I don’t know if this is true, but years ago, my dad told me a story. 

Back in the 60s, a businessman from Minnesota was visiting family in California, and they took him to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (The original American Ren Faire). During the visit, he noticed that everyone was gnawing on these giant turkey legs, and he thought to himself, “I can get turkey legs back home for a nickel a piece”, and so the Minnesota Renaissance Festival was born. 

Regardless of the veracity of this tall tale, it does serve to highlight the inexorable link between the Renaissance Faire and the turkey leg. It has a chokehold on the culture. Internally, those of us who work the show rarely eat them. Local cast members make low-effort bits about them. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of owning, operating, or working a turkey leg stand, you’ll never forget the experience. 

Why do we at them? Certainly, they’re not period. The turkey was a New World export, alongside the potato and tobacco.

We eat them, I assume, because at the birth of our industry, it was the most affordable giant hunk of meat you could sink your teeth into. Meant to replicate a leg of mutton, or some other archaic and indulgent carniverous treat, the average festival goer can walk around in the open air, pound ice cold beers, and gnaw on something greasy with a bone and live out their best  Henry VIII fantasies (We at the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire do not condone indulging other Henry VIII fantasies you may harbour). 

In short, turkey legs are iconic, and they’re here to stay. 

But that doesn’t really doesn’t address the complaint, does it? 

At every faire I’ve worked, this is one of the most consistent complaints I have heard from patrons. And at the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire, I can promise you it is the thing I hear the most. 

Why are turkey legs so expensive? 

The life of a turkey leg (in Florida, at least) starts one of two ways. The first way is that they are presmoked at a meat plant in northern Florida, frozen, and then shipped out. You can either get them delivered to you by a distributor or you can try your luck with Restaurant Depot, and both sides have their own risks.  One season, my wife and I had to hit every restaurant depot from Miami to Jacksonville to get enough stock for a faire weekend. Why didn’t we just use a distributor? We did, but the distributor had committed the bulk of their turkey leg resources to the Florida Renaissance Festival, the undisputed heavyweight king in terms of attendance and cash flow in our state. 

Obviously, the meat plant doesn’t want to overproduce, and because big ren faires move that product the most, they make enough for them and for Disney and for state faires and leave very little for the rest of us. 

Also, they know that it’s a product that we literally have to have, so they can essentially name their own price. I don’t know the economics of raising, slaughtering, smoking, packing, freezing, and shipping turkeys, so I can’t say that the price is unfair, but it’s not uncommon to end up spending upwards of 5-8 dollars per turkey leg when it’s all said and done. Basic food math says you should charge roughly 4 times the price of a product to stay in business, so when you buy a turkey leg for 15-20 bucks, that’s not happening. But you wouldn’t pay more than that, so that’s simply the way the turkey gobbles. Turkey leg vendors typically make it up by selling other things, such as drinks and less expensive products, to make up the difference, and hope it all works out in the end. 

The turkey leg vendor will drag giant fryers or ovens down the road, and set them up at your local ren faire, and wake up at the crack of dawn and start pumping out legs so that you can have one. They can’t be made to order, so if you ever feel that your leg is drier than you like, it’s because it’s probably been holding at temp for a while, or the meat plant overcooked it. 

Now I said there were two ways a turkey leg comes to be, so let’s look at the second way. 

The second way is the way our vendor does it at the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire. They purchase uncooked, unseasoned, fresh turkey legs, and on Friday afternoon, they fire up the smoker, and they get to work. They stay up all night from Friday through Sunday, smoking meat in shifts, to ensure it’s there for you when you arrive. 

Is either way better? No hate to the first way, and I’ve certainly done it myself, but I love having a pitmaster take that extra special care. We figure, if you’re going to drop cash on a hunk of meat, it should be the best hunk of meat we can bring to you. 

We work with the vendor through the season, and by our request, the turkey legs are price fixed at the lowest possible cost to eke out the narrowest profit. 

Another reason for the expense is food waste. We don’t know how many we will sell in a day, and they can’t be saved and reheated, and god forbid they run out, so they always have to make more than they need, and even sometimes, that’s not enough. There were still a few days last season when we ran out of turkey legs halfway through the day, which is a massive disappointment for everyone involved. 

Finally, the equipment is big, and it’s expensive, and it takes people to run and trucks and trailers to haul it, and that’s before you get to the other things like tents and sinks and napkins and tip jars and apathetic teenage cashiers, and all the other things you need to make a food booth run. 

So why are turkey legs expensive? 

Because they are expensive.

Are you being price gouged? 

Not on this, no, I promise.