Prices were dropping faster than the temperature in Kalispell as shoppers filled the parking lots and waited for stores to open on Black Friday.

A few big box stores such as Home Depot were ready and waiting. Employees met customers in the parking lot before the 6 a.m. opening with coffee and hot chocolate next to a heater.

“We’re very, very busy; you can hardly walk through the front door,” Vic Direito, store manager at Home Depot, said around 11 a.m.

Direito said he had most of his employees on deck for the big shopping day.

“We had to readjust schedules a little bit, but we still had fun,” Direito said about staffing for Black Friday.

Other stores didn’t even wait for the calendar to flip to Friday before opening the store and applying discounts. Target opened for Black Friday at 6 p.m. on Thursday night and stayed open through closing time on Friday as customers flooded the aisles looking for deals and steals.

But it wasn’t all huge corporate retailers that lit up on Black Friday. In its first year at the new Main Street location, The Toggery in Kalispell offered a few hefty discounts of its own, drawing shoppers who lined up before the store opened at 9:30 a.m.

“It’s been a great day,” Toggery Store Manager Becky Nash said. “There were a few people lined up this morning; that’s not something we normally have.”

The Toggery is one of many stores participating in Small Business Saturday today. It’s one of 73 local stores participating in the nationwide event aimed at supporting small businesses.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.