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Cattlemen Remain Committed to Quality

Certified Angus Beef closes the 2022 fiscal year on a high note.  

by Lindsay Graber Runft

October 18, 2022

With ranchers continuing to produce high-quality beef at notable marks and consumer demand staying strong, Certified Angus Beef closed its books on the second-highest sales year of record. 

The brand’s success is a reflection of an entire community pointed toward providing premium beef, starting with steady supply. 

“Angus cattlemen and women remain committed to meeting the demand for the best-tasting and best-sourced beef,” says John Stika, president of Certified Angus Beef. “Our diverse, global and growing customer base recognizes the brand’s commitment to quality from the ranch to the plate.” 

Certified Angus Beef sold 1.234 billion pounds in 54 countries during the 2022 fiscal year. Up 1.6% percent or 19 million pounds from fiscal 2021, the brand celebrates its seventh year reaching more than a billion pounds sold and set a new record sales month with 113.8 million pounds sold in March 2022.   

Demand Supported by Supply 

The second-largest supply in the brand’s history, 5.78 million carcasses achieved the brand’s 10 beef quality specifications. The year also marked a record 16.38 million Angus-influenced cattle evaluated for the brand, a 1.7% increase from the previous year.  

Cattlemen’s commitment to increasing high-quality beef supply continues to be rewarded through grid premiums.   

As reported in March, premiums paid by packers to producers for brand-qualifying cattle totaled $182 million annually or $3.5 million per week.   

“While we celebrate the success of the 2022 fiscal year, we are looking ahead to 2023 with a sense of optimism—driven by strong demand for the brand and a sense of realism. We know the challenges facing producers, and ultimately the cattle supply, over the next few years,” Stika says. “Moving forward, we will remain focused on what is within our control – growing demand and supporting ranchers as they push forward in targeting the brand to supply customers the high-quality beef they desire.”  

Beef Sales Stay Strong 

Consumer spending patterns encouraged a more typical distribution of beef sales for foodservice, retail and international businesses this year.   

Restaurant dining elevated foodservice to the brand’s second-best year at 405 million pounds, mirroring the previous year’s double-digit gain.   

Following two consecutive years with more than 600 million pounds, grocery store meat departments across the U.S. sold 548.5 million pounds of the Certified Angus Beef ® brand in fiscal 2022.  

While U.S. retail dipped slightly, beef sales by global partners grew.   

Partners outside of the U.S. increased sales to 178.5 million pounds for the year, with three of the top five markets—Canada, Mexico and Taiwan—growing by more than 24%. To complement international growth in these markets, the Middle East, Central America, Dominican Republic and Qatar each experienced their best year with the brand.  

Limits on labor in restaurants and grocery stores, coupled with shoppers seeking prepared and ready-to-cook items, led value-added products to a new annual record. The 40.7 million pounds sold marked a 6.3% increase, with gains in 15 of 23 product categories—especially fully cooked briskets, shaved steak and beef bacon.   

These same partners identified opportunities for ground beef, a versatile and less costly item for menus and retail shoppers. Ground beef sales reached a record 261.7 million pounds, 10.7% above 2021.  

Certified Angus Beef ® Natural also grew by 7% year over year to 4.7 million pounds.    

“The success of the last 44 years hasn’t come by luck or chance for this brand,” says Stika. “It’s been achieved through ranchers’ determination to produce a high-quality product, combined with our partners’ hard work and intentionality to continue to plan, prepare and position themselves and our consumers to be successful.”   

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More choices, less Choice beef

Trying to please every beef customer takes more of the best

 

by Laura Nelson

A wider price gap between Select grade boxed beef and Choice or better—the Choice/Select spread—always comes back to supply and demand. Consumers vote with their dollars, and recent shifts in merchandising put much more high-quality beef on the ballot, just as those supplies began to fall off.

Asked to comment on implications, JBS USA officers noted supplies of Choice beef had been on the rise, at prices not much above Select. That helped entice marketers to offer better beef to millions more shoppers by this fall, and now the wider price spread signals producers to boost supply.

“The retail channel in particular is making more impact than it has in the past on the spread,” says Tyler Brown, JBS premium program manager. Historically, that’s driven by foodservice, he adds, but retailers today want to offer more quality and consistency. “They’re looking at higher grading programs to do that.”

As looking gave way to buying more of the restaurant-quality beef, cattlemen took greater care to optimize marbling. In November and December, high-quality middle meats are often scarce due to holiday buys, but Al Byers, JBS senior vice president of sales, says this fall could see one of the tightest supply situations ever, especially for premium Choice programs.

“The signal being sent to us by the market and the spread is that we need more,” Byers says. “Part of that signal reflects the changing nature of the consumer.”

Indeed, as the flagging economy met higher overall beef prices, consumers sent their own signal to the retail and foodservice sectors. They wanted more value for their dollars. Brown says JBS customers are responding.

“If they’re going to sell beef, they’ve got to deliver a consistent product to their customers,” he says. “That’s more important now than ever due to pricing.” 

Opportunities for retailers to meet the demand continue to grow, apace with opportunities for cattlemen to respond in kind.

“When you deliver something they’re looking for with exceptional value, which is defined in the price paid for quality, you’ll usually get rewarded for it,” Brown says.

The Choice/Select spread is a measure of that, and the basis of grid marketing. After jumping to near-term highs above $20 per hundredweight this fall, the packers say that spread could stabilize somewhere between there and $12.

“Dollars drive everything in this industry,” Brown says. “I think the spread speaks for itself and the prevalence of black cattle and Angus-influenced genetics continuing to increase.”

Byers compares the evolving meat case to the variety consumers already expect in the wine aisle.

“You’ve got a bottle of $6 wine and then a $60 bottle of wine,” he says. “You’ve got them all on the shelf, knowing there’s that spread.”

Similarly, many retailers that used to carry only Select beef have upgraded part of the meat case to a higher quality product, but they maintain variety with more choices in the case.

“Both retailers and packers are beginning to understand that marketing is not an average of where a particular consumer walks in,” Byers says. “They have to provide a beef eating solution that meets the unique social demographics of each consumer who walks in.”

That caters to the universal demand for satisfaction, whether it’s in a fine dining restaurant or in the comfort of home.

“If we can deliver on those attributes every time, that’s a win for everyone, from the cow-calf guy all the way to the retailer and foodservice operator,” Brown says.

As supplies of premium Choice beef tighten up through the holiday season, Byers says packers will be challenged to meet demand.

“Certainly, we’re encouraging anybody from the feedlot to the stocker and rancher to keep sending us high-quality cattle,” he says. “We’ll find a home for it.”

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It’s time to pay attention

As the quality spread widens, prepared cattlemen profit

 

by Laura Nelson

Boxed beef climbed 15% in value to start the year, but with the passing of summer into fall value trends began a dramatic differentiation. “At these prices, buyers wanted better quality,” said Larry Corah, vice president of Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB).

The spread between USDA Choice beef and lower quality Select, moderate since 2008, shot up $15 per hundredweight in a matter of weeks. It was partly attributed to a major retailer switching to higher quality beef, but others had set the stage.

“Two of the largest retailers in the United States had added a premium-Choice program to their marketing plans in the past couple of years,” Corah noted. They were winning more satisfied customers, and the competition was quietly building demand at the high end.

The latest retail shift signaled a sudden need for more Choice and better beef, he said, but more importantly an excess of the low-Select product formerly in those cases.

“Combine the retail factors with an improving middle-meat market in our upscale, fine dining restaurants and a whole new demand profile for high-quality beef has been created,” Corah explained.

What does it mean at the feedlot and ranch? More money for informed marketers.

“There’s no reason not to sell high-quality cattle on a grid,” said Paul Dykstra, beef cattle specialist for the Certified Angus Beef ® brand, commenting on prices for CAB Prime. “When you’re looking at nearly $250 per head in premiums, that makes a guy pay attention.”

Those figures are based on mid-October calculations of an 850-pound (lb.) carcass, sold on a popular Nebraska grid (Table 1). The difference is much larger when compared to Select, which brought $187-per-head less than CAB on the grid. The premiums for quality represent a significant jump from recent annual averages.

Before anybody tallies potential premiums, Dykstra warned that it’s important to understand how area-weighted averages work (Table 2).

“Many people believe they’ll get the full Choice/Select spread over and above the carcass price for Choice,” he said. “Not true. It all depends on the plant location and grid structure.”

If a plant averages 65% Choice, the packer will likely pay 35% of that Choice/Select spread on every Choice carcass. Southern plants with historically lower grading may pay up to 50% of the spread, Dykstra noted.

Even in Nebraska, where quality competition is fierce, there’s plenty of reward for those who have focused on carcass quality.

“Select is always a discount by the full Choice/Select spread below the base, and Choice is that area-average premium over the base,” Dykstra said. “The spread covers the up- and the down-direction from the base.”

Regardless of whether you think about quality, it affects your price, he added: “Cattle with a track record for quality are the ones now bringing higher bids as calves and feeders.”

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New demand index points to profit potential

 

by Miranda Reiman

The leading Angus brand has increased the number of pounds sold every year since 2005, but does that really mean demand for the product is soaring?
Economists said there was not enough information to tell, so Kansas State University’s Ted Schroeder and Master’s student Lance Zimmerman analyzed additional data and found that the answer is, “Yes.”
The methodology and results are explained in their research paper, “Defining and Quantifying Certified Angus Beef ® Brand Consumer Demand.”

“The demand for CAB has outpaced Choice product since 2002,” the paper says. “Demand for CAB increased 56% over the eight years and Choice demand increased 20%.” In both cases, the biggest increase was from 2009 to 2010 (see Figure 1).

“Much of the 2010 demand growth had to do with export market opportunity,” Schroeder says, but also a return of restaurant visitors in 2010.

“We were a victim on the foodservice side and beneficiary on the retail side,” says Mark Polzer, CAB vice president of business development. In 2009, CAB’s foodservice business was down almost 5.5% and retail was up 9%, but 2010 brought good news in both sectors: foodservice increased 10% and retail by 20%.

Ted Schroeder

CAB sales increased by more than 100 million pounds compared to 2009, and the brand’s cutout value increased more than $5 per hundredweight in deflated U.S. dollars. The paper notes, “There was not another year in the model where both per-capita consumption and real cutout prices increased relative to the previous year.”

Demand for Choice beef and demand for CAB products are closely related, but certainly not identical.

“The commodity product seemed to be more dramatically affected by negative macroeconomic factors, such as trade barriers and overall economic health,” the research states. “It is also worth noting that demand for Choice product appears slower to rebound during times of recovery than CAB demand.”

The index showed that strong international sales years (2003 and 2010) were also the two highest years for wholesale brand demand. International increases remains strong, on track to break the 2003 record this year as it claims more than 10% of the brand’s total sales.

“Future dramatic growth will depend more and more on our international side,” Polzer says. “But there are so many variables outside of the cattle industry that affect international demand.”

 

Regardless of where it’s sold, these increasing numbers bode well for producers. It can be hard to make a direct connection between farm-level prices and retail beef price stickers, but earlier research from John Marsh, Montana State University economist, looked at that.

He studied total U.S. beef demand from 1976 to 1999 and noted a 66% decline. That translated to a 40% reduction in fed cattle prices, and feeder-calf prices dropped 48% during that period.

The recent K-State research says, “Improving demand at the consumer and wholesale level can have an equally dramatic, positive influence on farm-level prices and production, and these effects can be illustrated by the success of CAB and the Angus breed.”

That’s backed by numbers: CAB premiums in the $5 per hundredweight (cwt.) range, video sale Angus breed premiums of $6.55 and 63% Angus-influence in the 2010 U.S. steer and heifer harvest mix.

“To fulfill that need, premiums for that product will flow back down from the processor to the packers, back to the feedlot and ultimately to the cow-calf producer who is influencing those genetic selections,” Schroeder says.

Although not 100% of the premiums are passed through the system, a portion is still significant.

“If feeders see that they can get $4 or $5 per hundredweight (cwt.) premiums from CAB-qualifying carcasses, they’ll very quickly bid that back into their purchases for calves that they think will have a high likelihood of attaining that,” Schroeder says.

“Beef demand woes historically have surrounded quality issues with beef products,” Schroeder says, recalling the 1980s and ’90s. “We needed to start offering customers a more predictable eating experience or we were going to see continually declining demand.

“Higher quality and branded products do that or they don’t last,” he says. “If they don’t deliver consistently they’re out of the game.”
To learn more, visit www.CABpartners.com.

Steak prices show strength of CAB brand vs. Choice

April 15, 2011

As cash cattle prices shot up to record highs in March and the futures markets showed incredible strength, consumers were asked to pay record prices for beef. Shaking off worries about the economy, they responded positively.

Ground beef and cuts from the chuck and round led the increase, but middle-meat steaks moved higher, too. Faced with record high prices for the most expensive cuts, more consumers opted to ensure the eating experience by turning to the Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand.

“As middle meat prices rose, the CAB/Choice spreads widened,” said industry analyst Julian Leopold, of Leopold Foods. He has written the monthly “CAB Market Watch” column for licensees since January 2010, making note of relative prices for USDA Choice and CAB cuts.

Comparing year to year, CAB rib eyes rose 3.2%, from $5.58 per pound (/lb.) in March 2010 to $5.76 this March, while the Choice rib eye managed only a 2-cent increase. That amounted to a 40% increase in the CAB/Choice ribeye spread to $.56/lb., Leopold noted

He saw a similar pattern in the price relationships for CAB vs. Choice short loins and tenderloins. “The 16.1% increase in CAB tender prices, at $8.95 vs. $7.71 in March 2010, beat the 15.2% increase in Choice tenders,” Leopold said. “More importantly, the 52-cent CAB/Choice spread for tenderloins was even wider at 33.3%.”

The Iowa-based consultant made news in 2009 with an analysis of the relative wholesale prices for 15 CAB vs. Choice beef cuts, showing demand for CAB outstripped that for Choice for a five-year period that included the recession.

What do the spring 2011 prices mean? “Even in this higher-price environment—with record high cutout prices, abundant grading and weekly increases in beef production—it looks like we’re seeing improved high-end beef demand,” Leopold said. “Can this continue with high-priced gasoline, several global economic uncertainties and widespread unrest in the Middle East? Only time will tell.”

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Ready for the world?

Beef producers must set the stage for Asian beef trade boom

by Laura Nelson

Producers can’t wait for profit to knock on the door; they must seek it out, and according to one economist, that means now.

“It’s time,” Dan Basse says. “It’s time that the beef producer think globally and sell his very-high-quality product overseas.” The president of AgResource Company, Chicago, says failing to act in the near term will literally cost a fortune.

“Producers need to be acutely aware of the export opportunities and the real economic might those carry,” he says, projecting an 8% boost in trade volume would raise cattle prices by $9 to $13 per hundredweight (cwt.).

Basse says beef consumption in the U.S. is at its lowest level in 12 years, but demand around the world is increasing with population and wealth, from India to China. Until 1998, the average Chinese person made less than $1,000 a year. Today, it’s $3,900 and rising.

“When you go from dirt poor to a little better than just poor, you want more diet diversity,” notes Alex Avery, director of research at the Hudson Institute. “That means grain diversity, fried foods, then meat, milk and eggs. Dietary improvement is a consistent relationship with rising affluence.”

The two trade analysts were speakers at the November Feeding Quality Forums, co-sponsored by Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB), Pfizer Animal Health, Land O’ Lakes Purina Feed LLC and Feedlot magazine at Garden City, Kan., and South Sioux City, Neb.

CAB international director Geof Bednar shares that optimism while noting several obstacles. “Global trade is probably the biggest opportunity for the beef industry,” he says. “But the really difficult part of that equation is gaining the access we need to get into those markets.”

Although China’s borders are currently closed to U.S. meat, Bednar says it’s an important border for producers and beef marketers to watch along with other Asian trade doors.

“As soon as China opens up, it will be a very significant market for the beef industry and for CAB,” he says.

The world’s largest branded beef company has found its way into other Asian markets. South Korean sales set a record in 2009 at 6 million pounds, and although sales to Japan are slowly rebounding from the 2003 trade disruptions, CAB didn’t waste time finding other markets to fill the gaps. By expanding efforts in Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong, the brand has reached countries that are open and hungry for high-quality beef.

“Our brand is able to withstand more turmoil from an economic standpoint verses commodity beef,” Bednar says. “That’s because of the relationships we build through licensing and the way we go to the market, let alone the quality level.”

CAB-licensed distributors sell product in more than 60 countries, through a growing network of licensed partners in foodservice and retail. New licensee Wilson International is a leading meat distributor in Hong Kong, which, although part of China for more than a decade, has remained a free trade zone.

“Hong Kong has been gaining considerable momentum in our markets,” Bednar says. “But a key fact there is that Wilson International also has five business units in five major other Chinese cities. So that’s positioning us well, ready if China’s markets ever open up, too.”

Meat demand in Hong Kong has risen more quickly than in other Chinese districts, Avery says.

“Hong Kong is very wealthy in comparison to the whole of China,” he points out. “Compared to their mainland contemporaries, the average Hong Kong person eats twice as much pork, four times as much poultry and four times as much beef.”

Demand is about more than numbers, of course.

“As we think about global marketing, we also have to start thinking about the customers and their position in being from a country that is not a ‘net food producer.’ That makes them much more interested in where food comes,” Bednar says.

Asian consumers in particular are more interested in a “story” behind their food, something that Bednar says the Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand provides. “Japan and Korea imagine the U.S. beef industry as a factory industry. They just can’t image the rancher back in Iowa or wherever it might be,” he says. “To get the most out of these markets, we have to tell our production story. That’s an advantage we have over commodity.”

Basse says it will take a focus on opening the doors, followed by intense consumer marketing campaigns to fully realize the economic potential of international trade.

“We must have people thinking globally and talking about the advantages we have relative to other countries that are trying to sell beef,” he says. “We have to tell the world’s consumers about the safety and quality of U.S. beef.”

Consumers want high-quality, branded beef

University survey reveals perceptions of meat and entire industry

 

by Miranda Reiman

Beef reigns supreme in consumers’ protein choices, according to research released earlier this year from West Texas A&M University. Nearly half of consumers surveyed put beef as their No. 1 protein choice, and 97% indicated they ate beef between one and 12 times each week.

The study, “Consumers’ perceptions and preferences of meat and the meat industry,” was the result of doctoral research conducted by Lindsay Chichester, Canyon, Texas. She looked at the whole range of popular opinion on meat.

“We were trying to gauge consumer preferences, what their concerns were, and what they’re not concerned with,” Chichester says. “I think as an industry that’s where we need to go – our consumers are obviously the ones who support us and keep us in business.”

Digging into details, 65% of consumers preferred some type of branded beef. Among them, the largest breakout group, 28%, preferred their steaks branded as Angus beef. Chichester’s academic advisor, animal scientist Ty Lawrence, says that proves the power of marketing. “A lot of that is obviously going to tie back to the recognition of a brand like Certified Angus Beef,” he says.

The term “Angus” outweighed any other branding term, including Prime, tender, organic and grass-fed in consumers’ perception, but branding with words is not enough. Consumers are looking for quality behind those terms, Lawrence points out.

“The data also indicated customers say they want a higher quality cut of meat,” Lawrence says. When asked to visually identify the desirable amount of marbling in a steak, 49% selected Modest or Moderate marbling – the same level required for Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand acceptance.

“CAB’s marbling criteria overall was the largest sector of what consumers indicated they wanted – average Choice or better,” Chichester says. Another 20% of the population indicated a desire for Slightly Abundant or Moderately Abundant marbling, fitting into the Prime and CAB Prime category.

These results outline a clear challenge to cattle producers, Lawrence says. “Twenty percent preferred Prime-level marbling, while the beef population is at 2.5% Prime, maybe 3% on a good day. So we’re 17% short of the Prime population our consumers say they want.” With nearly 70% of the population indicating they preferred upper Choice or higher, he says, “It’s phenomenal what consumers say they would prefer in comparison to what we actually have to offer them.”

Most consumers, 83%, make those purchases at a supermarket, where competition rules the meat case. They are most concerned with price, color of the meat, the amount of edible product and marbling. “So we’re still looking at price, color, yield and quality,” Lawrence says. “The customers want their best combination of quality and cutability at a price they deem reasonable – and that’s different for everybody.”

Results did indicate 56% of consumers were willing to pay a premium for all-natural products like CAB brand Natural. However, it also indicated consumers were unsure of the true meaning behind a “natural” label, Chichester pointed out. “Producers should know they have a market for natural products,” she says. But it comes with a need for producers to better define and educate consumers about what those labels mean, Lawrence says.

The survey also pointed out a need to correct misperceptions. One-third of consumers thought eating meat from animals treated with antibiotics would make them “resistant to antibiotics.” Another 57% said they were concerned that animal mistreatment is widespread in the industry.

“We have some education to do,” Lawrence says. “And we have a long way to go in showing our consumer base that animal husbandry is alive and well in production.”

Demand for CAB outstrips Choice

By Steve Suther

When times are lean, sales of luxury items are typically the first to fall off. However, when it comes to beef, it appears that consumer demand for the higher quality and pricier Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand held up better than that for USDA Choice or lower grade beef.

What has been called an “economic collapse” in fall 2008 led many observers to speculate that the demand for premium brands would give way to lower-quality alternatives. Industry analysts Julian Leopold and Daniel Bluntzer, of Leopold Foods and Frontier Risk Management, respectively, dug deeper. They set out to explore the short- and long-term value and demand dynamics of the CAB brand versus Choice beef that would quantify the branding value of CAB.

To gather information, the two looked at pricing and volume data based on sales of the 15 highest-volume CAB cuts, not including ground chuck and round, and accounting for nearly 75% of total brand sales. The USDA “National Weekly Boxed Beef Report” provided data on Choice, while CAB pricing came from the Urner-Barry Yellow Sheet and volume from brand records.

Results were strongly supportive of premium brand value in this case. Overall, they showed that in four years (2005 to 2008), demand for the CAB brand brought in $367 million dollars more at the wholesale level than it would have if sold as Choice product.

Expressed as a percentage, the combination of CAB price and volume showed a 26.9% advantage over Choice grade beef in those four years. Conventional wisdom would suggest that could not hold up after the economic recession hit, but that would be wrong.

In fact, the CAB advantage over Choice more than doubled, to 56.1% when the sales and pricing data include the first half of 2009 vs. 2005, on a 22.4% increase in volume.

“The findings clearly show that CAB pricing, volume and revenues held up far better during tough economic times, compared to USDA Choice,” Leopold said. Granted, CAB pricing declined 10.3% for the first half of ’09 versus a year earlier, but Choice pricing fell harder, by 12.3%. Moreover, CAB sales volume rose 4.6% in that time period, on top of a 4.5% increase the previous year.

Even with lower prices, the market placed an extra $56.7 million value on these 15 representative CAB products, compared to their value if sold as generic Choice, a 21.1% increase from the same period a year earlier. “With overall revenues falling in the beef industry, this is precisely what we would hope to see in an established premium brand,” he said.

While many observers from academic to producers tend to worry about a narrower Choice/Select spread, Leopold said that misses the point by not including volume. “During a time of sluggish beef demand, total revenues for Choice beef still managed to increase 5.6% from 2005 to ’09 – but CAB licensees have been able to garner 8.9% more by selling as a premium brand,” he explained.

“It is fair to say that the consumer continued to support the CAB brand during the recession, paying more for it, perhaps as a reward for a special meal at home,” Leopold concluded.        

Note: Additional charts and information available at www.cabcattle.com/about/research/

Educating the next generation

Culinary competition teaches young chefs about beef production, value cuts, consumer demand

 

by Laura Nelson

A lot of folks in the beef industry worry about where the next generation of ranchers will come from. But cattlemen with real foresight wonder about tomorrow’s consumers.

Certified Angus Beef LLC recently partnered with its licensed distributor, Performance Food Group, at the Culinary Institute of Virginia (CIV). Their joint mission: to educate the next generation of chefs on preparing high-quality beef dishes that will capture future consumer demand.

The inaugural CIV Culinary Scholarship Competition challenged young chefs to develop new menu items featuring non-traditional Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand cuts. With that came an education on the utilization of the flank, flat iron, teres major and center cut sirloin (baseball cut) steaks.

Andrew Mosquera was on the winning culinary team. The Philippines native will graduate this fall from the culinary school and says he hopes to someday own his own restaurant. The competition opened his eyes to more variety in his protein selection for entrees.

“I learned about all the cuts of meat that aren’t being used enough,” he says. “I liked working with the teres major – I had never heard of that cut before, but now I’ve started using it. It’s almost the same as the tenderloin, but cheaper, which is really cool.”

Mosquera and his partner, Gary Woolard Jr., focused on the teres major in their winning Steak Medallion dish. The pair also prepared Steak Kabobs featuring CAB brand center-cut sirloin. According to CIV Director of Student Services Andy Gladstein, students who participated gained a greater understanding of beef cuts and value products.

“Being asked to use some non-traditional cuts certainly forced them to think in different ways,” Gladstein says. “They really had to develop their menus and put time into developing recipes after studying those cuts of beef they were less familiar with.”

 

Mosquera says he was surprised by the product’s performance after preparing his dish. “We didn’t even have to season our beef,” he says. “We didn’t use anything, and it still tasted great. That was something that surprised me after working with the CAB product.”

In addition to creating dishes, designing a menu and preparing product, students were evaluated on their knowledge of the CAB brand and recognition of beef products. Participants identified eight cuts of beef and determined if they were the CAB brand or USDA select.

“The students learned a lot,” Gladstein says. “You hear about different types of beef, but at the end of the day, it comes down to knowing what the difference is to the consumer. They saw, ‘Wow, that’s the difference between Select and a product like CAB!’ And through all the studying I’ve done, I know what result that’s going to have for the customer.”

Mosquera and Woolard were each awarded a $1,000 scholarship for winning. The second-place students won $500 each and third place $250. Perhaps more importantly, Mosquera says he learned more about creating high-quality products that meet consumer demand. With his goals set on restaurant ownership, he hopes to provide future customers with that experience.

“This makes me want to get good, quality products like Certified Angus Beef – I think that’s really good stuff,” he says.

Give consumers what they want

 

by Jackie Eager

When you walk into a grocery store, you’re surrounded by choices of several branded beef lines. That’s a relatively new development, promising better beef, and it’s most apparent in just the past 10 years.

Beef cattle specialist Gary Fike, with Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB), is excited about the opportunities beef branding brings to the ranch. He shared that with cow-calf producers at the Oklahoma State University Master Cattleman Summit in Stillwater, Okla., last month.

“Consumers have gone from a choice of just a commodity program offering retail cuts to a range of branded beef products that offer a more consistent, high-quality alternative,” he said.

The good news for consumers is also a rewarding prospect for producers.

“There is a great opportunity for producers to get into these branded programs,” Fike said. “Most of them offer some type of premium, whether that’s for breed influence, high quality, lean yield, natural, organic or a combination thereof.”

Producers who target the 10 science-based specifications required to hit the CAB brand target can share in the market premiums that add $500 million to the cattle business each year, he said. Even if the economy suffers, cattle producers can take advantage of a stable, premium market.

“Targeting a specific market will improve producer income, and it should also give them pride, knowing when they go to the store their cattle are supplying that brand,” Fike said.

The first step for producers moving toward a branded program is to look at their herd genetics and target those to a program, he said. Next, look at how the cattle are managed and where those practices will fit within a brand. With these adjustments, a producer can market more value-added cattle to receive premiums.

“Producers who can target the genetics and production practices of branded beef can get the premiums in the marketplace,” Fike said.

There is room for growth in the branded beef market, he said, as long as consumers demand consistent, high-quality satisfaction from their beef products.

“Targeting a specific market will improve producer income, and it should also give them pride, knowing when they go to the store their cattle are supplying that brand,” Fike said.

The first step for producers moving toward a branded program is to look at their herd genetics and target those to a program, he said. Next, look at how the cattle are managed and where those practices will fit within a brand. With these adjustments, a producer can market more value-added cattle to receive premiums.

“Producers who can target the genetics and production practices of branded beef can get the premiums in the marketplace,” Fike said.

There is room for growth in the branded beef market, he said, as long as consumers demand consistent, high-quality satisfaction from their beef products.