Making Thanksgiving Dinners Easy for Many Local Families

There are a lot of good reasons to pull an “all-nighter,” but at the Winthrop Marketplace in Winthrop, on Thanksgiving Eve, Michael Miccicichi has the best excuse in town.

He’s in charge of cooking more than 80 turkeys and making sure that rolls, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie and gravy fit perfectly for the feast of all feasts.

People start putting their orders in in September.

“It will come down to the last weekend, the last night, until we have te total number of orders,” said Marc Wallerce, owner of the Winthrop Marketplace. “As long as we have turkeys, we’ll fill orders.”

Miccicichi and Debbie Michaelson will come in late Tuesday afternoon, start preparing the birds after they have been bathed in butter. The weekend before the big day, everyone on the turkey team makes sure everything is labeled and organized.

“We also make the homemade stuffing, cranberry sauces and gravy,” Wallerce said, adding that people start picking up their dinners beginning 11 a.m. Wednesday and going throughout the day. This year there will easily be 200 pounds of stuffing and the birds are weighing in at 16-20 pounds. Those in need of a larger bird can also be accommodated. There are also turkey breast dinners.

But the Marketplace turkey duty doesn’t end until a day or two after Thanksgiving when Winthrop Marketplace employees call and ask how the dinner was – the reviews have been tremendous.

“We’ve done that follow-up service for years,” Wallerce said. “We pick up more customers just because Mike and the others have asked. We pride ourselves on our customers. There are other places to go, but we feel ours is the best.” About 15 years ago the Winthrop Marketplace began selling fully-cooked turkey dinners and the demand just keeps growing every year.

“We started out on whim, we thought we’d get five or six, it’s just climbed every single year,” Wallerce said.

“A lot of people are not cooking so we do this for the community,” Wallerce said, adding, “It takes a village to do this. Our customers are happy and we are happy.”

People ask, but unfortunately the Winthrop Marketplace does not do a Christmas dinner. Although if your loo9king for a good ham, look no farther than Winthrop Marketplace.