National Meat Case Study Outlines Retail Meat Case Trends

Posted to BeefRetail.org in conjunction with October 2010 issue of Retail Beef Blast.

Sealed Air's Cryovac Food Packaging, The Beef Checkoff Program and the National Pork Board teamed up in the first quarter of 2010 to conduct the 2010 National Meat Case Study (NMCS), an extensive audit of the nation’s retail meat cases. Surveyors audited 124 retail supermarkets and nine club stores in 51 metro markets across 31 states at various times of the day and days of the week.

Detailed information from more than 160,000 packages representing more than 288,000 pounds of meat and 21,000 SKUs of meat products was captured in supermarkets to help further understand the growing transformation seen in the retail meat case during the last eight years. Results from the 2010 study were benchmarked against the same study conducted in 2002, 2004 and 2007 to provide insights into emerging national retail trends.

The biggest news from the 2010 NMCS was in the area of store branding:

• The percentage of packages in the fresh meat case carrying a store brand has tripled since 2004 (the first year this data was collected).
• Store brands increased from 12% in 2004 to 23% in 2007 to 36% in 2010.

Growth in store brands was at the expense of packages carrying supplier brands, which decreased 13 percentage points, and no brand packages, down 11 percentage points for the same timeframe. Store brand growth was seen across all proteins in 2010 vs 2007:

• Store-branded beef products increased from 31% to 51%.
• Store branding of ground beef increased from 21% to 37%.
• Pork increased by 7 percentage points.
• Chicken increased by 9 percentage points.

Another area that has continued to expand during the eight-year history of the study is nutrition labeling. The number of packages in the fresh meat case with on-pack nutrition labeling expanded again in 2010. The increase has been gradual since 2002. From 2007 to 2010, the number of packages with on-pack nutrition labeling increased four percentage points from 57% to 61%.

When looking specifically at beef, the number of packages with on-pack nutrition labels in place increased 5 percentage points from 24% in 2007 to 29% in 2010. Ground beef also increased 4 percentage points from 77% in 2007 to 81% in 2010.

Bilingual language usage was another new item audited in 2010. Data revealed that ground beef has the largest percentage (17%) of bilingual packages. Beef was next with 11%. The average percentage of packages with bilingual information for all proteins is 8%.

Auditors also captured on-pack production claims in this year’s study. Top claims included:

• minimally processed
• hormone free
• antibiotic free
• vegetarian fed

The total percentage of all fresh meat packages with the "minimally processed" claim is 27%. "Minimally processed" claims were found on 57% of chicken packages, followed closely with 45% of turkey. Next was lamb with 34%, veal with 26% and ground beef with 22%.

There is much more information available from this study. To view more, download the 2010 National Meat Case Executive Summary.