Sam's Club will change its traditional Thanksgiving meal package this holiday season based on direct feedback from more than 200,000 members of its Member's Mark community, said Myron Frazier, executive vice president and chief merchant at the retailer.

The package serves up to 15 people for less than $10 a person. Members asked for specific additions: an extra dessert, an alternate protein for guests who prefer ham over turkey, a smoked turkey instead of a raw one to save cooking time, and a dish combining cranberries with green beans.

"They were very specific," Frazier told the Groceryshop 2026 crowd in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

The Member's Mark community functions as a standing research panel for the warehouse club. The brand uses the group to decide which products reach the shelves. Members test thousands of items in their homes at any given moment, according to Frazier.

"So we have over 200,000 members inside of the community, and at any given moment, thousands of items are in our members' homes," Frazier said. "They're doing over 200,000 activities per month, helping us understand how we should shape our floor."

The approach has already produced measurable wins this year. Over the summer, Sam's Club tasked the community with creating a dessert cookie. The merchandising team pitched a red, white and blue theme with a blueberry flavor. The Member's Mark group rejected the idea quickly and told the retailer that strawberry shortcake was the flavor they wanted, because it represented summer.

"So we made a completely different item, and we launched it, and it performed extremely well," Frazier said. "The thing that I've learned is when you listen to members and you make what they want, it turns out they actually buy it."

The strawberry shortcake episode and the Thanksgiving redesign point to the same operating principle: treat the member base as a live product-development engine rather than a post-launch audience. For a retailer with a subscription membership model, that feedback loop carries direct revenue implications, since members who see their requests appear on the floor have a demonstrated record of buying what they asked for.