Earning a free Easter ham is easier than ever

For a decade, Jessica Fox has been redeeming reward points to get a ham at Giant for her family’s Easter dinner.

While much of the annual tradition has stayed the same, the 36-year-old has noticed one big change in recent years: She’s reaching the reward-points threshold for earning that free ham twice as fast.

For her three-person household, “shopping for two weeks worth of groceries is going to be $200 to $300 anyway,” said Fox, an operations coordinator who lives in Conshohocken.

On trips to ShopRite in Cherry Hill, Gabrielle Gordon, 48, has noticed it, too: “I was like, ‘Wow, it didn’t take me almost any time to get the turkey this year.’ ”

As Easter weekend approaches, consumers across the Philadelphia region are cashing in on hams, turkeys, and other dinner staples through the popular promotion that grocery stores like Giant and ShopRite have run for decades.

Customers must spend a certain amount of money — or, in store rewards-club parlance, earn a certain number of points — in a certain period of time to redeem a complimentary item.

ShopRite customers, for example, must spend $400 between Feb. 18 and March 30 to qualify for a free ham, turkey, Tofurky, or other meal redeemable until Saturday, the day before Easter. They can also save their earnings and get a free kosher turkey or roasting chicken for Passover next month. During the month of March, Giant customers who have 400 “choice points” in their accounts can print a certificate for a free ham, turkey, Stouffer’s party-size meal, or Tofurky. (Rewards members earn at least one point for every dollar spent on eligible items.)

As food prices have risen, customers say they’ve noticed they’re reaching the threshold quicker than ever before, often in half as many regular trips to the store.

Some are happily collecting a free ham as their contribution to a gathering or to be used for everyday meals for their family. Others are letting rewards points stack up, preferring to use them to save in other ways, such as through Giant’s gas discounts, instead of on the holiday promotion.

Customers always have the option to donate the free entrées. The Food Bank of South Jersey has seen an increase in donations recently. But in the Pennsylvania suburbs, food bank workers said fewer people than ever are giving away their free hams and turkeys so far this season, a trend in line with the steady decline in overall donations many organizations have seen since the pandemic.

“I think a lot of families just can’t offer that level of support at this point, because grocery prices are so much higher,” said Catie Mahoney, director of food access and education at Chester County Food Bank, which had to buy 3,000 hams to supplement the fewer than 1,000 donated ones it had received from individuals in advance of Easter.

The free-protein giveaways have been around for decades. In the 1980s, ShopRite’s promotion began as a “save your register receipt” plan, and the weekly circulars contained envelopes to help customers organize them, said Karen O’Shea, spokesperson for the New Jersey-based chain.

Today, the points are accumulated electronically, with some customers even paying through the store’s phone app. And as inflation has reached record levels, some shoppers, especially those with larger households, have found more satisfaction than ever in getting a deal.

“People really love this idea of receiving something extra for free,” said Yanliu Huang, an associate professor of marketing at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. “Customers have that perception that the store is giving away something.”

In actuality, Huang said, the store is making money, while some customers — especially those with smaller households — may be spending more money, consciously or unconsciously, over more frequent trips to the store in order to earn the promised reward.

Each year, more Giant customers participate in the free-protein promotions, spokesperson Ashley Flower said, and its popularity is one of the reasons that the Carlisle, Pa.-based chain expanded the program, which began as only a pre-Thanksgiving tradition. It’s now done twice a year, in the fall and spring.

Giant and ShopRite spokespeople declined to answer specific questions about exactly how many customers have taken advantage of the promotion in recent years and whether elements — including the time frame and spending thresholds — have changed with time (Flower, of Giant, did say their points threshold has remained unchanged over the years, despite increased protein prices).

Most customers don’t do the math to figure out whether their household is getting a deal by spending a certain amount of money in order to get a free dinner item, Huang said, and that keeps the promotions lucrative for grocers.

In South Jersey, Gordon, the ShopRite customer, said she plans to do some math before the fall free-turkey promotion. As a single person who alternates between ShopRite and Wegmans when ShopRite isn’t having a free-protein promotion, she isn’t sure whether she’s getting a bargain.

“Are we really saving money on the turkey?” asked Gordon, a physical therapist who lives in Maple Shade. Or “if we just did our normal shopping, and just bought the turkey and ham, would we actually be saving money? Is the program actually good?”

Before Thanksgiving “I’m going to actually shop around and see what the turkey prices are per pound,” she added, to see if “I’m spending $400 for a $20 turkey.”