Winsight Grocery Business Featured Nurture Ranch As Innovation Leader In Beef
Beefing Up Strategies to Serve the Changing Consumer
Beef category is holding strong, with both dollar sales and volume up
Beef: Is it what’s for dinner? The answer is yes, with caveats. The category is not immune to the food trends at large. The desire for more protein is good news. The move toward more plant-based options? Not so much. But no matter the consumer dietary trend, beef is holding its own.
“Whether we look at the one-year or the three-year view, dollar sales and volume are strong,” says Anne-Marie Roerink, principal with 210 Analytics, San Antonio. “Beef represents more than 50% of total meat department sales for most retailers, given its high price per pound. It still has the highest share of volume, too, at about one-third.”
Beef sales were up 1%, surpassed only by breakfast meats in the meat category, for the 52 weeks ending June 16, according to IRI data. At 5.1%, ribs saw the biggest jump in sales, followed by offal at 4.8%. This rise in offal products can be attributed to health enthusiasts choosing nutrient-rich cuts such as liver, kidney, heart, tongue and bone marrow for the health benefits, says Rodney Mason, founder and chairman of Nurture Ranch, Frisco, Texas. Another sales driver for these products is people are purchasing them, especially the liver, heart and bones, for their pets, again for the perceived health benefits.
Changing Consumer
“A big area of change in how America’s food culture is changing is how we think and interact with our food,” Roerink says. “There is so much more emphasis on better understanding where the food comes from, who produced it and how.” Conventional beef still makes up a majority of sales, but the category’s growth is coming from beef producers talking about production attributes, such as antibiotic use, and outlining all the steps of how the beef ended up on the customer’s table, she adds.
Some producers also are incorporating tracking capabilities on beef’s packaging so consumers can trace that particular cut of beef back to the farm where the cow was raised.
This is a big deal for beef, Mason says, especially ground beef, which, when processed traditionally, can have several different sources in a single pack. Producers such as Nurture Meat and Tyson’s Open Prairie Natural Meats brand provide customers with full transparency and traceability of the beef on the package—from farm to table. Customers can find out what farmer raised the cow that became the cut of beef they purchased.
“In my mind, transparency is the currency of trust. And the more we can be open to the consumer and educating them, the better,” Roerink says.
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