The Thanksgiving holiday has come a long way since 1621 when the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians first shared an autumn harvest feast. Although cooking methods and table etiquette have evolved over the years, the traditional Thanksgiving meal in America is still consumed today with the same spirit of thanks, celebration and a bit of over-indulgence.

“From a business perspective, Thanksgiving has evolved from a one-day event into an extended holiday, often spanning four days and sometimes a complete week,” says George Van Horn, senior analyst with IBISWorld, Inc., an independent publisher of business intelligence research covering more than 700 industries. “While everyone can appreciate the extra time available for family and friends, it is the food producers, grocers, retailers, transportation companies, and other industry segments, which collectively look at Thanksgiving with thanks, as the holiday historically has been one of the most important sales periods of the year.”

According to Van Horn, “Business also directly contributes to the holiday by aggressively marketing new products and services to meet evolving consumer preferences. For just the Thanksgiving meal alone, consumers can now choose from preparing the turkey and all the trimmings themselves, dining out in restaurants that serve a traditional Thanksgiving meal, or even taking advantage of a more recent trend whereby consumers can buy a complete, pre-packaged Thanksgiving meal that is ready-to-eat after a short period of heating everything up before the meal is served.”

Since the early ‘70s, turkey production in the U.S. has tripled, with an estimated 16 to 20 percent of annual turkey consumption attributed to Thanksgiving, with as much as 30 percent of consumption occurring during the combined Thanksgiving to New Year holiday season. At current prices, Thanksgiving alone may account for $640 million dollars of industry revenue, a number that makes raising turkey a relatively important business for producers across the U.S.

For those in the home furnishings business, this begs an important question: Where exactly will all of those turkeys be consumed this Thursday?  

“As we all know, the dining category was for a long time, in decline,” says Jena Hall, vice president of merchandising and design at Aspen Home. “The pieces that manufacturers were making were not keeping pace with the changing ways Americans were using their homes. From a trade standpoint, we talk about the footprint, or how many pieces of furniture you would typically produce in a dining room collection. In the old, traditional mentality, manufacturers would make a dining room table, a china and hutch, and maybe a server or a buffet. But two things started to change the way that consumers used dining room furniture.

“One was an evolution in the building industry toward a more open plan,” Hall describes. “As builders tried to address more and more young home owners coming into the market, one of the tricks they used to entice buyers was to remove some walls to make a space seem larger. That meant you no longer had the small, rectangular dining room which was long the standard in all American homes. Family rooms became great rooms and great rooms required different kinds of tables. So, initially, dining room sales started to decline because manufacturers were still cookie-cutting the formal dining room.

“The other was that some of the vertical lifestyle companies—Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel—who were one step closer to the consumer than the furniture manufacturers because they were retailers, started offering more informal dining furniture to address their customers’ needs, based on the kind of houses they were furnishing,” she continues. “Customers would come in and say, ‘I don’t need anything fancy; I just need a big table where we can hang out.’”

Fast forward to today, and according to the noted industry trend forecaster, who’s own Thanksgiving dinner next week will resemble something of a “summit with 30 of the near, dear and those who have nowhere to go, and rectangular folding tables coming off of the dining table in a giant U-shape that stretches on forever,”—the dining room category is enjoying something of a renaissance.  

“I think there are several driving factors,” Hall explains. “One is the economy. More people are thinking about eating at home just to save money. Another is ecology. More people are thinking about driving less and saving gas, and are therefore entertaining at home. And then there is this enormous ground swell of consumers who are thinking more about their health, who are not eating out as much, fast food or anything else. There is more interesting cooking happening at home, with all the popular cooking shows, Food Network and all of that. This definitely translates to, ‘O.k., how many nights do I want to eat at home, and how many nights do I want to have my neighbors or the families over?’ for all of these reasons from pocketbook to health. In the big picture, it’s really about understanding that there is a big shift going on in consumers’ minds about their furnishings needs in the dining category.”

These facts will definitely “stop the slide in the dining category. Dining is not dead,” Hall says. “What is dead are the old configurations. You have to be smarter about what you are providing the consumer today.”

Cheminne Taylor-Smith, director of marketing at Lexington Home Brands agrees. “We’re seeing fewer purchases of the traditional grand suite of formal dining room furniture. China cabinets are scaling down and buffets and sideboards are growing in popularity because they can function in so many ways. Our high-low bistro tables are very high sellers because they fit in a kitchen, great room or family room with ease. And round tables with perimeter leaves are among our top sellers.”

As for homes being built sans dining rooms, Hall says: “Since this trend toward removing walls started, home builders have begun finding that consumers who can afford larger square foot homes, really want both. They still want a room for Thanksgiving and Christmas and major birthday parties, and formal sit-down dinners. And, they still want the other, large, open space. This is important, because if you look at price points, the higher you go up the food chain between good, better and best, people have more rooms to fill, and you see that both the dining room and the great room are being addressed.”

“The point is, people still eat, they still gather as families, they still have friends over. What has changed is how they do it, and where they do it in the home, and the big trend in case goods, not just dining room, is more casual, more relaxed, more informal, as a general rule. But for every trend there is a counter-trend and when you get enough of the same finish and the same wood in the marketplace, then you start to see something else evolve because the buyers get tired of seeing the same thing, and the consumers walk in and see a sea of chocolate brown furniture and say, ‘Don’t you have anything else?’ ”

It’s not surprising then that Hall sees finishes evolving and changing. “Casual means relaxed, but it doesn’t mean heavily beat up and distressed,” she says. “As a matter of fact, we see that starting to shift and change with some higher glosses, lighter finishes, cleaner looks coming back into the marketplace. In different parts of the country homes are built differently. The needs for Mid-West homes are so different from out West, or the South, or the Northeast. You cannot speak today about the dining category in a cookie-cutter, across the U.S. market, way; you have to speak to it regionally in each of the markets where you do your business.”

By Shannon Kennedy, High Point Market Authority