The Marketing Magic Behind New Beef Cuts
The Flat Iron steak, Petite Tender Medallions, Western Tip, America’s Beef Roast
all cuts of meat we are becoming more and more familiar with. Hi, I’m Susan Allen on today’s Open Range I’ll be back with bit about the marketing magic behind making new cuts of beef . In the beef industry in late 1990’s one thing became perfectly clear, consumers weren’t buying beef cuts from the chuck and round so cattle producers involved with the beef checkoff decided to fix this delima, they wanted to create new cuts of meat from the 39 individual muscles in the chuck and round. It wasn’t simple endeavor, it involved an in-depth marketing plan, new technology to cut meat plus extensive market research that not only targeted consumer taste but even determined the recipes that would part of the launch and how the names of each cut of meat would appeal to the general public. In our era of hyper-analyses, fats and calories new cuts of meat needed to meet specific nutrition requirements thus another part of the checkoff the Human Nutrition Research program made sure the new cuts would meet our government’s lean guidelines. Eight value cuts did, The Petitie Tender, Petite Tender Medallions, Ranch Steak, Sirloin Tip Side Steak, Sirloin Tip Center Steak, Western Tip, Western Griller Steak and America’s Beef Roast. Today the beef industry is beginning to see a return on this investment with these cuts like Boneless Country-Style Beef Chuck Ribs, Denver and Sierra Cut selling well not only in grocery stores but also on the menus of over 20,000 restaurants.