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Post Info TOPIC: What has your market done to over come the economy in a crisis ?
apcowboy


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What has your market done to over come the economy in a crisis ?
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What has your market done to over come the economy in a crisis ?

For me,  My company has kept down prices as much as possible, some close to cost.

myself I have added more items to my counter to give more choice.

my pick 5 items which use to be a 100 items is now hitting on 122.

my business is holding, I still beat last years sales BUT not by the week but by the month. not always great but still beat them.

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Leon Wildberger

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wes65


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We have just gone to a new system (phasing in five shops at a time) in which our order guides are on a lap top computer. This gives us access to a ton of information like cost, price, movement, ect. I using this to find items that I can offer at a low cost that I feel would be important to my customers.

I am also paying close attention to what I am signing and making sure it is helping our price image.

I have also change my approach to ad items and how I promote them. In the past I placed them last in line but now I want my ad to effect my price image in a positive way.

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Wes
kingofcubes


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We have targeted lower income families, and are seriously pushing pork

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Meat Monkey


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Our company (still in bankruptcy) has been running their hottest ads at the beginning of the month, along with starting a senior citizen's discount on the first Wednesday of every month. There's a lot of people on unemployement and relief right now and when they get those govt checks... we are just getting killed for the first 10 days or so every month.

Hope to draw me one of those gpvt checks one day...

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Burgermeister


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There's nothing I personally can do except do my best. We have a program that we stick to closely. We (seem to me) like we're doing very well
BUT:
The supervisor does frequently send memo's to the managers telling them that we need to improve and reminding them how important customer service is. Sort of a pep talk. Usually I don't get to see the letters. Sometimes they're posted. It's the same old story I've been hearing for 32 years.
 
Ever since I got in this business (July 25, 1978),  the owners have never been happy or never will admit it if they are. It's always "been slow". We've always needed to pick up more sales, we've always supposedly had more help than we need and they threaten to eliminate jobs if things don't get better. It's no different now. They always send memo's saying that somehow we need to improve the gross. Don't over trim, watch your ordering, mark things down  early instead of grinding them, etc., etc., etc.  My store seems very busy. I don't really ask what the gross was and what sales are each day/week/month. Sometimes someone announces the previous day's totals. I heard it this morning for example. I just do my best and hope everyone likes me OK, or my work. I figure the bosses/supervisors/meat buyers know what they're doing and I just follow the program. I just want to be thought of as a valuable employee and my job is (in this order of importance) Customer, counter, cut, then misc other stuff.
We're a so called "high end" store. We don't make large "value packs". It's 100% conventional counter and you can buy one hot dog, or one slice of bacon if you want.
It does seem like the company has lowered prices on all the beef loin and rib meat in the last two years.
That's the one thing I've noticed that my company may be doing.
In all the places I've worked, I've never heard a supervisor or store owner say they're satisfied. Right now, I'm not seeing or hearing anything different from what I've been hearing day in day out since the beginning.


-- Edited by CarniceroLarry on Tuesday 9th of March 2010 02:22:38 AM

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Bryan W


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Our market has continued to push ad items while keeping the regular retail items at a bare minimum. Doing this has helped us greatly.

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alive


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We have high standard meat counter that the customer can count on at 9 in the morning as well as 9 at night when we close.Friendly,Freshness,Quality of the meat put out on the counter.Customer service is a big thing.All the new markets that have move in does not offer this, as well we do special cuts,homemade sausage,value added products.Plus all management gets the staff on the same page and excited of what we are doing.Update us on regular dates on how we are doing.Our sales are up during this recession as well as competing against stores like wallmart,costco,superstore.as well as a lot of little shops opening.smile

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Burgermeister


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Alive:
I'd like to see a pic of your counter if you have any.

-- Edited by CarniceroLarry on Wednesday 28th of April 2010 02:38:58 PM

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alive


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here are some pic's hope they load

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apcowboy


Founder of The Meat Cutter's Club

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HEYYY Alive, love the meat case !! love the pictures !! one question, how much of your meat case is pre pack

the reason I ask is I see a lot of what I think is pre pack and can't see your steak section

get time give us a shot of the steak section  THANKS for the pictures !! looks like a very nice clean store !!!

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Leon Wildberger

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Burgermeister


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alive:
Thanks for posting the pictures. Very nice meat counter and like Leon said, it's a very clean store. We have TWO clean up guys and my store isn't as clean as yours.
What is that machine near the tenderizer? At least it looks like a tenderizer. A type I've never seen. From the left, a jet netter, then the (tenderizer?) then what is the other thing?
Oh! Is it one of those tenderizers that has a few hundred needles that penetrate into roasts etc? You don't see many of those. I've only seen one and that was in 1981.


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alive


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Thanks.
Our counter only has chicken as prepack.everything else is cut in store.
The plastic lid part of the counter is our value section.We have 3 cutters 2 wrappers.
Yes the shop pic was taken before I started cuttin that morning.We have no clean up kids in our shop,we do it ourselves.Takes about a hour to do the value added section.The machine is what we call a frenchin machine.It has been around for awhile.We use it for french cut's.

When the counter is full it will hold  about 6000.00 of product.

We also have fesh instore sausage, that is a big seller.I will try to make time to get some pic's of our steak section for ya.



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Burgermeister


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what is "frenchin"?
I know that term for trimming rib bones clean on b. i. pork loin roasts, rack of lamb and crown roasts. You have a machine that does that?

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alive


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It is what you say a machine with lots of thin blades, that cut the fibre of the meat,which of course done right makes the meat more tender.This is used for more special cuts.

Manual tenderizer model MTM5

Manual tenderizer model MTM5
pdf.gif  PDF document Available
Ideal for supermarkets, butcher shops and restaurants.


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Burgermeister


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alive wrote:

 

It is what you say a machine with lots of thin blades, that cut the fibre of the meat,which of course done right makes the meat more tender.This is used for more special cuts.

Manual tenderizer model MTM5

 

Manual tenderizer model MTM5
pdf.gif  PDF document Available
Ideal for supermarkets, butcher shops and restaurants.



That's what I thought when I said "Is it one of those tenderizers that has a few hundred needles that penetrate into roasts etc?" but then you said it's a "frenchin" machine. Oh well, I guess I now know the term for that tenderizer.
The shop I worked in in 1981 had one of those. We used it on all the roasts. I quit about a week after we got the machine. I remember it leaving lots of tiny holes making it obvious that something happened.
I'd think that machine would be hard to clean and maintain.

Still, until now, I've only heard the term "French" being used when they want us to "french" the rib bones. With "french" being a verb.

 


-- Edited by CarniceroLarry on Friday 30th of April 2010 09:53:25 PM

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alive


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Frenchin is a term use here in Canada,from the easterner that call it french cuts.
We also concider french lamb chops,and porl chops.

I call it a cheater,if it is use on everything.



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Burgermeister


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Here's a Youtube of Frenching a rack of lamb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k84bJhe5AYs&feature=related



I usually make the bones a lot cleaner than they do in this Youtube vid. Just posted it to show what we call French here in California. I like to score each bone with my boning knife (from the inside area of the ribs) and then separate the bone from its thin membrane using a meat hook.  You can take that entire strip of meat out in one piece if you do it that way. The bones come out perfectly clean and look better. It does take longer. In a shop with 11 butchers, sometimes you can take the extra time.  



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dedmammal


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we have a free-standing machine like that called a Jaccard.we were told not to use it until we figured out how to put it back together. LOL!! but my meat god said it was a tenderizer,as opposed to the cuber.

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alive


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Putting it together is easy as long as you don't stab your self with it.The needles are sharp.smile

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dedmammal


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the video at the jaccard site made it look easy...so i guess we'll give it a try!

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apcowboy


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Like Larry it's been many years since I've seen a hand tenderizer, in the 70's when i working in Atlanta, A&P had two stores that was high dollar stores, nothing but rich people came in there. In those days women still knew how to cook or rather their cooks did. In these two stores we tenderize a lot of beef roast, some bone and tied butts  the hand tenderizers we used didn't have it's own table, we used C clamps to hold them on our tables. we still had wooden butcher blocks then, you saw only a few markets with block tables like we have nowadays

I have the link below dedmammal was talking about if anyone wants to see one of these hand tenderizers, the ones i've used had the handle on the side and i don't think it had as many blades as this model here has. 
Photobucket

http://www.jaccard.com/Product-View.php?prod_type=P&prod_id=19  click on video's to see how you worked one.  you youngbloods here might get a laugh out of how we use to do things lolol

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Leon Wildberger

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masteryeti


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It's a jaccard. It punctures several little holes in the meat, particularly sirloins, inside rounds, etc. so they cook quicker. Restaurants employ them routinely. That's the last time I saw one! You can severally overcook your meat if you don't know it's been jaccarded!


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masteryeti


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We're advertising (TV,radio,newspaper,website) weekly sale items. Concentrating on high quality, locally sourced, humanely raised and processed products. People are starting to wonder where their meat/food comes from. We're letting them know. And we're letting them know it's all GOOD FOOD!

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Mike Smollon


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Great to among so many veteran meat cutters. I look forward to hooking up with many of you shareing experiences and getting good advice. I never stop learning.
Thanks to Leon for all his effort to create this forum.

Wanted to share this with all of you we just partnered with Groupon.com and offered a product as a coupon. My initial worry was it wasn't going to work in our favor. Here was our deal the product was 2 lb. ground beef our regular sales price is $5.49 lb. groupon offered a coupon for 2 lb. for $5.00 they sent this offer to all there members in the surrounding area over 100,000 direct emails! They collected the money through there web site and paid us back a % agreed upon by the two of us. Over 659 packs were sold in two days. Now we have had several thousands of dollars in revenue in the past four days attributed to this coupon. Sure some of these folks come in pick up their ground beef and you may never see them again. But so far Im confident that at least 70% of these people who have bought other items along with there ground beef will return. Our key objective is to them in the door, welcome them,  tell them about our products why we are different from the grocery stores and get their email addresses mention you send out weekly coupons and they usually sign up. We have added 127 new email in the last four days to our growing list.

I'm not sure if Groupon is nation wide on world wide but its a growing trend and Im sure where ever you are weathers its Groupon, Google or a loacally owned internet member/coupon business. Give it a shot.

Look Forward to Hearing From You All,

Mike Smollon, Owner / Operator
My Butcher and More
Annapolis, MD
www.mybutcherandmore.com



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apcowboy


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Mike sounds like a great deal, know you happy with a little extra coffee change lol  I have heard of it around here, came out after I retired. maybe some of the others have had a chance with them



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Leon Wildberger

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