Canadian Beef producers have maintained a pretty low profile since their prices went through the roof. Now, they’re taking cautious steps to get ‘back in the good books’ with consumers and rest-aurants – with a ‘Best Beef Recipes’ contest…
Help ‘Make Beef Great Again’: A classic pre-COVID, pre-price hike supermarket beef display…
Canadian Beef, the producers’ advocacy group for Canadian beef ranchers, is cautiously crawling out of its cocoon, testing the water to see if it’s time stage a come-back….
Like the old days?
Many food producers and brands are getting into the ‘newstalgia’ act this winter. In fact, it’s supposed to be a leading marketing technique all this year.
No wonder the beef producers are harkening back to the good old days, when their products were cheap enough that anyone could consider featuring a beef roast for Sunday Dinner, or hosting a big beef-themed barbecue party. In fact, they’re making it a party…
They’re hedging their bets, partnering with The Restaurant Gateway. “…an online hub dedicated to celebrating Canada’s high-quality beef and the farmers and ranchers who produce it.
According to the official contest news release, “This comprehensive resource features a Where to Eat directory, helping diners discover restaurant chains that serve Canadian beef, along with insights into the restaurant industry’s beneficial impact on local communities. Restaurant Gateway visitors can ex-plore exclusive videos from farmers, ranchers and chefs from across the country, highlighting their dedication to Canadian beef.”
I have no beef (outside of the obvious pun!) with that…
‘Important to buy local’
“It’s more important than ever to support local,” says Kelly Hyde, Director of the Canadian Beef In-formation Restaurant Gateway. “The Best Canadian Beef Dishes Contest allows Canadians an oppor-tunity to champion their most-loved beef dishes on the Restaurant Gateway for others to discover and enjoy while serving as a reminder of the vital role that restaurants play in our communities.”
What they’re doing…
The contest ‘offers Canadians an opportunity to nominate their most-loved beef dishes at local res-taurants’, with a chance for someone in each region to win $200 for participating as nominators. The contest will also crown a restaurant winner from each province, with each provincial champion ad-vancing to the national finale. Provincial winners will receive a prize pack valued at $1,000, and the national winner will take home a grand prize valued at $5,000.
My take
One point that makes the new recipe contest different from all previous ones I’ve ever seen is… The Producers want the best beef recipes you’ve ever enjoyed from a restaurant – not your own!
On one hand, I agree with Hyde: If you’re going to splurge on a nice piece of beef, why not have it prepared by pros, maybe in some exotic way you would never attempt at home? Rather than risk investing your hard-earned bucks in anything less than perfection?
But there’s as much left subtly implied in this whole deal as is explicitly expressed. I think it’s a little cynical to equate Buying Beef (‘at any price’) with patriotism. And Buying Local, not to mention re-minding consumers of, “the vital role that restaurants play in our communities,” playing on our sense of community pride.
‘Playing the long game’
What I think they’re doing is ‘playing the long game’ – opening a front in a longer effort to build a new consumer awareness of Beef. This includes shifting our whole concept of eating and buying beef from something take home and cook there, to thinking of it as something special. Something worth paying a premium price for, and featuring as part of special milestone-marking events.
In so doing, they’re admitting there’s little hope of ever bringing the price of beef back down to pre-price-hike levels again. And they’re trying to get us to adopt a new ‘value-added’ identity for their product. One under which we’ll eventually look at Beef the way some of us have long looked at sea-food. A concept under which the price of the food is blurred with how much we value the prestige, décor and service of a fancy restaurant.
And let’s face it… The idea of co-promoting Beef in partnership with restaurants is great for all in-volved on the sellers’ side. If consumers are not buying ‘beef to take home’ (see Classic Beef Stroganoff, top of page) as much as we used to, why not help the restaurants – whose sales are also suffering badly – to sell more? Which, in turn, helps the producers sell more, at prevailing prices.
Flashback…
Have I not been saying, for almost a decade, that the rising cost of animal protein – and Beef in particular – was going to result not in beef production going extinct, but instead going ’boutique’?
We’ll see where this new tack takes the Beef industry as the next few years unfold…
~ Maggie J.