The pandemic has created a challenging year for every aspect of ag, but the Certified Angus Beef brand and its partners still sold more than a billion pounds of beef across 51 countries.
There were some other bright spots as well.
According to the president of Certified Angus Beef LLC., John Stika, “It looks like retail is going to clearly have a record year when it’s all said and done, and it’s up more than 12 percent. What’s been interesting is as you look at food service, it’s going to end the year down about 22-24 percent. All things considered, but I think it’s important that we throw a sense of reality on top of that as well, and know where we’re at, starting into the next fiscal year with our food service business still struggling at a plateau where we’re about 30 percent back of where we were at a year ago.”
The brand continues to evolve, focusing on flexibility to help its partners across the beef supply chain.
“As we look at COVID, it hasn’t necessarily changed the consumer’s demand for quality, by any means. It just changed dramatically where and how they were looking to access it,” Stika states. “As a cattleman, I would just stress that there’s not a need to reshape the direction we’re going with regards to what we’re providing to customers.”
A record 35.9 percent, or 5.54 million head, of all Angus-influenced cattle met the brand’s ten quality specifications at licensed packers. More supply means more ways to licensed processors, distributors, restaurants, and retailers to deliver.
“As a not-for-profit organization, the reason we talk about growth in tonnage is because it’s easy to measure, but ultimately, what we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to grow the equity and value of the brand to all of our partners,” he adds. “It still feels relatively good when you look around and you can see the way that our licensees have latched on to this brand during a period of time of such uncertainty, as maybe something that they know can help them through it.”
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