Butterball turkey hotline observes 40-year birthday

Happy 40th birthday to the iconic Butterball Turkey Talk-Line. It all began in 1981 with six home economists worked the telephones during that holiday season to answer turkey-cooking questions from desperate homemakers. 

The original Butterball fairy godmother is Pam Talbot, who was a public relations executive working at the Daniel J. Edelman agency in Chicago. 

Talbot came up with the idea of a hotline to cure “turkey trauma.” 

Thus, the Talk-Line was born at Swift and Company of Chicago, which owned the Butterball trademark at the time. (Talbot advanced within the agency to serve many years as president of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, retiring in 2008.)

 

The Turkey Talk-Line has never gone out of style and is getting better with age. Kim Severson of The New York Times wrote: “Butterball’s Turkey Talk-Line is one of the great marketing ideas of modern American consumerism.” 

Joanna Saltz, editorial director at Delish and House Beautiful, seconded Severson’s motion. She said Butterball’s hotline is a “brilliant piece of branding. In the day and age of automated everything, getting a live human on the phone on the most culinarily challenging day of the year? It’s so genius.” 

Butterball is now based in Garner, N.C., but the “call center” remains in Naperville, Ill. 

Phyllis Kramer of Aurora, Ill., a 78-year-old retired educator, has spent 20 years as a Butterball expert. She told journalist Jenny Powers:

 “Everyone who works the Talk-Line has an extensive background in food preparation. I was a high school home economics teacher for 38 years. Each summer, I would intern at a food-related business to ensure I was teaching students what they needed to know.”

 

One summer she interned in the Butterball test kitchen, and “that’s where I learned about the Talk-Line. I remember thinking, ‘When I retire, I’m going to do that,’ and that’s exactly what I did. Today there are 50 of us, both men and women…and even Amazon’s Alexa.” 

“We are like a confession hotline,” said Janice Stahl of the Talk-Line. “We’ll get the husband on one line and the wife on the other because there’s been a dispute about what temperature the oven should be.” 

“A man wanted to propose to his girlfriend by placing a ring inside the turkey, then cooking it,” commented Butterball’s Carol Miller. “I was worried about food safety and the romantic moment!” 

“Crunching down on a diamond could have been a problem. I convinced him it would be just as dramatic if he took the ring, got a piece of ribbon, and tied it on a drumstick and then brought the turkey into the gathering and proposed that way.” 

The hotline workers are a savvy bunch who have heard all the jokes. “Which side of the turkey has the most feathers? The outside.” 

Rudro Chakrabarti of the MoneyWise digital personal finance website said one of his favorite Butterball hotline stories came from a mother in Kentucky “while in a bit of a cooking conundrum.” 

“She had followed all the Butterball instructions perfectly, and the turkey came out of the oven a mouthwatering shade of golden-brown.” 

“Once Mom started carving the turkey, however,” Chakrabarti wrote, “she began to see strange bright red bits throughout. It turns out that her son stuffed the bird with some Lego blocks.” 

The Mom decided to call in to figure out if the meal “could be salvaged,” Chakrabarti said. Butterball’s official answer was “maybe.” 

“It depends on whether the dinner guests could ‘Lego’ of any misgivings about the meal.” 

Standing by is Master Chef Tony Seta, Director of Culinary Services for Butterball.