ROGERS — Bill Reed of Bentonville was equal parts thankful and shocked Thursday by the generosity of stranger.
“That’s amazing is what that is,” Reed said as he held a foil-wrapped turkey, paid for by an anonymous woman.
Reed went to the Copeland’s of New Orleans restaurant Thursday to pick up the Cajun fried turkey he ordered for his family’s Thanksgiving meal, then learned he didn’t have to pay for the bird.
The $43.59 bill was paid by a woman who had picked up her food before Reed arrived at the Rogers restaurant.
Reed wanted to thank the woman, but would have to settle for doing a good deed for someone else.
“I guess I’ll have to try to do something nice for somebody today, myself,” he said.
Reed was one of the millions of Americans who obtained all or part of their Thanksgiving meals from a restaurant, instead of cooking it at home.
Thanksgiving has become one of Copeland’s busiest days, owner Joe Lisuzzo said, and is “one of the more prominent eating-out family days of the year.”
By noon, most of the takeout turkeys and side dishes were picked up, said Carolyn McHam, bartender and sales coordinator for the restaurant. At least 80 customers began picking up their orders about 8 a.m., she said.
Restaurants have become a central part of Thanksgiving for many Americans, according to Mike Donohue, spokesman for the National Restaurant Association.
The association estimated that one in 10 Americanswould dine out for Thanksgiving, Donohue said, and even more would purchase their meals from restaurants and take them home.
Donohue said the trend toward relying on restaurants is a matter of convenience for a lot of people. He said many people don’t have time to shop for the meal, much less the time needed to cook it.
“It’s not a simple thing to put together,” he said.
There are any number of reasons that more people could be looking to restaurants for their Thanksgiving meals, said Mary Jo Schneider, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
The trend away from a traditional home-cooked Thanksgiving meal may haveless to do with Thanksgiving and more to do with Christmas, Schneider said.
As Christmas has grown more commercial, many retailers are advertising the holiday before Halloween, she said. Since the Christmas shopping season seems to begin earlier each year, people may now be busier and may be involved in more activities around Thanksgiving than in the past, Schneider said. She added that she has only anecdotal information to support her theory.
For Crystal Marshall of Bentonville, the decision to buy a turkey from Copeland’s for her family’s Thanksgiving meal had little to do with Christmas.
“I just had twin girls,” Marshall said. The 4-week-oldgirls were a month premature, she said.
Part of the fun of buying the turkey from a restaurant was having a chance to get out of the house, Marshall said.
“I wasn’t about to cook,” she said.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 11/26/2010