Next week, in the US, is one of my favorite holidays… Thanksgiving! In my opinion, there are just so many great things about Thanksgiving. A gathering with friends and family that doesn’t involve the pressure of gifts. A day that helps realign priorities to being thankful for everything we have before heading into the crazy holiday season. The weather is cold, but no real danger of ice and snow. Football on the TV and, of course, the great food!
Thinking of all the food finds my marketing brain drifting over to the question of “what is the most popular Thanksgiving side dish?” I think most people tend to have a turkey as the cornerstone of any Thanksgiving meal, but side dishes can cover a wide array of vegetables, casseroles, breads and other foods.
Allrecipes recently published their 2014 Thanksgiving Trends report taking a look at their historical site data and a survey of 1,500 home cooks. How much traffic does Allrecipes see during Thanksgiving? According to their report, the day before Thanksgiving in 2013, there were “6.6 million home cooks consumed 34 million Thanksgiving recipes, reviews, and videos…” That is a lot of people looking for recipes! Looking at the report, I was surprised to see in the trending Thanksgiving recipe area that bread rolls had the highest surge in growth, but wasn’t as much seeing as the rest were stuffing, gravy, and a green bean casserole.
Allrecipes 2014 Thanksgiving Trends Report – Fastest Trending Thanksgiving Recipes | Courtesy www.allrecipes.com
To read the rest of the great report, including the top Thanksgiving searched pies, please visit Allrecipes.com
Of course, no question in my mind is truly satisfied until I take a look at some Google search data. I decided to limit the search to the top five side dishes that I could think most people would be searching for: mashed potatoes recipe, stuffing recipe, green bean casserole recipe, cranberry sauce recipe, or cornbread recipe.
I think it doesn’t come as a great shock that there are sharp peaks in the search volume for all the five side dishes during November each year. I was a little surprised as how much higher “stuffing recipe” was than everything else and that “cornbread recipe” somewhat surged to the second highest spot last year. I thought for sure that it would be “mashed potatoes recipe” or “green bean casserole”.
Of course, just because users are searching more for stuffing and bread recipes on Allrecipes.com and Google, doesn’t mean that is what will show up on your table for Thanksgiving. What are you searching for or cooking this year? Let me know in the comments below.
Hope you and your family have a fantastic Thanksgiving!
1 comment
My favorite Thanksgiving side would definitely be sweet potato casserole! That, and mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce, Stove Top stuffing, corn, and some really good bread pretty much completes it for me.