Video: Grocery Shoppers Prepare For Thanksgiving Dinner

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Grocery Shopping

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- Black Friday may be a few days away, but travel to any grocery store and you’ll see the large crowds. Clint Townsend owns the Sunflower Foods on Military Road in Columbus and says grocery stores prepare early for this time of year.

“This is our Superbowl. Every customer we’ve got is in here these 2 days so you’ve got a weeks worth of customers shopping in 2 days. We’ll have about 3 times the normal traffic we do on just an average day. We have to schedule more people, more hours. Everybody gets more hours. You work a full work weeks in 3 days.”

From turkeys to yams, holiday shoppers tell us they’re hoping to get all their items before the last-minute shoppers roll through.

” I’m trying to get my things and get out of the way. I’ll gradually get my dressing done by Thursday, is when I’m leaving for my mothers’ house and by then, dressing should be ready with no rush. I won’t be worn out,” said Shopper Frankie Colom.

” The last minute items that we’re picking are things like the English peas and chicken to cook to make the broth for the dressing and just odds and ends of things that I forgot in a previous visit,” said Shopper Pat Wheeler.

Don Harris also stopped by to pick up some Ham. He remembers working at a grocery store decades ago.

” It wasn’t nothing like it was now. The technology and everything. We didn’t have scanners and cash registers like we do now. It was key-punch and that was it,” said Harris.

Townsend doesn’t mind the crowd because eventually things will get back to normal.

“See we’ll be closed Thursday and then Friday is the slowest day of the year. I mean, we could just about not be open and nobody would even notice,” said Townsend.