Butterball Turkey Hotline Experts Are Now Inside Your Amazon Alexa

Alexa, did I just ruin this turkey?

This Thanksgiving, frazzled amateur chefs will be able to solicit help from turkey experts via their Amazon Echo devices. The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line is partnering up with Alexa to provide pre-recorded answers to a number of T-Day cooking questions, according to Wired. The new Alexa “skill” launched a week ago. “We really want to be able to offer assistance to holiday customers wherever and however they receive that information,” Rebecca Welch, Butterball senior brand manager, tells Wired.

In addition to this tech upgrade, Butterball is making it easier for those traditionalists who want to pick up a phone and dial the hotline. Instead of waiting on hold for who knows how long, there is now a callback option, which will allow puzzled home cooks to get back to the kitchen while awaiting for an available expert to answer their questions.

Walmart challenges Amazon’s online grocery biz

Amazon has pretty much been declared champion of all things online retail, including groceries, but Walmart is posing a surprising challenge. The superstore chain has surpassed Jeff Bezos’s company in a popularity survey, reports Bloomberg. The survey, conducted by Retail Feedback Group, asked 760 shoppers to name the online grocery service they most recently used.

Perhaps Amazon got early word of this data, because the company has just announced it is adding more Whole Foods locations to its roster of stores that allow customers to order their groceries online and then pick them up at their convenience.

And in other food news ...

• Taco Bell is getting in on the trend of hosting hiring parties, glorified job fairs at its locations that entice prospective employees with free food and swag. [Moneyish]
• In other Taco Bell news, everything ’90s is coming back in fashion, so the fast-food chain is heading back to London for the first time since the ’90s. Four T-Bell outposts are expected to open in the U.K. capital before Christmas. [Gizmodo]
• As expected, a $5 million lawsuit levied against McDonald’s, over claims the chain charged customers full price for Quarter Pounders with cheese, even though these customers had requested their sandwiches without cheese, has been dismissed. [Miami Herald]
• Rapper and Martha Stewart bestie Snoop Dogg has a new cookbook out, and it’s getting good reviews. “His recipes are solid, and in some cases brilliant, superior to what’s in a lot of cookbooks,” writes Bloomberg’s Kate Krader. [Bloomberg]
• Here’s a feel-good story: Customers at a Southern California doughnut shop are buying out all the store’s goods early each day so the owner can spend time with his ailing wife. [Twitter]
• And, finally, it appears Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has fallen victim to an extremely scammy assistant. The grifter took advantage of Rowling to make a number of unauthorized purchases, including $2,100 spent at Starbucks. [The Cut]