Every story has a number: 36.8 million
Where were you when beef prices dropped?
Admittedly a bit on the dramatic side, but I’m sure more than the location you recall what it felt like when the high rewards we’d grown accustomed to took a tumble. Thankfully with opportunities to achieve premiums such as qualifying for Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand still in tact, as well as a solid consumer demand, there’s plenty of reasons to continue to raise quality beef.
Here’s one: as prices drop on our end, so do those for our retail and foodservice brothers and sisters. That’s a huge sigh of relief for them as they’ve worked diligently to promote beef sales with record high costs. Sure it’s a different side of the business, but we’re all in the same family, right?
Maybe you’ve heard industry chatter along these lines: “The retailers sure haven’t responded to the lower beef prices.”
Oh to the contrary. And we’ve got the numbers to prove it.
36.8 million
That’s how many pounds of CAB product sold through our retail division in October 2015. That’s an 8.4 million pound (29.5%) increase compared to October 2014.
That was during National Pork Month, but who’s counting…
As I’m sure you already know, CAB employees tackle a variety of jobs and Steve Ringle is our go-to guy for data like this. As director of business development and analysis for the brand, Steve’s a numbers guy like us and tracks how many and what type of advertisement features our retail partners put in their weekly circulars.
Steve told me that in terms of front-page ad activity in October 2014 compared to 2015, the number of CAB items featured increased from 73 to 109, respectively. That’s organic growth because we don’t pay for those ads or their placement.
In 2014, only five of those were in what we call the “sweet spot.” That is ad features that are listed with a price of $2.99 or lower and/or a special deal such as a buy-one-get-one offer. This year, that number jumped to 19.
“We can attribute our increase in sales not only to the number of features we saw for October, but also the quality of those features,” Steve says.
And that leads back to an original decrease in beef prices on our end of the chain. Steve says the two are directly related.
“As the market softens, so does everything else. Boxed beef prices begin to decline and our retail licensee base has responded. From middle meats to ends and grinds, it’s all the way across the board.”
Thanks for allowing me to tell your story,
Laura
—
Just one more day to go in our “Every number has a story” series. Want to look back with us?
Day one: $6.93
Day two: 2.5 million
Day three: $204.10
Day four: 12.1 million
Day five: 11/13
Day six: 8 million
Day seven: 139
Day eight: $39
Day nine: 30.1%
Day 10: 120 million
Day 11: -2.26
Day 12: 12 to 15 minutes
Day 13: 30%
Day 14: 32 million
Day 15: $154,000
Day 16: 118
Day 17: .51
Day 18: 105
Day 19: 1650
Day 20: 36,575
Day 21: 603
Day 22: 23%
Day 23: 31
Day 24: .53
Day 25: 40%
Day 26: $4.52
Day 27: 7 hours
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