3 Ways For Meat Execs to Stay On Top of Changing Meat Trends in a Tight Market

As an executive in the meat industry, changing consumer trends often present unique opportunities for growth and expansion. As a graduate student of marketing at Northwestern University with experience in the meat industry, I have found two articles addressing and analyzing this changing market. 

This article entitled “Oh, you are offal but I do like you” by Victoria Robinson helps explain what offal is and how it functions as a profitable food trend. Animal organs haven’t seen a resurgence since the WWII era when they were widely available, but baby boomers rejected these staples soon after for more conventional food items. Offal’s re-emergence on food menus as of late is something food scientist, Miranda Mirosa of Otago University, attributes to a type of “food nostalgia”.  

Above: Pork rinds with spiced honey, a popular offal dish at Milwaukee’s trendy restaurant, Beta

This other article, “Game Meat, Organ Meat, and Marrow—What is Fueling the Fire?” by popular food blogger, Jennifer Nordwall, describes the growing popularity in today’s restaurant scene of game meats and other “strange” new exotic cuts. She ties the mainstreaming of off-beat products like elk, wild boar, and sweetbreads into other over-arching current food trends like buying local, nutritional value, and a growing consumer need for adventure and experimentation. 

     

Left: An assortment of Wild Game; Right: Nutritional information on game meats puts them ahead of beef and pork

After reviewing these two excellent articles, I have found three action items you need to implement immediately.  They are:

1. Research! - Don't get caught off guard when other industry professionals or customers ask about these cuts.

2) Network, network, network - Companies like Sierra Meat and D'Artagnan procure and distribute many unique cuts. Call them, get an idea of the market, add it to your portfolio.

3) Talk to your customers - Once you have the knowledge and have expanded your portfolio and vendor network, let your customers know you are offering some unique new cuts. Gauge their interest, send samples, and show them how this could help their business. 

 As meat professionals in an ever tightening meat market where beef tenderloin and strip loins are growing increasingly more expensive, it is crucial to stay adrift with changing trends in the meat industry so as to not get caught behind when competitors offer more options and lower prices.  

Alana Heber has been a Sales/ Marketing Manager for a wholesale meat purveyor in the Chicago Stockyards for over three years. She has is soon to obtain a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) from Northwestern University-Medill and intends to pursue a career in marketing within the foodservices or CPG industry.

Follow her on Twitter @AEHeber 

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Be the Change You Want to See In Your World

We’ve all heard the old adage ‘What’s mine is yours.’ As an aspiring brand manager within the packaged food and restaurant space, I decided to think of it in a way that we are taught to think at Northwestern University – from the customer’s point of view. In that case then, it would read more like ‘What’s yours is mine.’ But just how well are we as marketers making the issues of the consumer our issues in the organization?  And by issues, I don’t mean product-related needs, I mean issues – the hard-core, societal issues that affect each and every one of us and the communities within which we live.

The society we live in today is unfortunately dealing with nationwide crises like childhood obesity and child/adult hunger. Our communities are in desperate need for our help. The call to action couldn’t be any clearer. The time is now to take these serious issues and turn them into meaningful philanthropic programs within our organizations. As food marketers, we need to think about how we can truly adopt CSR programs into our organizations while contributing to the health and well-being of our communities. It could be through the donation of excess food, free workshops on healthy eating, volunteering at shelters and Food Banks, or a variety of other nutrition-related activities. But the challenge is that these programs can no longer just be a line of copy we write on our websites and expect customers to swoon over. Customers will call us on our bluff if we don’t show authenticity and belief in the cause we are promoting. By making consumers’ issues our issues is to weave these into the fabric of our organizations and recreate a focus from the inside-out.

Restaurant operator Darden Restaurants was recognized last month by NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams for their efforts to make a difference in their local Orlando community through their “Harvest” program. Darden, who owns well known brands like Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Long Horn Steakhouse, started their local philanthropic program in 2004 after employees at their restaurants started donating excess food to local food banks and hunger relief organizations. The program has been successfully employed throughout the entire organization where processes have been adopted by their 1900 locations to safely handle, package and store the food before it gets picked up by food bank partners. The food is then transported to local charities including the Boys and Girls Club of America afternoon programs where kids who don’t have easy access to nutritious foods are treated to balanced meals from these restaurants. President and COO of Darden Restaurants, Drew Madsen, admits that while it would be cheaper to just throw the food away, they see it as their company’s mission to nourish the community and this is evident in the dedication that Darden Restaurant employees have in making the philanthropy their own personal mission.

Get your organization thinking about promoting healthy lifestyles, donating excess food, teaching the youth about healthy food decisions or other ways to make a difference in your community today by following these three easy tips:

1.    Think locally

A great way to get started is to identify ways that your organization can make an impact within your local communities. If the philanthropy you identify is food or health related, start with local food banks, homeless shelters, local Boys and Girls of America chapters and other organizations that could truly benefit from the excess product and donations that you can provide.

2.    Unify the organization around the cause

The philanthropy needs to be worked into the entire fabric of the organization and customers need to feel the authenticity of the company’s passion for the cause. It cannot be something you do for show and consumers will know the authentic cause from the fake cause. From top-down and bottom-up, the entire organization needs to be aligned around promoting, believing and acting for the cause.

3.    Follow regulations for donating food

If you choose a path to donate excess food to charities, it will be critical to ensure that there are strict policies in place to follow ‘sell by’ and ‘use by’ regulations. The food that you do donate needs to be in compliance with health codes in order to keep all those involved healthy. Most importantly, give excess food that will promote healthy and nutritious food choices for all, don’t give food that just contributes to the health problems of our society.

 


Tara Gupta is a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program and spent six years in interactive strategy and user experience design.  Tara is passionate about brand management in the CPG space and health & fitness. Tara will be graduating in December 2012. 
Follow Tara on Twitter @tbg1230 or on LinkedIn

Build your Six-Second Resume if you want to be … eaten?

By: Tara Gupta  

Follow me @tbg1230

Photo source: Slashgear.com

            I read an article the other day about how the average recruiter only spends six-seconds reading your resume. Six-seconds! So you mean all the hours I’ve spent explaining how I organized the Post-Its by color in the supply closet is lost by your cursory glance at my resume and your toss to the side for the “next best thing”? So that made me think, what else are we as a society just glancing at and sizing up in a mere blink of an eye. As a graduate student at Northwestern University’s IMC program, I’m learning that I have a passion for helping consumers make educated and healthy food decisions. So what if we as CPG marketers started to apply the six-second rule to our own resumes: the nutrition and package label.

            So let’s try this out together. If a consumer were to pick up your product and give it the six-second test what would they find? Probably a bunch of health claims that they don’t believe, frilly icons that may be losing meaning, and percentages that mean little to nothing. That is according to a January 2012 Nielsen Global Survey of Food Labeling Trends that found consumers don’t believe over two-thirds of health claims made on package labels or by food marketers and 59% of consumers from around the world experience confusion by nutrition labels. Often times we’ve got health claims plastered all over our packages but it seems that it just results in more confusion for the consumer. But wait! Without our packages to describe the benefits we’ve got nothing, and on top of it, they don’t believe us? Time to get to the drawing board and reinvent our label efforts.

But it begs the challenge – will changing up icons or words on a label solve it? The study finds that “half (52%) of consumers around the world understand nutritional information panels on food packaging only in part. Four-of-ten consumers understand nutritional labels “mostly” and seven percent say they do not understand them at all.” Perhaps we need to think outside of the box (pun intended), and figure out outreach efforts that bring the nutrition labels to life and regain the consumer trust and belief again. But it’s also important to note that labels have come a long way and companies like General Mills have embraced indicator icons to help with nutritious decision making. But the survey results indicate that we need to be forward looking. According to Food Product Design Blog, “Consumer-friendly nutritional labeling can be a powerful marketing tool as consumers are hungry for easy-to-understand information.”

Build your six-second resume now

It’s pretty clear. You’re not getting “hired” with your current resume. This is a clear call-to-action for marketers to get rid of the skepticism, be clear and transparent for customers, and make it easier for consumers to make healthy food choices:

1. Think ‘outside the box’: Combine innovations in labeling with outreach efforts to gain trust in the claims you’re making.
2. Be honest and transparent: Know what the hot issues are for consumers and be honest about your ingredients.
3. Content Rules: Give consumers new ways to interact with your labels and packages and make the content easy for them, please! You’ve only got six-seconds. 

Tara Gupta is a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program and spent six years in interactive strategy and user experience design.  Tara is passionate about brand management in the CPG space and health & fitness. Tara will be graduating in December 2012. 
Follow Tara on Twitter @tbg1230 or on LinkedIn