MISSING THE CUT

LYNNE MILLER

Today's retail meat department is a scene of transition. Products in the cases are changing to reflect updated lifestyles and consumer demands for convenience.

Similarly, the specialists behind the counter and those managing them are discovering they have to find new ways to "add value" to their services or face the unkindest cut: a lack of retail work.

The job outlook isn't rosy for butchers and meatcutters, whose special skills have made them among the best-paid employees of supermarkets. While overall employment in supermarkets is expected to rise about 6% by the year 2008, jobs for butchers and meatcutters are expected to drop by more than 12% over the same period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau attributes the decline to two trends: the ongoing shift of meat processing from supermarket meat departments to meatpacking plants -- and increasing acceptance of case-ready meats. Growth in the amount of meat arriving at supermarkets prepackaged, with additional fat removed, will mean less work for retail butchers and a declining demand for their employment, the bureau reported in its most recent job outlook. "[Retailers] feel they don't need us anymore because they're getting everything prepacked," said Tony Tortora, 54, a veteran butcher at a unit of Pathmark, the Carteret, N.J.-based retailer who currently merchandises case-ready beef and pork. "They're not allowing the industry to grow. They're training no one for tomorrow."

Indeed, through 2006, about 80% of job opportunities for butchers and meatcutters will result from the need to replace workers who leave the occupation or the labor market -- not through the creation of new jobs, according to the California Employment Development Department, Sacramento.

Nevertheless, supermarkets are still one of the primary destinations for the skilled tradesmen, where they provide traditional services ranging from custom cuts to cooking and presentation tips. As the industry continues to evolve, butchers are finding more job security in smaller independents, rather than larger chains, which are taking the lead on case-ready products.

"I don't think the consumer is ready for [case ready] yet," said Tom Raeburn, the meat category manager for Genuardi's Family Markets, Norristown, Pa. "We custom cut for customers. That's the direction we're going as a company."

But even retailers who are not selling case-ready products, who pride themselves on customer service, find they don't need as many meatcutters as they used to, simply because more meat cutting, trimming and processing takes place at food-processing plants -- not in supermarket back rooms.

"The way the meat comes in, in primal cuts, you don't need as many meatcutters," Raeburn said. "Nowadays, probably 95% of the beef that comes in is in a box. There's minimal processing to put it on display."

By comparison, case-ready beef currently makes up only about 5% of beef sold in the country. But industry observers believe it will increase.

Butchers, meatcutters and supermarket executives took notice earlier this year when the biggest retailer of them all, Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark., announced it would stop cutting meat in its stores entirely and buy only beef and pork prepackaged by the packer. The decision coincided with union organizing among meatcutters. The retailer promised to keep meat department employees working, and a company spokeswoman recently said labor problems have been resolved.

Wal-Mart's decision prompted other retailers to take a look at the service-labor equation. Butchers and meatcutters, meanwhile, began to vocalize fears that they were being squeezed out of the department.

For example, case-ready meat has become an emotional issue at Pathmark. The retailer's introduction of prepackaged beef and pork caused an uproar among members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 342-50, Mineola, N.Y. Among its membership, the union has about 5,000 meatcutters.

Members launched a public awareness campaign this year, and have been handing out fliers to customers at New Jersey and New York Pathmark stores, encouraging shoppers to buy meat cut fresh in the stores. The pamphlets also raise questions about the freshness of prepackaged products.

On one flier, customers are urged to "be on the lookout" for prepackaged Black Angus, and to ask the store manager why the company switched from freshly cut to precut and prepackaged steaks.

Pathmark officials declined to answer SN's questions about the impact case-ready products is having on labor. The company has not laid off any meatcutters or butchers, but is thinning the ranks through attrition, said Andrea Curro, the union's director of communications.

If he lost his job, Tortora doubts he could find another one providing him with the same salary and benefits he earns working at a Pathmark supermarket in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"If I retired tomorrow, they wouldn't replace me with anyone," said Tortora, who followed in his father's and uncle's footsteps and started cutting meat for a living in 1966. "If Pathmark opens a new store, all they do is take personnel from the surrounding stores and open new stores with these people. They're spreading people thinner and thinner. We're all worried about our jobs."

Retailers who sell case-ready meats contend the products offer several benefits: extended shelf life, more protection against contamination, reduced shrink, the elimination of out-of-stocks and a solution to labor shortages.

Those benefits are lost on Ray Venezia, meat director of New York City's Fairway Market. An outspoken critic of case-ready beef products -- and a trained butcher -- Venezia thinks meatcutters, unlike other supermarket employees, play a key role in attracting and retaining loyal shoppers. The services butchers provide, and the relationships they have with customers, make butchers special, and worth their higher salaries, he said.

"We have knowledge of what it is we're dealing with," said Venezia. "Customers know butchers by name. If somebody feels they have a competent butcher, they don't want to talk to anybody else. Nobody will go out of their way to a store because Cheerios are 10 cents less."

Companies that complain about having empty meat cases should hire more people to stock the cases, Venezia said. While the shortage of trained cutters is one of his biggest headaches, Venezia doesn't see prepackaged beef as a solution.

"All it does is eliminate help and that's not what we're about," he said, adding Fairway has no plans to sell prepackaged beef. "We choose to do things the old-fashioned way."

Like many others in his line of work, Venezia fell into meat cutting almost by accident. His uncle, a butcher, approached Venezia, who was fresh out of high school, and asked him if he wanted to be a butcher's apprentice. Venezia had worked in other areas of supermarkets and knew he could make better money cutting meat. He got used to working in the cold, getting his hands bloody and being around carcasses hanging on hooks. Venezia learned how to make sausage and carve custom cuts of meat. He got used to answering all sorts of questions from customers. He enjoyed the prestige.

"Butchers used to be the king," Venezia said. "They were the big shots in the stores."

In their efforts to make meat departments more profitable, retailers in recent years have introduced a slew of value-added items designed to capture business from time-pressed cooks. As a result, butchers have been forced to update their knowledge of cooking techniques, further processing and general salesmanship.

As a teenager, Gary O'Brien started out as a meatcutter, working for a short time at a supermarket in Cincinnati. He then signed up for culinary school and now, at 35, teaches meatcutters cooking techniques at Dorothy Lane Markets, a three-store, Dayton, Ohio, independent.

Cooking knowledge is particularly useful for cutters who field questions from customers buying expensive cuts of raw meat, as well as partially prepared items, O'Brien said. "We get bombarded with culinary questions," said O'Brien, who worked as a chef at a hotel in Cincinnati and at a private hunting and fishing club in Indiana before coming to Dorothy Lane a year ago. The retailer does not plan to jump on the prepackaged meat bandwagon, choosing to emphasize customer service. It sees big chains embracing the case-ready trend more widely than small operators, said Jack Gridley, the company's seafood and meat buyer.

"We know that's the way the big boys are going to go," Gridley said. "We need to go 180 degrees in the other direction."

Dorothy Lane doesn't have the problems with stocking and labor that trouble the larger chains. The retailer has cutters who work in the evenings and keep meat cases stocked, Gridley said. As for filling vacancies in the meat departments, "I feel there's a lot of potential finding help from the restaurant industry," he said. Meatcutters "have to know how to do things besides cut meat."