Slow-Cooked Beef and Mushroom Braciole ~ Click here for recipe!
“Mom, what’s for dinner?”
According to my calculations, this is a question that has been asked of me at least 567 times since the pandemic began. That’s assuming three times a day over the course of 27 weeks – a highly conservative estimate.
So as not to simply respond with the obvious answer (BEEF – what else?!), the anticipation of this question has forced me to be more creative and exploratory in my culinary skills to provide some new and different options for my growing boys. There are just so many meatloaf, pot roast, and beef chili meals one can make.
Like many others, I’ve leaned hard into comfort food classics, pulling some delicious ideas from the Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner. website. Some big hits with my family have been a whiskey-molasses shredded beef (we shared that recipe in the last issue of The Progressive Rancher, but you can find it online as well), various iterations of chili, sloppy joes, and a perennial favorite of the Scofield family, good old Tri Tip.
But aside from dinner, I, like many parents at home with children these last several months, have also been blown away by how much eating is being done before the dinner bell rings. In our household, we’ve settled into a solid pattern that goes something like this: breakfast at 7:30, snack at 9:30, pre-lunch at 11, lunch at noon, afternoon snack on a continuous rotation from 1:30 to about 4, pre-dinner around 5:30, dinner at 7.
Turns out, being locked down with two growing boys will do a number on your grocery bill and put quite the dent in your pantry.
So, needless to say, the money we saved over the last several months from not being able to eat out at restaurants as much was more than made up for by our increasing grocery spend. We obviously weren’t the only ones to experience this. But in looking at the data, turns out that many consumers stocking up on groceries were reaching for animal proteins, and predominately beef.
As consumers stocked up their refrigerators and freezers over the last several months, all three major animal proteins saw significant year-over-year growth in retail sales, with beef leading the way. This growth was incredibly high in the early days of the pandemic in March, when beef sales spiked at 73 percent year-over-year. But even as the “stock up” mentality waned a bit, protein sales remained high in August, with beef sales still up 20 percent year-over-year.
Throughout the pandemic, beef has also increased its market share compared to other animal proteins. For the week ending March 1, beef had 53% of the market share, compared with chicken’s 28%, pork’s 13%, and “other” at 6%. Fast forward several months to the week ending August 2, and beef’s market share had increased to 57% compared to chicken at 25%, pork still at 13% and “other” at 5%.
In looking at the dollar sales for meat, starting March 15 through July 12, retail meat dollar sales were up 35.9%, and volume sales increased 22.5% versus the same period last year. This translates into an additional $7.4 billion in meat department sales during the pandemic, which includes an additional $3.3 billion for beef.
And just where to put all that extra meat? Another not-so-surprising result of the stock up mentality has been a run on home appliances, particularly deep freezers, which had surged by 45% this year as of early May. Other home appliances also saw huge increases in sales as consumers stayed home, including electric pasta makers (462%), soda machines (283%), handheld cleaning devices (284%), water filtration machines (152%) and air purifiers (144%).
As we enter the fall months, there doesn’t seem to be an end to this pandemic, and even as life returns to “sort of” a normal pace in many areas, Americans are looking ahead to the fall months and holiday season with some uncertainty.
As we face the coming weeks and months, the Nevada Beef Council and Beef Checkoff will continue providing resources and content for consumers who are still navigating a return to the kitchen and home-cooked meals. This fall, beef-centric comfort food classics and home-cooking ideas will be shared with consumers through a variety of digital advertising and online engagement with consumers. This continues our efforts of meeting needs of consumers today amid this changing landscape – like our United We Steak campaign that took place over the summer and included an offer for Nevada consumers to get a cash-back rebate on beef products through the Ibotta app, which thousands of Nevadans took advantage of in an era of high food prices at the retail level.
As an employee of the Nevada and California Beef Councils, I’ve always been impressed with the vast amount of work done on behalf of this industry – from research on important topics like beef’s nutrition, to partnerships with influencers, to major advertising campaigns reminding consumers that beef still is what’s for dinner. But over the past several months, I’ve used more of those resources as a mom and a consumer than I ever have. Finding inspiration for the next meal is something that has been tremendously easy to do at BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com. Other consumers are also using and seeing the value in these types of resources, which is a benefit to you, the producer who has continued to work so hard to continue supplying beef in these challenging times.
Just like you, our work hasn’t ended these past months. We adapt, we move forward, and we continue representing the beef industry to our consumers in a variety of ways. And just like you, we’re looking forward to the day when we can do so in easier circumstances.
As I typed these last words, the blond head of my youngest son peeped into the home office with a burning question. You guessed it – “mom, what’s for dinner?”
By Jill Scofield | Director of Producer Relations, California & Nevada Beef Council