Thanksgiving is just a day away which means Aurora resident Phyllis Kramer is busy helping all those cooks with questions about how to make the big day’s turkey come out just right.
Kramer is reprising her role with the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line — a job she has mastered with skill and grace for more than two decades and continues to hone each year before the annual hotline opens.
A former home economics teacher who worked at West Aurora High School, Kramer again joined up with her turkey problem-solving colleagues on Nov. 1 — the 41st time that the famous Butterball Turkey Talk-Line has been offered.
Over the course of the month, operators will handle thousands of calls including more than 10,000 on Thanksgiving Day, part of 100,000 calls officials said are received each year to the hotline.
“This is my 21st year and this time, there were a lot of changes in packaging and in some products as well as new programs that we’re working with and new facilities,” Kramer said from the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line office at 1240 E. Diehl Road in Naperville.
“We have a few new people – they always try to keep about 50 people and the attrition rate is very low. People stay there for a long period of time. We’re having different kinds of people – chefs, who didn’t work during the pandemic – we have teaching chefs now and other kinds of food professionals.”
Nicole Johnson, who serves as the director of the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, has also served over 20 years with the company and said the call center “has people working here as well as at home.”
“We like having that sort of hybrid option,” Johnson said. “In terms of calls, we find we are usually busiest in the morning, which has been the case again so far this year. We get calls from all 50 states and from many places throughout the world.”
One of the storylines this year is people returning to their Thanksgiving traditions with family, something that was put on hold during the pandemic and began gaining some traction last year.
Kramer said the feedback she is getting from people is that “they are not holding back or cutting back on guests” and are doing whatever is necessary to have a bang-up Thanksgiving in 2022.
“People are very excited about Thanksgiving because they haven’t seen people for a long time. I talked to a caller last week and she was so thrilled about people getting together, something they haven’t done for three or four years,” Kramer said. “They are not willing to compromise the number of guests at their table. People are very excited but on the other side there’s some stress in the world right now. The price of things is a concern, there’s post COVID, and people are still a little worried this year.”
To combat that, Kramer said the Butterball company “is going to take its 40-plus years of experience helping people prepare turkeys and having a nice dinner” and try to ramp down the anxiety with a new “comfort calendar” – a 24-page flip card design that gives users both a schedule and some advice to lower their angst.
“Today, there are more generations cooking than ever before and the information available today can be confusing,” Kramer said. “In this book there are tips from when to invite guests to a little puzzle to do – a moment of Zen where people can just take a few minutes. Thanksgiving, above all, should not be stressful. We’ve all had experiences where you go to somebody’s house and people tell you, ‘Don’t go in there whatever you do.’”
Johnson admits there has been some lag time among some families celebrating Thanksgiving which has led to some surprising discoveries.
“We’ve had people who bought a turkey two years ago and just kept it in the freezer and never cooked it,” she said. “We’ve been getting calls with people asking, ‘How long is a two-year-old frozen turkey good for?’ From a food safety point it may not be the turkey of choice for your Thanksgiving meal, but it can still be cooked safely as long as it’s still in the originally-sealed packaging. We are seeing a lot coming back from two years.”
Butterball has again expanded its social media presence with help on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Alexa-enabled devices, as well as via text at 844-877-3456 or by calling 800-288-8372. The website is at www.butterball.com
The comfort calendar is available on the website.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
