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By Alice McFarlane

Beef Demand

More consumers buying ground beef

Apr 8, 2020 | 3:18 PM

Ever changing consumer demand and consumption is challenging the beef sector.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more Canadians are stocking up their deep freezers with ground beef.

Canada Beef President Michael Young said instead of eating at restaurants and fast food establishments, more Canadians are cooking at home. As a result, retail beef demand has increased 50 to 75 per cent.

“Consumers have aggressively stocked up on groceries and supplies for home. Unfortunately, the food service and hospitality sector has been hit the hardest with reports from 50 to 90 per cent decreases in demand depending on the category.”

Young said consumers are buying a lot more ground beef.

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“Obviously, the demand is quite high now and we don’t see that really changing. The reality is ground beef represents an excellent value and can be used in so many ways,” he said. “One of the areas that we’re seeing a lot of traffic on is actual recipes for using ground beef and ground beef products in any recipe. I can see the demand maintaining throughout this crisis and I know that the delivery system is working very hard to meet that demand.”

Offering choices to the consumer will remain a priority. Young said it will be very critical to provide both supply and an assortment of products.

“We have many portion cuts from the carcass that can be used in a variety of ways both from a value cut and a high end. We are working very hard to get the merchandising solutions to the delivery system so that they have options on producing merchandising and offering different cuts to different levels,” he said.

Young said the Canada Beef team is focusing on circulating simple, how to prepare instructions which is very important now,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that are basically cooking at home. They have more time and they have more people around the table. They want to enjoy their food.”

Young said consumers have turned to the internet to track down new recipes as they search for additional cooking information. Canada Beef’s website has seen a significant increase in traffic.

“We’ve seen a 66 per cent increase in total users. That’s over 93,000 and a 73 per cent increase in new users of the website in March compared to the same time last year. Thinkbeef.ca has seen a 450 per cent lift in monthly visits up by 13,000 visits comparing traffic in February to the month of March.

More information and recipes can be found at www.canadabeef.ca and www.thinkbeef.ca.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF