What Does It Take to
Increase Beef Demand?
Demand hinges on being relevant to the customer.
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS (Jan. 28, 2010) — “When you stay relevant to your consumers you maintain demand. But when you are more relevant than your competitor you grow demand,” said Molly McAdams, vice president of Own Brands for H-E-B, a privately owned Texas grocery store chain with 325 stores in Texas and Mexico. The company has annual sale in excess of $15 billion. “In the beef industry today, our top concern is how to grow demand.”
Speaking at the 2010 Cattle Industry Annual Convention and NCBA Trade Show, Jan. 28, in San Antonio, Texas, as part of a panel charged with addressing the future of the cattle industry, McAdams offered three tips for success:
1) Know your business. “This actually means learn your business. You need to understand the macro events that will affect your business on the home front,” McAdams said, noting that understanding demographic changes of your consumers is particularly important. “Recent immigrants to the U.S. want to buy high-quality protein as soon as they get here. For Hispanics especially, that usually means beef.”
2) Be very clear about what you do well and what your competition does well. “Chicken may not be as memorable as a good steak, but it sure is cheap to buy,” McAdams said.
“Consumers are discerning and they vote with their dollars,” she said. “We have to win based on value and safety and consistency and quality. If we think we can win consumers’ dollars based on just two or three of those things, we’re mistaken. You must have an ‘and’ approach.”
3) Collaborate. “Internally competitive behavior is destructive. We need teamwork and a sharing of knowledge to be successful at selling products to our consumers,” McAdams said. “As an industry we need to rally around the common enemy and that enemy is declining demand.”
Editor’s Note: This article was written under contract or by staff of Angus Productions Inc. (API), which claims copyright to this article. It may not be published or distributed without the express permission of Angus Productions Inc. To request reprint permission and guidelines, contact Shauna Rose Hermel, editor, at 816-383-5270.