Thanksgiving 2026 takeout video: a preorder cutoff clip

Thanksgiving Day 2026 falls on Thursday, November 26, according to the federal holiday schedule from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, read on 2026-10-03. For a restaurant selling takeout meals, that means a preorder cutoff a few days earlier, and the simplest way to tell guests is three short vertical clips: the food, the deadline, and how to order. Photograph the dishes yourself, animate each photo for four to six seconds with Seedance 2.5, and burn the cutoff in as caption cues, which show exact text without speech recognition.

OPM's page is the only outside source here, and it only supplies the date. Your cutoff time, prices, menu and pickup hours are yours to decide and to type in, so the copy stays under your control.

The calendar your clips hang on

Work backward from the holiday. The dates below are the ones on OPM's schedule; the posting plan is a suggestion, not a rule.

Three clips, one idea each

Keep each clip to a single message so a guest who watches only one still knows what to do.

• Clip 1, the food: your actual turkey, sides or pies, with slow steam or a slow push-in as the only motion.
• Clip 2, the deadline: a held photo of the pickup counter with the cutoff date and time as caption text.
• Clip 3, how to order: your phone number or ordering link as the last card.

Animate a photo, burn in the cutoff

Request a small motion; large motion tends to bend plates and cutlery. Then burn the deadline in with a cue that you wrote, so the clip never shows a time the model guessed.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "seedance-2.5",
    "prompt": "Slow push in. Steam rises from the plate. Nothing else moves.",
    "duration": 5,
    "resolution": "720p",
    "aspect_ratio": "9:16",
    "frame_images": [{
      "type": "image_url",
      "image_url": {"url": "https://example.com/photo.jpg"},
      "frame_type": "first_frame"
    }]
  }'

Then add the words

After the clip finishes, send it to the captions route with cues and your cutoff line.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: thanksgiving-cutoff" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://example.com/clip.mp4",
    "style": "slam",
    "cues": [{"text": "Order by Nov 22, pickup Nov 25", "start": 0.3, "end": 3.5}]
  }'

What to check before you post

Generated food can look better than yours, which creates a trust problem when guests see the real tray. Use clips for atmosphere and keep one real photo in the set. Check every plate at full size for added or missing items, and make sure no allergen claim appears in generated text. The date and time in the example are placeholders; use your own.

Sume does not take orders or post to social platforms. Download the finished MP4s and upload them where your guests already look.