Millions of Dong for a Christmas Turkey

Roast turkey is an indispensable dish during Thanksgiving and Christmas in the US, and in Vietnam this dish is gradually becoming familiar to many families.

Mr. Hoa, the owner of a turkey shop in Hanoi, said that this year, in addition to customers ordering chickens for breeding, his shop also supplied the market with 100 meat chickens for Christmas.

“There are already orders for this holiday. I sell each kilogram of turkey for 150,000 VND. Normally, they have to be raised for 7-8 months before they can be sold,” said Mr. Hoa, adding that female turkeys usually weigh 5kg, and roosters 10-12kg. For large parties, customers often order roosters. With that weight, each turkey usually costs 1.5-1.8 million VND. If you buy in large quantities, you will get a discount.

According to Mr. Hoa, in the past, Vietnamese people did not like to eat turkey. People raised this breed of chicken mainly to serve foreign guests. But now, many weddings and ceremonies use turkey as the main dish, pushing the price of chicken to quite high, from 90,000 to 120,000 VND per kg.

Turkey in Vietnam is currently quite expensive.

Also specializing in selling turkeys, the owner of a farm in Tien Giang said that this Christmas season he will supply about 400-500 turkeys to the market. Most of the turkeys are sold to businesses in Ho Chi Minh City. So far, about 30% of orders have been placed for Christmas.

“This year, the number of customers placing orders is earlier than usual. When they first started raising chickens, people in the West did not like this type of chicken, so they mainly sold it to restaurants serving Western customers. The rest only raised a few for decoration, but recently, more and more foreigners have come to Vietnam, so the demand for turkeys has also increased and the price has stabilized, even higher than that of domestic chickens. However, the demand is still concentrated in big cities,” said the owner of this farm.

Specializing in imported turkeys, a store in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, said that around Christmas, the price of imported turkeys is often higher than on normal days. Currently, the store sells whole chickens imported from the US, weighing an average of 7-8 kg, for 150,000 VND per kg.

“So far, the number of orders is not much, it will be from December 20th onwards that customers will start placing orders. Last year, we supplied about 200-300 to the market during Christmas, so this year the orders are expected to increase. If the number of orders is large, we will give customers a discount,” said an employee of this store.

According to turkey sellers, this type of chicken has bland meat, not as sweet as domestic chicken. However, the meat is quite thick, often roasted with vegetables and fruits, so it is less boring to eat. Turkey is a familiar dish appearing on every family's table during Thanksgiving or Christmas, mainly in the US and Canada. In the US, more than 50 million turkeys are consumed each year.

According to VNE