Black Friday shoppers flock to Salinas department store

Holiday shoppers didn’t wait for Black Friday to get major discounts as many Central Coast stores rolled out their sales the day before. Some stores, opening their doors as early as 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon.

That’s when JCPenney in Salinas opened it’s doors.

Store management said that more than 2,000 people lined up to start taking advantage of deals. Customers came in steadily through out the day.

Huge deals have brought shoppers out of their homes before giving Thanksgiving dinner a chance to settle.

“We had turkey, it’s a good time to get out and exercise, walk around and enjoy the holidays,” said shopper David Longoria.

Store manager Tarcisio Paredes says there was a lot for shoppers to enjoy.

“We had giveaways for the people that were lined up,” Paredes said, “We had two $500 dollar coupons and also some coupons for $100 off.”

With the growth of online shopping over the years, people at the store said there’s still nothing like visiting a brick and mortar store.

“I’m old,” said shopper Consuelo Cosio, “I like to come and make sure it’s going to fit.”

“It’s better to shop in store and promote your local city,” said Sunny Rivera.

Though holiday sales have been known to cause madness, management says they’ve brought in 250 staff members to help make the experience better for everyone.

“We did some work and we added additional satellite registers and we also did what we call ‘mobile warriors’ which is a handheld device for checkouts,” Paredes said, “That really did speed up the process this year versus last year.”

Though Black Friday is only one day, Paredes says it marks the beginning of their busiest season.

“We have another event starting on Saturday, completely different from Black Friday and then we have our Cyber Monday,” the manager says, “We are expecting crowds all the way through Christmas.”