A 1981 Publix Thanksgiving Dinner Cost $17.95. Here’s How Much Floridians Pay Today

Some prices from the early ’80s sound like a typo today.

Publix’s old holiday deli dinner is one of them.

Here’s how far money went at the Thanksgiving table back then, and how far it goes now for Floridians.

What the Dinner Included

Publix’s deli ad ran on page 72 of the Nov. 24, 1981 St. Petersburg Times.

A headline billed it as a complete Thanksgiving feast from the Publix deli.

In the newspaper’s online archive, you can see the $17.95 price and the serving size of 12 to 15 people.

The dinner bundled a cooked House of Raeford turkey of 9 to 10 pounds with a pound of cranberry orange relish and a quart of giblet gravy.

You picked the dressing: 4 pounds of plain, walnut or cornbread.

The ad said the whole dinner was ready to heat and serve. It also called it a Deli Dinner.

The math below uses 12 people for the low end of the ad’s serving range and 15 for the high end.

Other Table Prices in the Ad

If you’d rather cook, Publix’s ad that day priced the parts of a Thanksgiving table one by one.

A frozen Butterball turkey of 10 pounds or more was 79 cents a pound, so a 10-pound bird came to $7.90.

Split among 12 guests, that’s about 66 cents each for the turkey. Among 15, it’s about 53 cents.

Pepperidge Farm stuffing cubes were 69 cents for a 7-ounce bag. A 12-ounce package of fresh Ocean Spray cranberries cost the same.

At the bakery counter, an 8-inch pumpkin pie was $1.39 and a 10-inch pie was $2.69.

Both were available only in full-service bakeries.

Assorted round dinner rolls were 89 cents a dozen.

Add up a 10-pound Butterball, one bag of stuffing cubes, one package of cranberries, a dozen rolls and an 8-inch pie.

The advertised prices come to $11.56.

The deli dinner cost $6.39 more than that list.

But the two don’t hold the same items, and the deli turkey came cooked.

Those are advertised prices, so we can’t know what any shopper paid.

Publix's Dinners Today

Publix's order-ahead page lists a Complete Turkey Dinner.

The base size serves 8.

That size comes with one fully cooked turkey of 9.5 to 12.5 pounds.

Add 2.5 pounds of cornbread dressing and 2.5 pounds of mashed potatoes.

You'd also get 16 ounces of cranberry orange relish, 26 ounces of marshmallow delight and 32 ounces of gravy.

Publix's page says you can serve all your Thanksgiving favorites for less than $10 per person with the dinner.

Fully cooked turkey, cornbread dressing, gravy and cranberry orange relish appear on both lists.

Publix also lists a dinner that feeds about 15. That's the closer match to the 1981 dinner.

People magazine reported in November 2025 that the 8-person dinner started at $69.99 and the 15-person dinner at $139.99.

Prices can change each holiday season, so what you'd pay this year may differ.

Potatoes and Marshmallows

Publix's 1981 deli dinner didn't list mashed potatoes or marshmallow delight. But the same ad page priced the makings.

A 10-pound bag of all-purpose white potatoes was $1.29.

At that price, the 2.5 pounds of mashed potatoes in today's 8-person dinner would use about 32 cents of potatoes.

Kraft marshmallows were 59 cents a package, in either the 10-and-a-half-ounce miniature size or the 10-ounce Jet Puffed size.

Neither price covers the cooking.

So you can't treat them as the cost of the finished dishes Publix sells today.

Cost for Each Guest

No grocer gets everything right, and we think many Florida shoppers won't like today's math next to this Publix Thanksgiving ad.

Divide Publix's 1981 dinner by 12 guests, and you get about $1.50 each.

Across 15 guests, it's about $1.20.

Now run the same split on today's dinners.

At 2025's starting price of $69.99, the 8-person dinner comes to about $8.75 a guest.

At $139.99, the 15-person dinner costs about $9.33 a plate. That's close to $9 a plate, against about $1.50 in 1981.

The 15-person dinner's 2025 starting price is nearly eight times what the 1981 dinner cost.

The 1981 dinner also fed 4 to 7 more people than the 8-person dinner does.

The Inflation-Adjusted Price

Inflation means prices rise over time.

Publix's $17.95 dinner from November 1981 has the buying power of $62.09 in November 2025.

That's according to the government's inflation calculator.

Spread that across 12 guests and it's about $5.17 each.

Across 15, it's about $4.14.

Next to the adjusted $5.17 a guest at 12 guests, 2025's $8.75 is about 1.7 times as much.

The calculator tracks overall consumer prices, so treat those figures as a ballpark.

So the 8-person dinner's 2025 price of $8.75 a guest runs about $3.60 to $4.60 above those adjusted figures.

The 15-person dinner's $139.99 sits about $77.90 above the adjusted $62.09, or more than twice as much.