Free Thanksgiving Turkey

How would you like to score a free turkey for Thanksgiving? Yep! Me too. There’s probably a lot of great ideas out there, but today we’re gonna cover how to get your free bird through Ibotta.

What is Ibotta? It’s a rebate program and app that gives you cash back on your online and in-store purchases. I tend to use it solely for groceries, but they are partnered with other retailers. Today we talk groceries.

How It Works Overall:

You go onto the Ibotta website (or app) and add offers to your list. Sometimes there are simple generic ones like 10 cents back on any milk purchase. Others can be $1 back on two boxes of mac and cheese. Some are even Free After Offer. You add the offers before you shop, do your shopping, then submit a picture of your receipt so they can verify your purchases. It’s honestly not all that complicated, especially if you just load in offers for the place you shop, then do your normal shopping. You get your cash back directly deposited to your bank account, or you can opt for gift cards. Which is what I frequently do for “free groceries”. But just so we’re clear, this is a rebate program, not a coupon.

How to Get The Turkey:

Okay friends, buckle up because this year is a little more complicated than in years past. I’ll cover those later, just so we don’t muddy the water in this turkey getting process any further than it’s already messy.

Go to Ibotta and in your offers, you’ll see Unlock Your FREE Turkey Offer. It’s a process and I’m going to advise taking one route before the other. Your choices are to Unlock Your Free Turkey and Unlock Your Free Sides. To unlock the free turkey offer, you must claim 16 unique Ibotta offers.To unlock the free sides offer, you much only claim 4 unique offers.

If it’s your intention to get all the freebies available, get the sides unlocked first. Why? Because those four free sides will count towards your turkey unlock.  If you just want the turkey, then choose the turkey part and ignore the sides unlock.

Turkey Only:

When presented with the choice of which unlock you want first, choose the turkey. Purchase 16 unique offers and redeem them on Ibotta. The free turkey offer will then become available to you. Add the offer, return to the store, buy your turkey, then redeem that purchase via Ibotta too. They will rebate you up to $14.35 on the purchase of your bird. If your turkey is a super jumbo large and exceeds that price, you will only receive the $14.35, and therefore it will not be free.

All the Freebies:

This is the process I advise as it’s the best way to maximize the Thanksgiving deals this year. It is complicated and will have you doing multiple shops.

Please note: There is an expiration on this offer of November 22nd.

As to making this method go smoother and less back and forth from the store for me, I took the following measures:

Of an evening after work, ran out for a few staples I was out of and also grabbed those four items with offers that I mentioned earlier. Got home and saw that the redemption was already cleared at Walmart, so I added the four freebie sides offers to my already very full list. I set a grocery pickup order for the morning with those sides and other items I intended to get anyway, including hand soap, egg noodles, and yeast. Grabbed those groceries before a morning appointment, then added the now available free turkey offer. At the end of the work day, zipped back into the store, bought my turkey. Voila! Free turkey.

About the 2023 Thanksgiving Deals:

There’s good things and disappointments with this year’s offerings via Ibotta. In years past, they’ve had a much bigger selection of sides to receive for free with offer. Those have included things like green beans, Stove Top and french fried onions in addition to what’s available this year. This year’s sides are the following:

• 1 Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce
• 1 McCormick Gravy Packet
• 1 Idahoan Mashed Potatoes (4oz only)
• I Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

All things I was going to be getting anyway so I’ll take them for free with that rebate, but it does make it a hard sell to friends how great this program really can be on the regular. I personally joined Ibotta right before Thanksgiving my first year and that happened to be the year they were offering free turkeys to new members. The next year, it was a free turkey if you referred someone and they signed up. (The new member again got a free turkey.) So while this year’s a little disappointing on the free sides, it’s great that the turkey isn’t limited to being new or a referral.

Want to Maximize Your Rebate?

In addition to the standard offers, Ibotta also runs Bonuses. These are usually bigger rebates by fulfilling offers in a group. For example, the current $1 back for three unique Old Spice offers. I’ve historically gotten up to $8 back from a single offer buying things like my skin care while there was a bonus on that brand. They also frequently have some very short term bonuses like Midweek Mania (redeem 12 offers by midweek) or Weekend Warrior (redeeming 16 offers over the weekend.) These have paid out bonuses of $5-12, in addition to the cash back available from the individual offers. So double check on the availability of one of these bonuses when you go to schedule your shopping trip.

Enjoy your bird!

Legal Beagle Blah Blah: Yes I have provided links to the Ibotta site. It does include my referral link. You do not have to sign up with the link. But if you do, I can earn a cash bonus, if and when you use the service for yourself. It helps me keep the web hosting paid for. And the current Ibotta offer gets you the same amount of cash bonus that I receive: $5.