Imagine if Apple sold an iPhone that was so complex, you had to call tech support just to avoid being killed by it.
That’s more or less the model used by billion-dollar frozen turkey producer Butterball, which launched its Turkey Talk-Line in 1981 to help people safely cook their Thanksgiving birds.
- Butterball says 10k+ panicking cooks call the hotline every Thanksgiving.
- The most common questions include: “How do I thaw a turkey?” and “What are giblets?” (They’re edible intestines and organs, yum!)
- The US turkey industry produces 5B+ pounds of meat every year, so it makes sense that there’s a big demand for help.
- BTW, if you haven’t started thawing your turkey by Thanksgiving, it might be too late.
But now, in what may be the first turkey innovation since children started tracing their hands and drawing a beak on the thumb, Butterball has introduced a turkey that can go straight from the freezer to the oven — the perfect dinner for someone who doesn’t know how to cook and doesn’t want to learn how.
The new turkey…
… uses a “specially-formulated brine,” per Butterball, that requires no thawing and involves no giblets.
- There’s a catch, beyond potentially putting its own hotline out of business: Butterball states it would pose a “food safety risk” to make stuffing inside the new bird.
Back to the iPhone metaphor, that’s like inventing a device that’s easier to use but doesn’t get emails — it does the job, but is it worth it?
What we’ve learned: There’s still room for innovation in the multibillion-dollar turkey sector, so maybe next up is some kind of AI turkey that can tell you how it wants to be cooked?
