By John Ewoldt and Kavita Kumar

Minneapolis Star Tribune

For Marlee Kosanke of Shoreview, Thanksgiving has dethroned Black Friday as the best shopping day of the year.

Her family has moved turkey dinner to Wednesday. On Thursday, she, her sister and their husbands have a no-muss-or-fuss meal at a restaurant buffet around noon and then head out to shop the deals.

“It’s a slower pace on Thanksgiving than on Black Friday,” she said as she shivered in line outside Best Buy in Roseville hoping to snap up a $600 Dell laptop for $299.

“It’s not as crazy busy on Thanksgiving, so it’s easier to get the deals,” she said. “Besides, there’s no snow to go snowmobiling, and there’s no ice to go ice fishing.”

U.S. consumers were expected to spend more than $1 billion in retail stores on Thanksgiving, more than double the amount spent in 2011, according to ShopperTrak. Last year, Thanksgiving shopping took a bite out of Black Friday’s store visits, with the number of shoppers on Black Friday declining by 7 percent, according to ShopperTrak.

Most Thanksgiving Day shoppers are the same ones who used to be in line in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday. “It’s young and old, parents, kids, mom and daughter, dad and daughter. People don’t want to sit home watching the third football game,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst for the NPD Group.

Many of them like Tina Dyer of St. Michael would just as soon not be shopping on Thanksgiving, but she finds herself unable to resist the deals. Dyer was one of the lucky ones to nab a big-screen TV doorbuster at Target in Minnetonka on Thursday. But, she admits, “it takes away from the family getting together.”

At Best Buy in Minnetonka, CEO Hubert Joly fired up his employees at a pep rally shortly before the 5 p.m. opening. He jumped up on a counter and put his arm around the store’s manager. He thanked the employees for working on Thanksgiving.

“We know that it’s a sacrifice,” he said. “But we’re going to win.

Overall spending fell 11 percent over the Black Friday weekend in 2014, according to ShopperTrak. But stores saw promising signs for this year on Thanksgiving.

—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.