Thursday, November 13, 2025
37.0°F

In Britain, U.S. turkey dinner is big business

DANICA KIRKA/Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 10 years, 11 months AGO
by DANICA KIRKA/Associated Press
| November 27, 2014 8:00 PM

LONDON - Plump turkeys in butcher shop windows. Harvest displays of pumpkin and corn. Sandwich boards describing groaning feasts.

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Britain, but you might be forgiven for being fooled. It's not hard to find someone to talk turkey, never mind sell you one. That's because there are so many Americans in Britain these days that dozens of businesses have started selling the goods they need to celebrate.

Greg Klaes, a Detroit native who used to teach science on U.S. military base schools, started growing pumpkins 30 years ago so his students could carve Halloween jack-o-lanterns. This year, his Oxfordshire farm is selling 1,322 pounds a week, filling harvest decorations and pumpkin pies.

"I believe firmly that there's a real integration of the societies," he said. "There's a lot of Americans and a lot people want to share their cultures."

Klaes is one of some 200,000 U.K. residents who were born in the U.S., according to census data. That's 26 percent more than in 2001. In Kensington and Chelsea, an upscale London borough that is home to many bankers and celebrities, U.S.-born residents make up 5 percent of the population.

And since there's no other holiday that's quite like Thanksgiving, businesses big and small are finding ways to join the celebrations. Dozens of restaurants are putting on spreads. Texas-based Whole Foods has turned its store on Kensington High Street into a one-stop holiday shopping center beginning with a sidewalk chalkboard that welcomes customers with the message "We are here to make your Thanksgiving epic."

Even the mainstream British grocery chain Waitrose is getting involved, although in a smaller way. A few blocks down the High Street in a store that's already decked with red-and-green Christmas decorations, Waitrose has a small "Happy Thanksgiving" display, complete with a picture of a pumpkin wearing a buckled Pilgrim hat.

Offerings include Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, Carnation evaporated milk and Libby's pumpkin, alongside British icons like Paxo Sage and Onion stuffing.

Turkey producer Bramble Farm in Surrey has been around since the 1930s and sold 100 or so special birds during the Thanksgiving season 15 years ago. Farm owner Derek Joy says he now sells 4,500.

It's not just Americans who are buying. Joy said he has started getting calls from British families who want to put on feasts for their American work colleagues - so they don't feel lonesome on the big day. As he is most definitely British, Joy finds it strange when he is asked to dispense advice on a quintessentially American holiday, but he tries to keep it straightforward.

"I'd say just treat it like Christmas day," Joy said. "And instead of doing a pudding, just buy a pumpkin pie."

And for the really upscale, there's always Lidgate's. The ever-cheerful Danny Lidgate, whose 160-year-old shop has been in the same family for five generations, says Americans gobble up the big, broad-breasted, heritage Kelly Bronze turkeys he stocks.

For those who don't understand the holiday, Lidgate's offers this primer on its Website: "Turkeys feature prominently in the history of the Pilgrim fathers, and it is believed that many Puritan families owed their survival to wild turkeys."

Never mind that those Pilgrim parents left Britain fleeing religious persecution. That's all past. Everyone is friends now.

ARTICLES BY DANICA KIRKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 19, 2015 9 p.m.

Vicious tug-of-war

Europeans shut borders, block bridges, to halt migrant surge

ZAGREB, Croatia - Thousands of migrants were trapped Friday in a vicious tug-of-war as bickering European governments shut border crossings, blocked bridges and erected new barbed-wire fences in a bid to stem the wave of humanity fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

Paparazzi pics of young prince irritate royal family
August 15, 2015 9 p.m.

Paparazzi pics of young prince irritate royal family

LONDON - Royal officials on Friday urged media organizations not to publish unauthorized images of Prince George and Princess Charlotte, arguing that paparazzi are using increasingly dangerous tactics to get the valuable images.