Raleigh real estate company donating 3,000 turkeys for Thanksgiving meals :: WRAL.com

By Kasey Cunningham, WRAL reporter

Raleigh, N.C. — More people are in need of a hot Thanksgiving meal this year, but food banks, nonprofits and other organizations that help feed hungry families are struggling ahead of the holidays.

On Thursday, local realty group Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and Walston will distribute 3,000 turkeys to 200 organizations working to supply Thanksgiving meals to families who need them. Among the recipients are Camp Lejuene, Fort Bragg, area schools and food banks.

At 5 a.m., volunteers were already setting up for the Turkeys for the Triangle event at the realty office on Wade Avenue in Raleigh.

Now in its 18th year, the event is made possible by raffle tickets sold by agents during the holiday season to raise money to purchase the birds. This year’s event is the company’s largest ever despite product and supply shortages.

To make sure they had enough birds, Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and Walston partnered with Butterball, LLC, and ordered thousands of turkeys almost a year ahead of time to account for supply chain shortages during the pandemic.

“We pre-order our turkeys in February, and with this pandemic this year we knew we had to add a couple on, so we added another 500, which gets us short of the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Matt Horton, president of the Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and Walston Foundation.

The record number of turkeys given away in one day is 8,000.

So far, Turkeys for the Triangle has donated over 34,000 turkeys to provide holiday meals for more than 160,000 people.

Another Turkeys for the Triangle event will be held closer to Christmas for the same reason.

Food Lion is also making a big donation to help with food insecurity concerns this Thanksgiving, gifting $100,000 in gift cards to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. The food bank will then distribute those cards to families in need at local events across our area.