Thanksgiving Dinner Cost
The 16-pound turkey makes up 44% of the cost of the holiday dinner for 10 as shown in the Marimekko chart below. The total dinner cost is estimated by the American Farm Bureau Federation to be $48.90 or less than $5 per person.
The side dishes cost $13.38. This includes sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, rolls and vegetables. Desserts, milk and other ingredients round out the meal. Two pumpkin pies with whipped cream cost $7.88, which is less than $1 per slide.
Costs were down slightly from 2017 as indicated in the data row under the chart. The turkey's cost was down 3% from 2017, while other cost categories all increased by about 3%. Total costs were down .5%.
Here are the steps to make this chart:
Marimekko Chart of Thanksgiving Dinner Costs
How I Made This Thanksgiving Dinner Cost Marimekko Chart with Data Rows
I used a Marimekko chart to group the 12 food items into logical categories. I first thought of grouping into protein, starch, vegetables. I then decided it might be more interesting to group into main dish, sides and desserts. Once I decided on a grouping, I copied the data from the American Farm Bureau Federation website into Excel, added the categories for each item and created two PivotTables:
Here are the steps to make this chart:
- create a Marimekko chart in PowerPoint from the top PivotTable
- copy and paste the 2017 total data to the bottom of the Mekko Graphics Data Editor
- add data for the % of total and % change from 2017 data rows to create a datasheet as below
- sort bars with biggest on left and series with biggest on bottom
- show values and series names in segments
- format numbers with $ and two decimal places and format data rows as percentages
- manually color each segment so bars are shades of different colors
- adjust internal chart margins and label font sizes
