A Thanksgiving Meal to Dine For--More Are Gobbling Takeout

After his run of woeful luck with Thanksgiving, the thought of preparing another turkey dinner from scratch makes Paul Donovan’s knees wobble.

There was the year a Santa Ana gust blew out the power in his Glendale home, snuffing the oven just as the roasting got underway. Next came the backed-up sink that forced him to scrub the vegetables in the bathtub and then wash dishes and pans there afterward. Then followed the drama of the missing guests who phoned to say one of them had been arrested at the other’s behest.

“I have accepted that Thanksgiving is just not my day,” said Donovan, 48, a writer for a TV production company whose wife, Linda, “God love her, is no wizard in the kitchen.”

This year, Donovan will join untold other stressed-out, weary Americans in steering clear of the hazards in their own kitchens and making pilgrimages to restaurants, grocery delis and hotels to bag their Thanksgiving turkey--not to mention stuffing, candied yams, creamed spinach, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

They will then carry home the feast, reheat it if necessary, dish it into their own serving bowls and maybe even, as Donovan intends to, claim full credit.

“Yes, this year we will be doing takeout,” Donovan said with a sigh, dreaming of the 20-pound turkey and trimmings that his neighborhood grocery will pack for him on Thanksgiving morning. “I can sit and watch football and stare out the window. Good old Vons can worry about the electricity and backed-up sinks.”

This thoroughly modern phenomenon might rattle the bones of those pious Pilgrims who celebrated the nation’s first Thanksgiving in 1621. But “home meal replacement” (as the restaurant trade calls it) and “meal solutions” (the grocers’ term) are rapidly catching on, said Caitlin Storhaug, a spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Assn. in Washington.

In recent years, restaurants including Koo Koo Roo California Kitchen and Boston Market have turned up the heat on food retailers by offering home-style takeout meals for Thanksgiving. Prices for full dinners for 8 to 10 people start as low as $35 at Lucky food stores and ascend to the rarefied $195 for a four-course dinner for six at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel. (Don’t bother phoning. The Laguna Ritz’s “turkey to go” is already sold out.)

By contrast, the American Farm Bureau Federation found that the average cost of this year’s traditional feast prepared at home for 10 will cost $31.66, a $2.02 increase from 1995.

Turkey dinners to go, said Edie Clark of the Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade group in Washington, are tailor-made for people who don’t want to spend precious time preparing and cleaning up but crave that cozy, All-American feeling that comes from carving a bird and filling up on comfort foods in a homey atmosphere.

“This allows the person who takes pride in cooking but feels pinched for time to feel good about the meal,” Clark said.

By year-end, the Food Marketing Institute expects 77% of food retailers to offer some version of prepared foods to take out, up from 63% last year. Holiday meals to go are especially in vogue.

The increase in holiday takeout gibes with a trend that restaurateurs have noted: Fewer people are eating their Thanksgiving dinners in restaurants.

The trend also reflects a growing willingness on the part of women, who shoulder most of the Thanksgiving meal preparation burden, to let go of the Superwoman idea. Guilt pangs no longer hold cooks back from taking the easy way out. Women are fed up with being unable to enjoy the holiday.

Karen Zarachoff will follow her mother’s suggestion and pay $80 for a 28-pound turkey at Koo Koo Roo so that she can focus on preparing side dishes for 35 family members who will descend on her Encino house. Zarachoff, a part-time teacher and coach who is also launching a small business, prays that the turkey won’t taste too bland, but she’s willing to run the risk. And her friends “can’t wait to hear how it works,” she said.

At Koo Koo Roo, “we’ll be working on Thanksgiving so our customers don’t have to,” said Andy Solomon, marketing director for the 27-store chain, based in West Los Angeles. Koo Koo Roo outlets, some of which maxed out on orders days ago, are selling complete Thanksgiving dinners for 20 for about $130.

Boston Market, which sold hams for the first time last Thanksgiving, expects sales to soar 80% with expanded offerings that include rotisserie turkey breast dinners plus several side dishes.

“We’re looking at 550 hams and turkeys per store,” said Patrick Lenow, a spokesman in Anaheim for the franchisee that runs the 77 Southern California Boston Markets. The stores also expect to sell more than a ton of mashed potatoes and stuffing over Thanksgiving week.

Tapping into another food fashion dubbed “speed scratch,” Boston Market is encouraging cooks to use its items as ingredients in dishes such as dips and desserts.

With its holiday promotions, Lenow said, Boston Market has managed to turn what used to be its two slowest weeks--Thanksgiving and Christmas--into its two busiest.

The nine Los Angeles-area Whole Foods Market stores, with their in-house Mrs. Gooch’s Kitchens delis, plan on selling more than 1,000 meals for six at $60. Most big food retailers--including Lucky, Vons, Pavilions, Ralphs, Hughes, Gelson’s and Fedco--also will be sending dinner boxes home with scads of patrons.

Grocers have been trying with mixed success to sell holiday takeout meals for about a decade, said Clark of the Food Marketing Institute. The increased demand is good news, but the beefed-up competition from restaurants is making it tough for the meal purveyors to make a profit.

Even independent restaurants are getting into the act. Hannah’s Hickory Smoked Barbeque in Monrovia has taken “quite a few orders” for full meals with a Southern flair, said owner Josephine Hannah. They feature roasted or smoked turkeys and smoked hams, along with jambalaya and seafood gumbo. Last year, holiday takeout meals accounted for about 15% of the restaurant’s holiday business.

The surging popularity of Thanksgiving turkey to go strikes Donovan as a sensible thing. But he still considers his intention to go to Vons a “deep, dark secret.” If any of his guests ask, he said, “I’ll dodge the question.”