Kristin Mueller will be out before 6 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving this week to start making the rounds of malls and shopping centers in the Atlanta area. But it's work for her.

Mueller, as JLL president of retail property management, oversees roughly 480 U.S. retail properties, from super regional malls to open-air lifestyle centers to unanchored specialty centers. She and her team across the nation will be monitoring how sales are going and what retailers say about the number of shoppers on Friday. That's how meaningful the day, long known as Black Friday, remains to many brick-and-mortar retail executives.

The holiday shopping season is the most critical time, in terms of generating revenue, for stores. Black Friday, getting its name from the day at the start of the Christmas shopping season when stores often went into the black — becoming rofitable — was once the undisputed most important day for the industry during the holidays. But times have changed, and retailers are less reliant on that day, according to JLL.

With the rise of e-commerce, Cyber Monday — the Monday after Thanksgiving — has become a booming shopping period. And Black Friday sales have been cannibalized now because some stores offer big savings earlier, even in October before Halloween, to draw shoppers.

Still, during the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend this year, Black Friday is expected to be the most popular day to shop, with 72%, or 130.7 million people, planning to do so, up from 69% in 2022, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. Overall, three-quarters, or 74%, of holiday shoppers plan to shop during the entire Thanksgiving weekend this year, the survey found. That is up from 69% pre-pandemic in 2019, the NRF said.

By most accounts, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is expected to be strong for retail. An estimated 182 million people plan to shop in-store and online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday this year, according to the NRF. That's 15.7 million more people than last year and is the highest estimate since NRF said it began tracking that data in 2017. Another holiday spending survey, from Deloitte, found that 80% of respondents plan to shop from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, with their spending expected to hit a new high of $567, up 13% compared with 2022.

The NRF is slated to report the results from Thanksgiving weekend on Nov 28.

Mueller said she and a friend will venture out early this Black Friday to visit a cross section of shopping venues. Meanwhile, JLL employees will be keeping track of what's happening at the malls and lifestyle centers where they're assigned.

"Through the day, our team does the traffic reports," Mueller said. "And so, I'll be watching to see [the] ... traffic reports. It's quantitative and qualitative [data]. So, our management teams talk with retailers throughout the day and get some kind of quantifiable stuff from them. As we move through the day, we'll have a clear understanding about how that Friday shapes up against the prior year."

Black Friday and Thanksgiving will be a bit different than other years, according to several real estate brokerages.

During a recent webinar on holiday spending by brokerage CBRE, Brandon Isner, the firm's Americas Head of Retail Research, noted that more major chains and retail landlords this year plan to stay closed on Thanksgiving Day. That list includes mall giant Simon Property Group, Target, Walgreens, Macy's, Kohl's, T.J. Maxx, Best Buy, Trader Joe's, Costco and J.C. Penney.

That could create pent-up demand for brick-and-mortar retail on Black Friday, according to Isner.

“In that spirit, Black Friday could be huge because you’re not going to have the opportunity to shop on Thanksgiving or maybe even the day before Thanksgiving" at physical stores, he said. "So, it could be huge in regards to just a lot of these places just deciding to take a step back and just take the day off.”

And this year will feature one of the longest shopping seasons possible, Mueller said. The earliest date that Thanksgiving can fall is Nov. 22, and this year it's only one day later than that.

"There can be seven more shopping days in the official shopping season from Thanksgiving to Christmas," Mueller said. "We get six of them this year, because [Thanksgiving] could only be one day earlier."

Retailers will be offering doorbuster sales to draw shoppers on Black Friday, Mueller added. She said she expects foot traffic at shopping venues to build throughout the day.

"I think it will be a very solid shopping day, but I don't think it will be people lining up at midnight the night before," Mueller said.

JLL's holiday shopping survey this year found that consumers planned to dedicate nearly a quarter of their spending on entertainment and experiences, such as dining out or seeing a film. So, shopping venues with restaurants and movie theaters as tenants should benefit, Mueller noted.

Earlier this month, the NRF forecast that holiday spending would reach records during November and December and rise between 3% and 4%, totaling $957.3 billion to $966.6 billion. By comparison, last year's holiday sales hit $929.5 billion. This year’s holiday spending is expected to be consistent with the average annual holiday increase of 3.6% from 2010 to 2019, according to the NRF, but less than the 5% average growth rate in the past three years. CBRE predicted that holiday retail sales will increase 3% this year.

Oak + Fort, a Canadian apparel retailer, has decided to hold a grand opening celebration for its new 3,913-square-foot store at the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey on Black Friday. There will be music from a local DJ and shoppers will get a complimentary exclusive tote bag with their purchase while supplies last.

"As we recently soft-opened the location a few weeks ago, it worked out for all our teams to hold our grand opening this Black Friday weekend," a spokeswoman for the chain said in an email to CoStar News. "In addition, it provides our team the chance to meet with fans and new consumers due to the anticipated higher foot traffic."

On Black Friday last year, Mueller also ventured out in the early morning to get an eyewitness look at shoppers at brick-and-mortar retail locations. She recalled seeing lots of people coming out of stores with TV sets. Mueller also got in a little shopping for herself.

"Literally, because I live in Atlanta, I hadn't owned a 'coat' coat in a few years," she said. "But I end up in Chicago and New York and other places, and I was kind of uncomfortable not having one. So, yeah, I was able to get one on Black Friday last year."