The best time to shop for Thanksgiving is now

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - With Thanksgiving around the corner, shoppers are stocking up on ingredients for their Thanksgiving Day meals, and some are paying less than they thought.

Carmen Richardson is one of those shoppers. She bought greens, a turkey and all of the fixings for her Thanksgiving dinner, but says she needs to get ingredients for dessert. She believes her cart full of items were bought for a good deal.

“I didn’t do too bad today, less than I expected it to be, but I’m not done,” said Richardson.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, food prices are down compared to Thanksgiving last year, but the average price for a 10 person holiday dinner “still reflects historically high costs.”

Major chains announced special pricing for the holiday season.

Aldi is cutting prices up to 50% off for sides and ingredients, Kroger curated a meal for 10 people for under $50, Walmart boasted removing inflation on its pricing and Target created a $25 Thanksgiving dinner for four people.

Some shoppers took notice of the deals and lowered prices the past few weeks.

“It got lower through the week, two weeks, three weeks maybe, I think for the holiday,” said Jariesha Dillard, a shopper.

According to one grocery store employee, the busiest time to shop is fast approaching.

“I would say the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the two days before are especially busy,” said Maggie Spitler, a grocery store e-commerce clerk. “Everybody’s trying to get everything they need and then you have the people who already have their items getting their last-minute things that they forgot.”

For the very last-minute, day-of shopping trips, Spitler said you likely won’t see many people in the grocery store.

“It’s actually really slow on Thanksgiving, we get very few customers,” said Spitler.

As holiday shopping ramps up, Spitler said that she wants to remind people to be kind retail workers meeting the high demand.

“Just please be kind to your retail workers,” said Spitler. “They’re working very hard to take care of their customers and they’re doing the best they can.”

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