Black Friday crowds nearing pre-pandemic numbers
The Columbia Mall saw a familiar Black Friday sight Friday morning: Lines of people, waiting for stores to open.
About 150 people stood outside Target at 7 a.m. Rusty Strodtman, the general manager of the Columbia Mall said. While that sounds like a common Black Friday event, he said the mall hasn’t seen anything like it since before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“The last couple years of not having this crowd and all these people is kind of disappointing,” Strodtman said. “So this is like the days it used to be. It's kind of exciting that hopefully we're kind of past the COVID and that people are out fully about their business, like normal.”
The amount of visitors still hasn’t completely caught up to pre-pandemic numbers, but it’s about 80% of traffic before 2020. The Black Friday crowd also beat last year’s.
“If you look around now, most people have a bag in their hand,” Strodtman added, pointing to visitors walking in and out of stores. “So they're here to shop, and they're shopping.”
