How Butterball’s Turkey Talk-Line experts — now on TikTok — help thousands with Thanksgiving dinner every year

Carol Miller, Bill Nolan and Karen Wilcher are just three of more than 50 experts available via call, text and live chat to field questions about turkey prep, recipes and cooking from November 1 to December 24 on the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line. And although they range in years of experience, Wilcher tells Yahoo Life that they're all proud turkey lovers.

"You better love turkey and become a turkey-tarian like we all are," Wilcher says.

The food manufacturing company, which specializes in all things turkey and deli meats, has been an essential resource for thousands of people over the past 40 years that its turkey hotline has been available, offering people tips on how to best prepare for the holiday meal. In its latest holiday season, the Turkey Talk-Line is taking to social media as Butterball introduces a test kitchen exclusively for TikTok.

Watch to hear how these three talk-line veterans are adapting to social media, their answers to callers most frequently asked questions and what keeps them coming back to work during the holidays year after year.

Video Transcript

CAROL MILLER: Welcome to the Butterball Turkey Talk Line Kitchen. I'm Carole Miller.

BILL NOLAN: My name is Bill Nolan.

KAREN WILCHER: And I am Karen Wilcher.

CAROL MILLER: You give us a call, we are all over to help you have a perfect, stress-free Thanksgiving that you can enjoy with your families.

KAREN WILCHER: The Butterball Turkey Talk Line is a consumer-friendly helper.

BILL NOLAN: We have over 50 experts that take calls, answer text messages. One of the requirements of working on the Butterball Turkey Talk Line is that you have a background in food.

CAROL MILLER: They're dieticians. There's chefs.

KAREN WILCHER: You better love turkey and become a turkey [INAUDIBLE] like we all are. We all work on Thanksgiving.

CAROL MILLER: We probably take about a thousand calls.

BILL NOLAN: It's also emails, live chats, text messages. We get all different ways of people contact us. But it can be as high as 10,000. All 50 of us are here for either 8, 10-hour shifts. If we deserted the folks on Thanksgiving Day, that would be bad. That's the day we share everything that makes Thanksgiving a little smoother.

KAREN WILCHER: How much turkey to buy? I say, go big. Plan on about 1 and 1/2 to 2 pounds per person, depending on the kind of generous eaters you have.

BILL NOLAN: My turkey's not thawed. What am I going to do? Take the turkey out of the freezer, put it into their refrigerator on a pan towards the back of the refrigerator, and let that turkey thaw out in the refrigerator. So in the refrigerator the week before Thanksgiving, which is what we like to call National Thaw Your Turkey Day.

CAROL MILLER: How do I serve it? Sometimes, I cut it up and carve it in the kitchen. A lot of people do that. They don't want to do the demonstration on dining room table.

BILL NOLAN: This is our 40th anniversary this year with the Butterball Turkey Talk Line. The Taste Kitchen is something that we introduced just this year to the TikTok platform. We test recipes that are new and trending.

KAREN WILCHER: We are interested in being wherever our consumers need us to be. And we realize, hey, old-school cooks once upon a time were calling us. But many of the Millennials and younger people are interested in meeting us on social media platforms. So we're available to them there.

I did not know a lot about TikTok until I saw my grandson sitting with his phone, flipping videos. And I said, what are you doing? I'm watching TikTok. OK. So when Butterball said we were going to have a TikTok this year, I got my groove. I got my groove. I'm ready to go.

KAREN WILCHER: We've tested it. We tasted it. We like it, and we think you're going to love it, too. I enjoy helping people. I like to cook. I like to eat what I cook. I like to share what I've cooked with people I know and even people I don't know. And so this gives me an opportunity to do that.

CAROL MILLER: I love the job, and I love the people that I work with. And it's been a real adventure for me.

Butterball Turkey Talk Line. Hi. How can I help you today?