This viral Dollar Tree Thanksgiving dinner is helping people on a budget

27 November 2024 at 8:24 pm·3-min read

Rebecca Chobat is a connoisseur of her local Dollar Tree.

The savvy chef on a budget runs the TikTok account Dollar Tree Dinners, where she makes hearty meals for those looking to stretch their money a little further - her latest series was on how to make five meals for four people on just $50. But she surpassed expectations when she posted a video about how to make Thanksgiving dinner for only $20 using Dollar Tree ingredients.

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In the video posted Saturday, Chobat holds up a $20 bill in front of her local Dollar Tree before claiming that the resultant meal - fried mac and cheese bites, a Thanksgiving casserole and caramel apple pie sugar cookie bars - was the “best Thanksgiving dinner that I have ever made.”

The video has more than 8 million views. To Chobat’s many fans, the holiday spread was heartwarming and informative at a time when the economy is technically booming, yet everyday Americans are still struggling with pandemic-related inflation.

“It’s just me and my son, I’m about to have surgery so finances are incredibly tight. Thank you SO MUCH for this!!!” wrote one viewer.

“I just wanna say, as a woman who used to be so ashamed that my childhood Thanksgivings came from the dollar store or food drives, this is beautiful to see you helping others!” wrote another.

Jorge Barraza, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, said the video demonstrates empathy at a time of economic uncertainty.

“We were told by economists that this is actually a prosperous time, but not everybody is benefiting from that,” he said. Even for those who are financially secure, the video shows “that there is an understanding that people are hurting economically.”

Costs associated with Thanksgiving dinner are down 5 percent since last year, according to the annual American Farm Bureau Federation Thanksgiving dinner survey. The survey cited low demand for turkey, which accounts for 44 percent of the meal’s cost, as the biggest factor in the lower price. The price of sweet potatoes, frozen vegetables, pie ingredients and whole milk also dropped.

When adjusted for inflation, today’s meal for 10 would be “the least expensive Thanksgiving meal in the 39-year history of the AFBF Thanksgiving survey, other than the outlier of 2020,” according to the report.

However, Barraza said big-picture economics don’t always reflect how consumers feel - especially when factoring in other costs associated with the holidays, such as travel and gifts. In the face of financial anxieties, Chobat’s videos give consumers alternative holiday feast options.

“We don’t think about Dollar Tree - especially those who haven’t shopped at a Dollar Tree - as a store where you can get food and make something like the things that she’s making,” Barraza said.

Chobat’s videos also dispel the ideas, propagated by food influencers on social media, that cooking needs to be a laborious process or that dishes need to be ornately decorated, Barraza said. In particular, Chobat’s casserole dish provides a meal option that may not be pretty but is filling and inexpensive.

“I don’t need to have a fancy kitchen. I don’t need to have fancy ingredients, and I can make something that’s going to be good and it’s going to be comforting and it’s going to be nostalgic,” he said.

Since she posted the video, Chobat said, Dollar Tree Dinners gained about 300,000 new followers. Much of the traffic is because of a shoutout from creator Caleb Demeny, posting under the name CalebCooks, who described visiting a dollar store and seeing a woman with three young kids buying the exact ingredients used in Chobat’s Thanksgiving meal.

“The Dollar Tree Meal lady is a wholesome creator, and I want her to know that her videos do help people,” Demeny said in his video, which has nearly 28 million views.

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