Food Forum: A Holiday Meating Place

Retailers can curate and celebrate top selling meat items to increase holiday season profitability. By Brian Diffenderfer With the holiday selling season fast approaching, retailers are searching for ways to enhance their gross profits during this high traffic time. It is always a challenge, especially for the meat department as it struggles to provide value without giving away “the farm” in an effort to be the lowest priced retailer destination for turkeys and other popular holiday fare. With the Avian flu affecting turkey pricing and the cattle shortage affecting beef pricing, it is going to be even more of a challenge this year to achieve that desired gross profit number. I recommend converting frozen cases over to all of the holiday items as soon as feasibly possible. Let customers know you will offer many of those “hard to find” items. Line up the frozen birds like soldiers ready for holiday battle, making sure to expand on high margin items such as geese, ducks, capons, turkey breast, boneless turkey breast and chitterlings. Another good area to start focusing on is the smoked meat case. Make sure your pricing and costs are all set for the upcoming holiday selling season. Expand your case sets and double check to ensure you have a large variety of premium boneless hams available. Local brands tend to sell well during the holidays so do not be afraid to expand your offerings in this category. Smoked offal along with ham steaks and other items typically used for seasoning can be a great profit generator during the holidays. The packaged lunchmeat case will be one of your biggest profit generators during the holiday season. With most school systems being closed during the winter break, lunchmeat sales will be stronger than usual. Breakfast items are always popular during the holidays and many dinner and appetizer recipes call for bacon and sausage items. I recommend adding extra hours to the schedule for keeping the lunchmeat cases well stocked with those profitable items. In order to meet holiday sales and profit numbers, it is very important to take advantage of every sales opportunity available. There are not many shelf stable items available for the meat department, but do not be afraid to load up the stores with the ones that are available. In fact, each store should have a minimum of five fully cooked bacon shippers during the holidays. They should be strategically placed in the spice aisle, by the eggs, near packaged lunchmeat, at the express checkout area and back by the fresh meat case. I also recommend at least three pillow pack pepperoni shippers in each store. To maximize sales opportunities, offer one by the lunchmeat case, one in the meat aisle and a third in the snack aisle. Also consider breaking down the pillow pack shippers and merchandising them on clip-strips near the lasagna noodles and spaghetti sauce for added customer convenience. Summer sausage shippers are available during the holidays and are another great item to have available in the meat or deli aisle. Using private brand versions of fully cooked bacon, pillow pack pepperoni and summer sausage can help increase your gross profit margins. When done properly, cross merchandising can greatly increase sales and profit numbers. When selling frozen turkey or hams at or below cost, it is imperative for customers to purchase other items to maximize profits. Stores can also cross merchandise within their own meat department by including a section with all of the profitable holiday items such as sausage rolls, breakfast sausage, cocktail franks, bacon and other top sellers. Retailers have to walk a fine line with fresh holiday-only items to prevent shrink. It is helpful to identify these items and let individual stores know that it is okay to sell through them. It is good for retailers to keep a daily inventory on these items throughout the holiday selling season so that products can be moved from store to store to achieve 100 percent sell through. This year is going to be one of the most interesting holidays we have seen in a while. Good luck and may the profits be with you. Brian Diffenderfer is director of meat & seafood at Daymon Worldwide. He can be reached at [email protected].