A BUTCHER shop has opened in Rockhampton offering only chicken – after the owner realised his other butchery was struggling to sell red meat due to the price.
While it is not a new concept, with chains like Lenard’s successfully expanding each year, siblings Meg and Daniel Kieth took a punt and opened their store together in October.
Meg, who manages the storefront while Daniel works at his other shop in Emu Park, said they thought they would “give it a crack”.
“I worked for JBS in shipping for a few years, and Dan has been a butcher since he was 15,” Meg said.
“Obviously my JBS experience was very different to this experience, going from beef to chicken now.”
She said the decision to sell only chicken was a no brainer for the duo.
“Based on the price of red meat at the moment and the way the trends are going, Dan’s window at Emu Park Meats at the moment is half chicken,” Meg said.
“When that started to happen and we got approached about potentially opening up another shop, there was no question about opening up the shop as 100 per cent chicken.”
Consumer trend experts at the Australian Meat Processor Corporation’s national conference in Sydney in late November said Australians remained big meat eaters.
Per capita consumption in Australia now exceeded per capita consumption in the United States, they said.
But the big trend, according to Wendy Umberger, executive director with the Centre for Global Food and Resources at the University of Adelaide, was the shift from beef to poultry.
There was also a trend towards eating less meat - that was happening at a rate of about 3 per cent per year, she said.
Ms Umberger outlined Australian consumer studies conducted in July where a massive 46pc of meat eaters said in the past 12 months they had eaten beef less often, compared to just 9pc eating chicken less often.
Their responses showed that was largely due to price, she said.
“Big butcher shops told us their main issue with beef prices going up was not only were they losing beef consumers but they were also losing the people who would purchase chicken,” Ms Umberger said.
“That was because these people were simply making the shift to buying everything in a supermarket due to convenience.
“We used to think there was substitution going on but butchers are saying they are actually losing customers across the board.”
Indeed, the research indicated 28pc of Australian meat eaters were likely, in next 12 to 24 months, to reduce the amount they consumed.
Meg said most customers have been happy with what the store is offering.
“You get a couple of big burly blokes that come in asking where the beef is, which is fine, that’s fair enough, but I think people are happy, people know that it’s going to be cheaper than beef and we’ve had no problems at all,” she said.
