For Immediate Release                                                          Oct. 25, 2003
For Information: Burt Rutherford

RETAIL AND FOODSERVICE EXECS SAY 
SUCCESS DEPENDS ON WORKING TOGETHER

"I've been in this business for 30 years and it's time for us to quit the bid and buy.  I love to pound the packers harder than anyone.  And I was really good at it," said Brad Graham, senior vice president at Harris Teeter, a 140-store grocery chain in the Southeast. 

"But you know what?  It doesn't work any more.  We've got to move from just selling meat to marketing high quality meat and doing it with a plan."

That was one of many thought-provoking statements heard by more than 650 cattle feeders Saturday during the Retail Roundup panel discussion featuring retail and foodservice experts.  The Retail Roundup took place during the 2003 Annual Convention of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association (TCFA) in Amarillo.

Graham said the way that beef producers and beef retailers can work together to provide beef consumers with a consistent, high-quality eating experience is through alliances.

Harris Teeter's mission is to provide consumers with the most consistent beef eating experience possible, he said.  "Through an alliance, we can all work together as a team and deliver the end result of that great eating experience.  The supply chain must coordinate to make decisions that benefit the consumer and, by working through an alliance, you can do that."

Graham told cattle feeders that a branded product builds consumer loyalty.  "Do marketing alliances work?  At Harris Teeter, our Rancher brand of beef is the fastest growing brand in the Southeast."

Michael Swanson agrees.  Swanson, beef manager at HEB, a 300-store chain in South Texas and Mexico , said consumers simply want to have their expectations blown away.  "And this is not a something-for-nothing discussion.  Consumers have proven time and time again they will pay for what they want, but they have to have a dependable delivery on that expectation."

With beef, that can be a rub, particularly Select beef, which is HEB's largest share of their beef business.  Swanson said the beef industry has two major challenges-improve the eating quality and consistency of Select beef and increase the supply of Prime and the upper end of Choice.

"We have a responsibility to deliver a great eating experience to our customers.  We need your help.  When you go out and look at your pens, do you see cattle or do you see food?  Or more specifically, do you see a great eating experience?"

Joe Hallinan, a retail meat specialist with Cargill Meat Solutions, told cattle feeders that the beef industry has had a lot of adversarial relationships for a long time.  But ultimately, nobody benefits from that kind of situation.

"The beef business is tough and there are a lot of outside factors that affect what we do that we have no control over," he said.  "That's enough of a challenge.  I don't care if you're a producer, a feeder, a retailer, a packer.  We need to stick together and focus our attention on taking care of the other proteins."

Continuing the theme that the beef industry's ultimate goal is to provide consumers with a great eating experience, John McIntyre, vice president of merchandising with Sysco, the nation's largest foodservice distribution company, said people may not know beef, but they know the difference between a good piece of meat, a great piece of meat and a bad piece of meat.  And for Sysco to deliver a beef product to its restaurant customers that will consistently meet consumer expectation, they have to age it at least 21 days.  That's an expensive proposition.

It's a situation brought about because different segments have a different focus.  "You guys like pounds, we like consistency.  You guys like pounds, we like quality.  You guys like pounds, we like tenderness.  You guys like pounds, we like eating experience."  But for the industry as a whole to succeed, he told cattle feeders, everyone needs to focus on the eating experience of beef.

To achieve that, he suggested that cattle feeders start giving people incentives to grow the right product.  "And when I say incentives, don't pay them more.  Start paying them what they deserve.  If you want to sell more beef at higher prices, make sure every single bite tastes great.  Your mission should be the same as ours, and that is to help our customers succeed."

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