Latin American Retail Team Offered Fresh Ideas at Annual Meat Conference

Helping educate customers in growing Latin American markets about new ways of marketing and merchandising red meat products is a key strategy for the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF), which recently hosted a team of retail meat buyers from Central America, South America, Mexico and the Caribbean for a U.S. tour that included the Annual Meat Conference in Dallas. Liz Wunderlich, USMEF representative in the Caribbean, explains that including retail visits and U.S. red meat training sessions on the team’s agenda provided insight and fresh ideas for selling more U.S. product.

The USMEF Retail Promotion Team also participated in a cutting and merchandising demonstration presented by the Texas Beef Council, along with Pork 101 and Beef 101 educational sessions at West Texas A&M University. The trainings offered breakdowns of individual cuts and explanations about the attributes of U.S. pork and beef.


TRANSCRIPT:

Ralph Loos: Red meat buyers from Central America, South America, Mexico and the Caribbean attended the annual meat conference in Dallas as part of the U.S. Meat Export Federation Retail Promotion Team. In addition to attending retail marketing sessions, the team visited several retail outlets. In this USMEF report, Liz Wunderlich, USMEF representative in the Caribbean, explains how the conference benefits team members.

Liz Wunderlich: I have been going to the Annual Meat Conference pretty much every year, and it hit me that it would be a really good kind of anchor for our retail team. Instead of just a team that comes and you look at stores and you go to plants, what if you take them to the Number One new research meat conference that’s held just once per year. What we’re trying to do is show them new ideas and new ways to hopefully make money. So you have the sellers and you have the buyers, from a domestic retail perspective, and they use that product showcase to unveil their latest and greatest retail products. This is the place where they typically launch their retail products they are going to have in the upcoming year.

Ralph Loos: The team also attended a meat merchandising demonstration by the Texas Beef Council, as well as Pork 101 and Beef 101 sessions at West Texas A&M University.

Liz Wunderlich: It’s hands on in that we are doing a lot of instruction. So for the pork side we are going to do the difference between well-done and not well-done pork. And we’re going to have them sample the difference between biting into a tenderloin and biting into a sirloin, because the muscle fiber link changes your bite, and so they are going to be doing these blind type tastings. We’ll do age of animals for beef, young animals, old animals, whether it’s been aged or not aged, how much marbling it has and what impact that has, whether it’s been fed just grass or whether it’s been fed grain.

Ralph Loos: For more on this and other trade issues, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Ralph Loos.