Canned Cranberries Is Instacart's Most Ordered Thanksgiving Side Dish

Instacart, the grocery store delivery app that gained traction in 2020 during start of the COVID-19 pandemic, took a recent poll of 2,000 Americans to gauge their plans for Thanksgiving dinner this year. The app also looked at orders from years past to looks at trends and upticks in certain items being ordered. It wanted to see when the most amount of orders come in, who's ordering what, and how people plan to cook their Thanksgiving feast. A lot of interesting outcomes came from this survey and you may be surprised by some of the findings.

In its fourth annual Turkey Day Exposé, Instacart released countless data points that provided a look at certain aspects of Thanksgiving grocery shopping. The data goes into everything from last-minute buys for people who forgot an important ingredient (with cheddar, cream cheese, and whipped cream making the top three), to a side-by-side look at each state's favorite side dish. And when it comes to those extra dishes, there's one side that rises above all others.

In the side-by-side comparison of what side dishes were most popular in each state, Instacart found overwhelming support for canned cranberries, even over fresh ones. According to Instacart, canned cranberries are the most popular Thanksgiving item sold via its app. While Thanksgiving is known for its turkey as much as its countless sides, there seem to be some dishes that are more popular than others. And for a holiday known for traditions, it's sometimes hard to kick foods that have been around for generations. For example, a survey by The Vacationer found that cranberry sauce was actually the least popular side dish.

But that's not what the thousands of people surveyed by Instacart voiced, with the app saying, "All but 6 states prefer canned berry jelly over fresh cranberries," in its Turkey Day Exposé survey. The app added that in November 2021, customers ordered enough cranberry sauce to create a stack more than 188,000 feet tall, or more than six Mount Everests combined. Which begs the question: What are you all doing with this much cranberry sauce?