Can AI plan my Thanksgiving meal?

More than a Store: Can AI plan my Thanksgiving meal?

AI shopping tools can be useful, but simple, grocer-curated lists are much more helpful than the cutting-edge chatbots.

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More than a Store is a regular column that delves into the experiential side of grocery retailing.

Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away, and while I enjoy cooking the holiday feast, I don’t look forward to the hassle of planning out which dishes to make and which ingredients I need to buy.

Grocers seem to understand this problem, and have recently made their online shopping experiences faster, more useful, and tailored to customers. I figured there’s no better time to give some of these digital options a whirl. 

I initially wanted to look just at how conversational commerce —a buzzy advancementin the grocery industry — can impact the online shopping experience, especially for a typically large and complex meal like Thanksgiving. Albertsonsunveiled its agentic AI shopping assistanton its banners’ websites at the end of 2025, noting that the tool would become available on their apps in early 2026. Instacart, Shipt and DoorDash all launched AI-poweredconversational shopping assistantsearlier this year. 

But while the conversational component can create new opportunities to better learn a shopper’s preferences, I found using the chatbots I tested to be a clunky, overly complicated experience. 

As grocers continue racing toward the future, they need to make sure AI delivers on the promises of an outstanding customer experience rather than a headache. 

Negotiating with AI for my Thanksgiving shopping basket

I wanted to see how grocery AI chatbots fared at saving me time and money when I built a virtual cart. So I gave this prompt to the AI shopping assistants on Safeway and Kroger: “Build a basket of items for a Thanksgiving meal that feeds 10 people and includes a frozen whole turkey, pumpkin pie ingredients and classic sides.”

Safeway’s shopping assistant responded with a very thorough list that included several protein options, 14 types of produce, pantry staples, snacks, beverages, and, of course, ingredients for cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie. 

“Want me to turn this into cart-ready product matches and add everything to your cart, or keep it as a checklist only?” the chatbot asked, noting that it wanted me to select a protein option for the main dish. The chatbot then made a shoppable list of 51 items — totaling just over $202 — to sift through.That was more suggested items than I was expecting!

While several of the items that the AI picked were private brands or produce items on sale, the chatbot also picked name brands like Pillsbury pie crusts, Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce and French’s Original Crispy Fried Onions that were more expensive than Albertsons’ store brand versions, which are featured on the grocer’s curated webpage for Thanksgiving ingredients.

The AI also seemed unsure about how much effort I wanted to put into making a pumpkin pie from scratch. Its list included both a 15-ounce can of Libby’s pure pumpkin as well as a roughly 4- to 5-pound pie pumpkin. I found the latter suggestion hilarious, since I have never made pumpkin pie from scratch with an actual pumpkin before.

I found Kroger’s AI shopping assistant a bit smoother to use. It initially responded to my query with a shoppable list of 23 products, including a 16-pound turkey, 10 pounds of potatoes, family-size vegetables and ingredients for two pumpkin pies.

Next to the “Add All to Cart” button was an estimated total of $97.03. I asked if recipes were available for the sides, and the chatbot gave me six, including cornbread sausage stuffing, buttery mashed potatoes, dinner rolls and roasted green beans. It also provided some helpful tips, like making sure to prepare the cranberry sauce one to two days ahead of the meal.

While the recipes were a close fit, they didn’t perfectly match the ingredients that the AI chatbot had initially selected. For example, the AI chatbot had selected a box of cornbread stuffing but no sausages and had added ready-to-bake dinner rolls instead of ingredients to make them from scratch. 

The AI seemed to realize this and suggested I ask it to “Add the missing ingredients to my cart.” I clicked that and answered a few more questions, which led me to my “Complete Thanksgiving Basket” of 43 items with an estimated total of $127.73, factoring in an estimated $2.89 in savings.

Both of those pricey options materialized only after I spent several minutes conversing with the AI. While AI chatbots could be useful for brainstorming and nutrition research, they don’t seem to work well as actual shopping tools.

Meal bundles to the rescue

As I spent time on grocers’ websites, I found myself more drawn to their curated pages and preset meal bundles for my Thanksgiving needs. 

These options are not new in the grocery industry — but I found the user experience significantly easier to navigate. 

Four clicks on The Fresh Market’s website were all it took to add one of the grocer’s holiday meal bundles to my cart. Each of the specialty grocer’s meals clearly list the selected premade dishes included and the suggested serving size, making it easy to determine if you need additional items, like dessert or drinks. The Fresh Market also offers a variety of take-and-bake sides, bakery pies, dinner rolls and ready-to-eat appetizers.

Whilethe Fresh Market’s curated bundles seem to cater to customers who want to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible around Thanksgiving, other grocers offer a variety of options based on whether their shoppers might be willing to cook or want premade options instead.

Safeway, for example, hasa Thanksgiving bundle toolthat provides options for pumpkin pie ingredients, a fresh apple pie and a frozen ready-to-bake apple pie. That tool also includes a reminder to add commonly forgotten kitchen items like foil and food storage containers. I found Safeway’s curated webpage, which helpfully showed my estimated total as I added and deleted items, more intuitive and simpler to use than the grocer’s AI chatbot, which was thorough but also a bit overwhelming. 

Discounter Aldi takes the crown for speed when it comes to online shopping for the fall feast. The grocer hasa one-click shoppable basketfor nine of the items that are part of its approximately $40 meal bundle, which can feed 10 people with a 16-pound turkey. That shoppable bundle, though, does not currently include cranberries, a turkey or pumpkin pie mix. All items will become available in the coming weeks, according to Aldi’s website. Once all of those items are available, that shopping experience will be quite efficient. 

As this year’s holiday season approaches, grocers with AI assistants would be wise to also prominently feature shoppable lists and other curated webpages to make sure they don’t miss out on sales from customers who might be wary of conversational commerce. 

My guess is that chatbots will become more polished by Thanksgiving next year. While conversational chatbots are the shiny new plaything for grocers, not-so-revolutionary merchandising options like shoppable lists, preset meals and curated webpages — at least in the short term — seem to serve up a better online shopping experience. 

Grocers, it seems, still know their customers better than AI.

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