The Wednesday before Thanksgiving has always been a busy travel day. It's also one of the busiest days for grocery stores, as many wait until the last minute to finish their feasts. Time Warner Cable News' Jackson Wang visited one Newburgh store to find why shoppers wait until the eve of thanksgiving.
NEWBURGH, N.Y. – Donna Evanks certainly was not alone Wednesday as she began her Thanksgiving shopping.
"The only thing I have already is the turkey, but I don’t have any of my side dishes," Evanks said. "I don’t have anything else that I would need to have. So I’m here to pretty much get everything I need to finish my Thanksgiving dinner."
Dozens of shoppers at Adams Fairacre Farms did the same exact thing, waiting until the very last day.
"Yeah, we’re bad. Just like everyone else, we waited until the last minute,” said Adam Pitkin, another shopper.
But they had good reasons. Shoppers say Thanksgiving Eve is the most convenient time for them to do their shopping. Plus, the food is fresher when it's time to make their Thanksgiving feast.
"Some sweet potatoes and cauliflowers. We usually have about eight different vegetables and turkey, pie,” said Terri Popkave, a shopper from Cornwall-on-Hudson.
“I’m making turkey, stuffing, and rutabaga and turnip. They’re two different things,” Evanks said.
Store manager Mark Wheeler says Thanksgiving Eve is the store's third busiest day of the year, trailing Mother's Day and Christmas Eve.
"With Thanksgiving, they always wait until the last minute," Wheeler said. "You want to get everything as fresh as possible. You don't want to have frozen stuff necessarily ahead of time. Convenience is frozen, but it's certainly nice getting the fresh and it tastes better."
Some of the last-minute items shoppers are picking up include herbs, spices, fruits, vegetables, and of course the turkey.
"We’ll go through over a thousand turkeys with no problem," Wheeler said. "Hundreds and hundreds of pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies. It’s that kind of holiday, all food."
And shoppers say there's nothing wrong with buying too much food, because we all know the leftovers taste just as good.