PANEL WEIGHS MEANS TO LIFT MEAT SALES, CUT PROBLEMS

ROSE-MARIE TURK

ANAHEIM, Calif. (FNS) -- Retailers participating in the Meat Summit during the recent Annual Meat Marketing Conference here said that supermarkets need to maximize a number of emerging practices and technologies if they want to boost meat sales.

The panel -- which included Tim Prindle, general manager of the meat and service-deli division of Certified Grocers of California, and Marty Stephanic, director of meat for Save Mart Supermarkets, Modesto, Calif. -- discussed different aspects of the problems that retailers face in the effort to increase volume.

Prindle, whose cooperative serves 3,500 stores, said the failure of new items in general makes it difficult to determine what really works.

"The attrition of products that have come and gone through my distribution channel is quite dramatic. Eight out of 10 of them just don't seem to last," he said.

Products that look promising to the retailer, but may be having trouble getting off the ground, might be good candidates for bundling, a fairly recent practice in the retail world that has coincided with the growth of fresh meals, said Stephanic.

"Retailers are bundling a meal, and often that meal is a new item tied with a couple of solid items from a branded [manufacturer] to help move it into the consumer's home."

Another panelist, Joe Swedberg, director of marketing for the meat products group of Hormel Foods Corp., Austin, Minn., reminded everyone that it's always about giving the customer what he or she wants.

"We've been guilty in the past of wanting to drive a fat-free product in the marketplace," he said, citing one example. "But it didn't deliver the flavor the consumer was expecting, and look where the fat-free category has gone today."

Convenience is an important part of the strategy, according to moderator Roger Blackwell, professor of marketing at Ohio State University. Citing a recent study, he noted that at 4 p.m. on an average day, 60% of the people have yet to decide what they are going to eat that night.

"And with [fresh meals], if you're not located exactly in the right location, with exactly the right demographics, it's just not going to work. So you've got to know your customer," he said.

John Curran, vice president of sales and marketing for Tyson Fresh Chicken, Springdale, Ark., said that, for anyone involved in product development, consumer needs must be closely monitored.

"We have to tailor-make," he explained. "I think you have to take the time to have good honest communication, so you know what that customer is looking for. And success builds trust."

On the subject of success and trust, Stephanic said supermarket retailers were following the example of major department store chains in learning to run their business by the point of sale.

"We've gotten to the point where we only need to buy the cuts that we sell," he said. "We've made great progress in finding out what the customer is buying and putting that back into the counter at the right times to try to enhance our sales."

Building customer trust was addressed at length by panel members, including Ken Taylor, president and chief executive officer of Taylor Packing Co., Wyalusing, Pa. He said that as a packer-producer, he was very much involved in improving the relationship between customers and retailers.

"We've taken food safety as the defining element in our relationship with the retailer," he said. "We've involved them in our very proactive approach to protecting the ground beef supply, and we've partnered with them in the work they've done in their supermarkets. Hopefully, that trust will be passed on from the retailer to the consumer."

Harry Fehrenbacher, a Newton, Ill., pork producer with Farmland Industries, said that the company was focusing on branded fresh meat products "so we can go beyond the retailer to the consumer and get that identity and that trust built up."

Prindle weighed in with another safety issue, as he described a typical scenario in which "a retailer might be looking for an item to promote two weeks out. His concerns are availability and price. He's never asked me how safe this merchandise is. I think there's a lot of assumption that goes along."

And while irradiation could provide what Taylor called a new level of safety the industry has never had before, he cautioned that the public remains fearful of the idea. Calling it a great opportunity for the future, he said he was reserving judgment until he saw the results of the first test-marketing.

Swedberg said he was concerned because the process is not a total guarantee, noting that "when consumers get the product home, they have some responsibility" to maintain the integrity of the product.

Fehrenbacher added his own cautionary note, referring first to the fact that many consumers now fail to properly refrigerate ready-to-eat luncheon meats because they equate precooked with complete safety.

"I'm just wondering -- if we introduce the irradiation process, [are they] going to assume it's safe not to take all the precautions they ought to take," he asked. "Sort of like we do with airbags and automatic brakes in cars. We think we can drive faster because we've got protection. And the number of accidents hasn't really gone down that much."