Lake St. Louis shopping center giving $50,000 worth of gift cards away

The Meadows Shopping Center is kicking off their holiday in a new way this year, by giving back to the customers who shop there.

"We got here at 4 a.m., me and my three daughters," said Justin Workman, who was first in line waiting to get one of the 250 gift cards being handed out for free Saturday morning at The Meadows.

"When you're excited it's fun, but when you go to bed late it's tiring," said Madison Workman, Justin's oldest daughter.

The gift cards are worth $25 or $50 and they are handed out at random until they are all gone, so the gift cards could come from any store or restaurant at The Meadows.

"We took $50,000 of our marketing fund and bought gift cards from all of our retailers," said Alysia Kerkove, general manager at The Meadows.

Being first in line didn't give the Workman family any special perks, except, it did guarantee them getting gift cards. Some people who waited walked away empty handed.

"There's going to be some people way back in the line that I don't think are going to get one because there are more than 250 people here," said Workman.

The line was so long it went to the entrance of the parking lot. Some customers stayed occupied in line by picking up a game of tag football.

The whole motivation behind this giveaway is to keep people shopping and spending more than their gift card is worth at The Meadows. The gift cards being handed out this weekend aren't even the jackpot.

"From now until December 18, you can enter to win 10 of our really large gift cards, so one is a $5,000 gift card to Von Maur," said Kerkove.

If you missed your chance to get a gift card on Saturday, The Meadows is giving out 250 more gift cards on Sunday at 9 a.m. Then they are giving out 100 more on Saturday, December 2 and Saturday, December 9.