Sacramento-area restaurateurs wish every day was Thanksgiving Day.

While restaurants have struggled locally and nationwide amid an economic downturn that has seen consumers cut back on dining out, Thanksgiving Day is shaping up as a hopeful trend-breaker.

Simply put: Thanksgiving's standing as a big eating day apparently trumps economic jitters.

Lloyd Harvego, owner of the Firehouse restaurant in Old Sacramento, said he started serving Thanksgiving Day meals only a couple of years ago "because I wasn't sure people would want to come out, but they do come out.

"This is our third year, and we're almost fully booked from 1 to 7 (p.m. Thursday). We were a little concerned, but now people are filling out the last available slots."

Charlie Coyne, co-owner of the Delta King Hotel and its Pilothouse Restaurant, said Thanksgiving trails only Mother's Day in volume of meals.

"We did over 600 on Thanksgiving last year," he said. "Right now, our bookings are slightly behind last year, but I think we're going to be close to what we had last year. … We've been doing it for 20 years, and we have a lot of people who come back year after year."

On Thursday, the Pilothouse will have a buffet with traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Coyne speculated that family traditions and convenience work in local restaurants' favor for at least one day.

"It's just a whole lot easier. That's what they tell us, and a lot of it is families," Coyne said.

Daniel Conway, spokesman for the California Restaurant Association, based in Sacramento, said "going out on Thanksgiving is definitely more acceptable than it used to be."

"And I think it reflects other factors – people who can't travel, people without children," he said.

Price might also enter into the equation.

The American Farm Bureau's annual survey of the price of groceries needed to make Thanksgiving dinner for 10 jumped 5.6 percent this year to $44.61, or $4.46 per person.

Area restaurants offer traditional Thanksgiving Day dinners in the $10 to $25 range per person. That's pricey compared with the farm bureau's numbers, but restaurants market the fact that they do the hours of meal preparation and the cleanup afterward.

"There's more of a tendency to let somebody else do all the work and cleanup as opposed to doing it all yourself," Conway said. " … It's obviously a very challenging time for the restaurant industry, but (Thanksgiving) might be a day when people ignore the context of things. Still, I think it's possible that we'll see at least a minor drop-off (in business)."

Given the struggles of some restaurants this year, any kind of a big day would be welcome.

According to the trade publication Nation's Restaurant News, published in New York, some of the nation's major restaurant chains are taking a serious beating this year.

NRN said some of those hardest hit in 2008 include Ruby Tuesday Inc., net income down 80.8 percent in the year-to-year period; McCormick & Schmick's, down 76.9 percent; and Dallas-based Brinker International Inc. down 58.3 percent. Brinker oversees nearly 2,000 restaurants, including Chili's Grill & Bar and Romano's Macaroni Grill outlets.

Perhaps because of numbers like that, there's no shortage of competition locally for consumers' Thanksgiving Day dining dollars.

Nearly two dozen local restaurants ran advertisements touting Thanksgiving Day specials in last weekend's editions of The Sacramento Bee. They ranged from the Hof Brau at 2500 Watt Ave. in Sacramento, to McCormick & Schmick's seafood restaurant downtown, to Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln.

At Rudy's Hideaway restaurant at 12303 Folsom Blvd. in Rancho Cordova, co-owner Steve Ryan said he expects to serve about 300 Thanksgiving Day meals from 2 to 6 p.m. That would be equal to Thanksgiving last year, but not like Christmas Day, when Rudy's Hideaway faces less competition from open restaurants.

"We've been doing Thanksgiving for 36 years now, and it has always been a good day, but we served 547 meals in five hours on Christmas Day (last year)," he said. "We're one of the few open on Christmas, so we almost have to force the door closed that day."

Ryan said the Thanksgiving Day boost is historically tempered by the days after it: "The days following Thanksgiving are dreadful. People are at home eating all those leftovers."

Call The Bee's Mark Glover, (916) 321-1184.