How A Revamped Meat Case Made a Big Difference for Ground Pork
What happens when you change up the grocery store meat case and position ground pork right next to its competitors?
Greater sales of ground pork.
Eight states have been teaming with the National Pork Board to work with the Hy-Vee grocery store chain to test out adding a ground pork section in the meat case. Hy-Vee has about 285 stores in this eight-state area. To carry out this test, Hy-Vee selected 70 stores. Half of them became test stores and the other half served as control stores.
“In the test stores, we redid their meat case to add a ground pork section that was two feet wide and went from top to bottom,” Joyce Hoppes, consumer information director at the Iowa Pork Producers Association, explained during a webinar on Sept. 29 hosted by the National Pork Board. “It also had 11 different ground pork items in that section. It was put right in the middle of the ground meat section of the meat case – right next to ground beef.”
A Ripple Effect
National Pork Board collected and analyzed the sales data. Hoppes said the results were impressive.
"Sales of ground pork in the test stores were nearly 20% higher* than the control store. We're very pleased with that and obviously Hy-Vee was pleased too because they decided to expand the ground pork section to the 285 Hy-Vee stores,” Hoppes said. “We're currently in the process of resetting those meat cases.”
The National Pork Board is eager to take this information gained from one retailer and share it with other retailers.
“It takes some of the risk out for that retailer too, because they may be concerned that about making changes or trying something new,” Hoppes said. “We're de-risking it a little bit for the retailer and showing them how they can try different things.”
Getting ground pork into the hands of more consumers through Hy-Vee is a big success story and is starting to ripple across grocery stores as the pork industry directs efforts towards the East Coast, said Bill Even, National Pork Board CEO.
“The big takeaway from this is that once you help the retailer understand how to merchandise ground pork in a better fashion, we're able to get more shelf space, and we're able to get more consumer demand from that,” Even said.
Ground Pork Preferences
During COVID, 50% of the households that tried ground pork, were trying it for the first time, Hoppes said. Research also unveiled that ground pork is a destination item, which means they are purchasing it with a specific recipe in mind. They also found out that ground pork appeals to younger consumers.
“Consumers really want choices,” she adds. “When it comes to ground pork, they want more than just the 80/20. They want 90/10 fat-lean ratio products, just like they would find with their ground beef items. They want choices as well as they want the product right next to each other in the meat case so they can make choices and substitute if they would like.”
Ground pork will continue to be a focus for the rest of this year and into 2023 and probably beyond. Hoppes said the pork industry needs to keep working with retailers to help them implement ground pork and give both retailers and consumers ideas and suggestions for how to incorporate more ground pork into their routine.
*: IRI Control Store Test
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