The staff at Grico’s in Exeter cooked 50 turkeys this week, preparing to fill Thanksgiving orders - but general manager Shauna Strellish worried until the last second that they wouldn’t have enough.
“I realized a lot of the names were not familiar names that I had seen in the past,” she said. “We’re selling more than we usually have, so I actually took the list and called my regulars to say do you still need a turkey?”
Strellish says Gricos has offered full Thanksgiving meals for more than a decade, but this year the service was more popular than ever. The restaurant’s kitchen hummed every day this week as the chefs filled pans of stuffing and sweet potatoes and tended to each turkey.
Ben Fileccia of the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association says across Pennsylvania, more and more people are looking for Thanksgiving meals from restaurants, and more restaurants are meeting that demand.
“More people are choosing the option,” he said.
Fileccia thinks the trend toward takeout started during the pandemic. He says when restaurants that weren’t typically associated with takeout started offering it, customers formed a different opinion of what takeout can be.
“It’s not very surprising now, three years later, that palettes have expended a little bit about what they expect from takeout and delivery food,” he said. “They’re considering restaurants when they’re planning their Thanksgiving meal.”
North Slope Pub and Eatery in Dallas sold Thanksgiving meals for the first time this year. General Manager Kaylee McMahon was nervous about it - with other area restaurants doing the same thing, she thought North Slope might have a hard time standing out.
“It is going so much better than we ever expected. I genuinely thought…because I was seeing so many posts online that we would only get a few orders,” she said. “But there’s been a lot of interest in it.”
McMahon agrees that opportunities for takeout have grown since 2020. She says people’s routines have changed since then, even as they’ve gotten back to work.
“I think that people are busier than ever,” she said. “I’ve noticed a lot of the people who are ordering are small families and single people who are working but still want that Thanksgiving meal.”
Fileccia has found that ordering out for Thanksgiving dinner can also end up being cheaper or at least the same price as buying the groceries to cook it at home.
“It’s not necessarily cheaper to buy your Thanksgiving meal in the grocery store,” he said. “Dollar and cents wise, it’s probably going to be the same amount of money to go out…as it is to fill up your shopping cart.”
Like Grico’s, North Slope will be sending out full Thanksgiving meals - turkey, gravy, potatoes, cranberry sauce and all.
John McNeil, catering chef at Grico’s, had timings and steps for each dish scribbled down to keep things on track. He started with the stuffing - it’s the most time consuming to prep.
“I found that out last year, the stuffing put me behind,” he said. “This year there’s a lot more than we did last year, stuffing and mashed potato-wise…you just put your head down and keep working and bang it out.”
All 50 turkeys and every tray of sides left the Grico’s kitchen on Wednesday, headed to homes throughout the area for the holiday.
