Key Highlights:
Thanksgiving Eve was DoorDash’s busiest grocery day of the entire year in 2025, outpacing both Christmas Eve and Big Game Sunday.
Meat thermometer orders peaked at noon on Thanksgiving Day, roughly one order every 10 seconds, with food thermometer purchases up more than 3,600% across the day.
Potatoes were America’s most-ordered Thanksgiving side, but every state has a local favorite, from squash in New Hampshire to stuffing in Vermont.
Chocolate cake outranked every pie in America on DoorDash across Thanksgiving, with pumpkin pie landing fourth.
Sweet potato pie and pecan pie were among Thanksgiving’s fastest-rising desserts year over year, while snickerdoodle cookies and pumpkin cake climbed on the restaurant side.
Thanksgiving Eve was DoorDash’s busiest Wednesday for restaurant orders two years running, with pizza as the most ordered Thanksgiving Eve dinner.
Thanksgiving brings back our favorite dishes every year, and somehow, the same last-minute scramble for ingredients and tools we swore we had. Ahead of Thanksgiving 2026, we dug into DoorDash’s 2025 holiday orders across grocery, restaurants, and retail to find what made the menu, what landed in last-minute carts, and what hour the panic set in.
Turkey Tomorrow, Takeout Tonight
Thanksgiving’s menu may be spoken for, but Wednesday dinner still needs a plan. Nobody wants to cook before prepping a feast, so America did what it usually does: ordered pizza.
In 2025, Thanksgiving Eve was DoorDash’s busiest Wednesday for restaurant orders for the second year running, and pizza did the heavy lifting, up more than 50% over other November Wednesdays.
Pie Before Pie: Cheese pizza (+70%), Hawaiian pizza (+60%), and pepperoni pizza (+50%) all spiked on Thanksgiving Eve.
Comfort Before the Chaos: Familiar favorites including fried chicken (+40%), cheeseburgers (+20%), tacos (+20%), and burritos (+20%) all climbed too.
“Thanksgiving Eve has quietly turned into its own holiday, and almost none of it involves turkey,” said Cristen Milliner, Consumer Trends Expert at DoorDash. “It’s the biggest grocery day of the year on DoorDash and one of our biggest Wednesdays for restaurants, which is a strange combination until you think about what Thanksgiving Eve entails. Everybody’s cooking Thursday, so people turn to DoorDash to save a few hours so they’re able to spend time with their friends and families.”
Prep, Set, Go
While Wednesday’s dinner was handled, the actual holiday was still being assembled. Thanksgiving Eve was DoorDash’s single busiest grocery day of 2025, outpacing both Christmas Eve and Big Game Sunday. Orders hit their peak at 5 p.m. local time, right about when everyone got home and started prep.
Seasoned for the Occasion: Whole turkeys (+840%), dried sage (+2,000%), fresh rosemary (+840%), and fresh thyme (+820%) spiked as hosts prepped for the main dish.
Sweet on Sides: Sweet potatoes (+730%), brown sugar (+830%), and marshmallows (+560%) jumped, a familiar lineup for anyone whose favorite side could almost pass for dessert.
Pie Prep: Frozen pie crusts (+1,400%), pecans (+810%), and vanilla extract (+840%) were added to carts.
Room for One More: Disposable tins (+2,100%), serving trays and platters (+1,300%), and even outdoor chairs (+1,000%) saw significant spikes in orders. Having enough food is one question. Having somewhere to put it, and everyone, is another.
Back In Town: The Reunion Before the Feast
The night before Thanksgiving has long been called the unofficial hometown reunion night. In 2025, alcohol purchases through DoorDash rose more than 40% year over year on Thanksgiving Eve and ran more than 80% above the average of other Wednesdays.
Late Night Essentials
For Old Times’ Sake: Condom purchases on Thanksgiving Eve rose more than 30% compared with Thanksgiving Eve 2024. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Plan B purchases were more than 60% above the average Friday in 2025.
The holiday drinks menu was taking shape, too. Compared with other November Wednesdays, Thanksgiving Eve purchases pointed straight at Thursday’s toast.**
Festive Pours: Cream liqueurs (+390%), Prosecco (+260%), and Champagne (+230%) were dinner must-haves.
A Toast for the Whole Table: Sparkling grape juice jumped more than 1,050% and nonalcoholic apple cider about 690%, a sign the toast made room for the kids’ table too.
Thanksgiving Day: The Great Kitchen Scramble
The recipe is open, the oven is preheating, and the measuring cups are nowhere to be found. In 2025, DoorDash grocery orders peaked at 11 a.m. local time on Thanksgiving Day, right about when the gaps started getting noticed. Enter DoorDash, saving the day with last-minute essentials.***
10 a.m. — Batter Late Than Never: Cake pans, brown sugar, and marshmallows all reached their busiest ordering hour, with cake pan purchases up about 900% across the day. A reminder that “preheat the oven” assumes you’ve already found the pan.
11 a.m. — Pie to the Rescue: Bakery pie orders hit their peak, up more than 620% across the day, the hour “from scratch” became “from the bakery.”
Noon — Is the Bird Done Yet?: Meat thermometer orders reached their busiest hour, averaging roughly one order every 10 seconds. Across the day, food thermometer purchases climbed more than 3,600%, the biggest single-item spike we saw on Thanksgiving Day.
“Some of these day-of spikes are just people forgetting something ordinary, but a lot of it is people taking on a dish they’ve never made before and realizing halfway in that they don't own the thing it requires,” Milliner added. “You’ve eyeballed it and cooked on vibes all year, but you’re not doing that with the turkey in front of the whole family the year you decide to roast it yourself. The recipe says to check the temperature, and you realize you have no way to do that."
Here’s more of what America went looking for — and shopping for — once the cooking was already underway on Thanksgiving Day.
Don’t Forget the Flavor: Dried sage (+800%), nutmeg (+620%), and gravy (+380%), a reminder to give the spice cabinet a second look before the heat is on.
Sugar Rush: Marshmallows (+330%), brown sugar (+350%), and vanilla extract (+330%), proof the sweet potato casserole is dessert wearing a side dish costume.
Before You Preheat: Cake pans (+900%), mixers and blenders (+590%), and measuring cups (+440%).
Peel the Pressure: Graters (+1,300%), peelers (+1,100%), can openers (+490%), and kitchen knives (+390%), because apparently “The Drawer” has nothing useful in it.
Cherry on Top: Maraschino cherries (+460%) and whipped cream (+260%), the finishing touches nobody thinks about until the pie is already cooling.
Wrap It Up: Toothpicks (+820%), aluminum foil (+700%), disposable food containers (+410%), and disposable plates and bowls (+130%), the tell of a bigger crowd than planned, and leftovers headed out the door with them.
A Little Help From the Pros
Not every Thanksgiving dinner comes out of a home kitchen. Sometimes, restaurants on DoorDash are part of the family recipe.
The Bird Needed Backup: Restaurant turkey orders more than doubled (+100%) on Thanksgiving Day, a sign plenty of birds never made it into the oven, or never made it out.
The Dry Turkey Rescue Kit: Gravy (+380%), butter (+100%), and chicken broth (+90%) all spiked in grocery on Thanksgiving Day, the three things you reach for when the bird comes out a little drier than you’d hoped for.
Dessert, Outsourced: Pumpkin pie climbed more than 310% in restaurants, along with French silk pie (+80%) and banana cream pie (+70%).
Not Everyone Was Having Turkey: Restaurant purchases of T-bone steak jumped more than 150%, while grocery orders of ham rose more than 160% on Thanksgiving Day.
A Table as Diverse as America: Thanksgiving doesn’t look the same in every home. Restaurant purchases climbed for Chinese Peking duck (+150%), Mexican bolillo rolls (+80%), Latin American buñuelos (+60%), Indo-Chinese manchurian (+50%), Levantine manakish (+40%), South Asian gulab jamun (+40%), and Central European kolaches (+20%).
Sides Worth Seconds
Turkey may be the headliner, but sides are the reason anyone goes back for a second plate. Nationally, these were the most-ordered sides of Thanksgiving week.
Mashed Potato
Corn
Sweet Potato
Green Beans
Gravy
Carrots
Mac and Cheese
Stuffing
Cornbread
Cranberries
The holiday may be national, but side-dish loyalty is deeply local. Here’s the side each state over-ordered most compared with the rest of the country:
Spud Nation: Every great mash starts somewhere. Mashed potatoes were the most over-ordered side in 11 states, including California, Washington, and Massachusetts.
Corn Gets Its Moment: Corn stood out in six states, including Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
The Other Potato: Sweet potatoes were the local standout in six states, including Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri.
Bean Scene: Green beans got extra love in five states, including Iowa, Kansas, and Kentucky.
Gravy Country: Gravy was the go-to in four states: Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, and West Virginia.
Southern Comfort: Cornbread stood out in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Mac and Cheese claimed Delaware, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Biscuits held their own in Tennessee.
Green Eats: Carrots were the side of choice in six states, including New York, New Jersey, Utah and Colorado. Collard greens stood out in Minnesota, Nevada, and Virginia.
A State of Their Own: New Hampshire was the only state where squash was ordered most compared with the rest of the country, while Vermont remained the only state where they prefer stuffing.
The Great Pie (and Cake) Debate
We looked at every store-bought pie and cake ordered across Thanksgiving, and the ranking did not go the way tradition suggests. Chocolate cake took the top spot in DoorDash’s ranking, with pumpkin pie landing fourth.****
Chocolate cake
Apple pie
Cheesecake
Pumpkin pie
Pound cake
Chocolate pie
Strawberry cake
Pecan pie
Cherry pie
Vanilla cake
Narrow it to pies alone and tradition mostly holds, with apple on top, pumpkin second, and chocolate pie third, followed by pecan, cherry, sweet potato, key lime, peach, banana cream, and blueberry pie.
A few flavors are also climbing fast. Across Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving Day, purchases of sweet potato pie rose more than 210% year over year and pecan pie more than doubled (+100%). On the restaurant side, snickerdoodle cookies rose more than 110% and pumpkin cake grew more than 40%.
“Pumpkin pie has been the default Thanksgiving dessert for generations, the one that shows up whether anybody asked for it or not, and it’s still landing outside the top three,” Milliner explained. “But chocolate cake outranking every pie tells me people are ordering for the room instead of for the occasion. Pumpkin pie is polarizing, you either wait all year for it or you take the smallest slice on the table. Chocolate cake is something nobody turns down, and when you’re feeding a mix of adults, kids, and the one cousin who doesn’t like pie, that matters more than tradition does.”
And as with sides, there’s no one-slice-fits-all. Here’s the pie or cake that makes each state’s Thanksgiving sweeter:
Pumpkin Pride: Pumpkin pie was the most over-indexed pie or cake in 14 states, more states than any other flavor tracked, including California, Washington and Arizona. In Hawaii, pumpkin pie’s share of pie-and-cake purchases was nearly three times the national share.
The Cheesecake Belt: Cheesecake took eight states across the Midwest and beyond, including Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.
Pound Cake Power: Six states leaned into buttery slices, including Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
New England Goes Chocolate: In a genuine plot twist, six states over-indexed on chocolate pie instead of apple, including Kentucky, Maine, and New Hampshire.
Apple Aficionados: Apple pie stayed true to its roots in three states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, fittingly the home of the Big Apple itself.
Chocolate Cake Country: Five states crowned chocolate cake, including Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Nutty for Pecan: Four states kept the South’s signature dessert right where it belongs, including Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
Sweet Surprises: Vanilla cake won three states, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. And Georgia, improbably, went key lime.
However you slice it, and whatever you forgot, Thanksgiving still comes together. Usually right around noon, with a Dasher and a thermometer on the way.
Methodology: Insights are based on DoorDash ordering data from November 2025 unless otherwise specified, with year-over-year comparisons to the same period in 2024. Percentage changes reflect Thanksgiving Eve (Nov. 26, 2025) and Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 27, 2025) compared with the average of other November Wednesdays and Thursdays, respectively, unless otherwise noted. All figures are approximate.
**21+ Only. Drink responsibly. Alcohol available only in select markets.
***All times are local. Percentage increases compare full-day purchases on Thanksgiving Day 2025 with the average of other November Thursdays.
****National pie-and-cake rankings and state standouts reflect U.S. purchases from grocery, convenience, and other stores on DoorDash from November 19–27, 2025.
