Claim Your Popeyes Cajun Turkey Before It's Too Late

In recent years, Popeyes Cajun-Style Turkey has served as the centerpiece for many a Thanksgiving feast. Once again in 2023, the fried chicken chain has announced it's bringing back its specially seasoned holiday bird long before the holidays, albeit at an increasingly higher price.

The Cajun bird is pre-cooked, frozen, visibly well-seasoned, and feeds 8 to 12 people. Although the turkey is premade, it does take a little work to go from packaged and sealed to the dinner table. It has to be left to thaw in the refrigerator for 72 hours or under cold water, and then heated through in the oven before it's ready to serve.

Popeyes Cajun-Style Turkey is only available in the continental U.S., which excludes Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Alaska. Shipping frozen food is not a simple endeavor, so getting pre-seasoned poultry to your doorstep in pristine condition does present its challenges.

Starting this week, the turkey is available for online ordering and doorstep delivery for a whopping $99 plus sales tax, but shipping is included in that price. If $100+ for a Thanksgiving bird sounds a little too steep, you can save some money by waiting until October 17 to order it from your local Popeyes restaurant for pickup; the in-store price at Popeyes restaurants will vary by location. Be sure to call ahead to reserve your turkey, though, because just as the price has grown over the years, so has the bird's popularity.

Some might argue that it's the best Thanksgiving turkey out there—no offense to your family recipe. Reddit threads from when Popeyes announced the Cajun Turkey's return in both 2021 and 2022 demonstrate the love people have for this annual limited-time offering.

"Yes, it's precooked, had it last year for our small family thanksgiving and was honestly the best Turkey I've ever had," wrote one Reddit user. Another noted the unique taste and quality of the poultry: "Super good, doesn't really get a crispy skin, but very flavorful and juicy meat."

"That's my kind of turkey," one user succinctly wrote in 2021.

So far, the 2023 announcement has failed to generate much online chatter. "$100 dollars now.... LOL they were $50 last year and $40 the year before," reads the lone comment on a Reddit thread about the Cajun turkey's return. However, the $50 and $40 prices the user cites were referring to the pickup option. Popeyes only just started offering the Cajun Turkey for delivery in 2022, and the price was $94.99 at the time. Delivery costs have gone up this year, but only by a couple dollars. Now, whether or not a pre-seasoned, pre-cooked, flash-fried, and flash-frozen bird is worth $100 is up to you, but the convenience of a ready-to-eat Thanksgiving feast is one that many customers appear to consider nearly priceless.