Meat + Poultry - September 2008 - 80

AVA

In order to bring efﬁciency to production and distribution, the pork room features two production lines that can be expanded to four when the
order volume warrants.

Cryovac package aged-beef program
that provides 30 days of shelf life. The
beef side of the business produces patties without using trim in the grind. The
incoming tubes are independently tested by U.S. Dept. of Agriculture certiﬁed
third-party labs as well as by the manufacturer before being accepted.

shrink. In the latter instance, he may
lose sales and loyal customers because
the product is not available when the
customer comes in. In both cases the
retailer loses.
"The Meat Depot's Case Space Optimization program's advantage is to
ﬁll those product voids whenever they
occur, even if the meat cutter has gone

Out-of-stocks and shrink
Out-of-stocks and shrink are the two
sides of the same common problem
retailers increasingly face. Late
in the evening
or on the weekends when the
meat cutter has
left the store for
the day, customers come to the
Lombardi
meat case looking for a particular cut. The operator
has two choices before the meat cutter leaves for the day or weekend: ﬁll
the case with extra packages or leave
some cuts with sparse facings that may
run out. In the ﬁrst scenario, the operator runs the risk of having too many
packages that don't sell and become
80

MEAT&POULTRY

September 2008

"We needed to be
where the future needs
of the operator were
headed. But we need
to go there with a
specialized offering."
home for the day," says Greenberg. "A
stock clerk just needs to identify the
sold-out product, open the appropriate box for a particular cut (the box
holds either six or 12 packages) and
place them in the case. So, you have
a variety assortment in the case without the shrink; this leads to less labor
costs, more sales and better customer
satisfaction. There is also no deviation
I

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in the consistency of the product from
store to store in a chain as you would
have when it the product is cut and
packed at store level."
With a model designed to partner and
an entrepreneurial business philosophy,
the Meat Depot is set up to produce
some of the more specialized needs such
as signature beef and pork products to
maximize case-space revenue.
"Our approach to our customers is
to provide meat-case solutions designed
to ﬁll 'menu variety' for them," says
Girgenti. "We want to consult, manufacture and ship what the customer
wants. One of the major differences
in the model is that it is built and designed with a communication strategy
as an integral part of the overall caseready production needs. The strategy
of our business model is to approach
each customer; recognizing from the
outset that each customer would have
different needs and that meeting the
operator's ﬂexibility needs would be
one of the 'keys' of our unique selling
points of value."
We would like to hear from you - to comment on
this story or to request reprints, contact us by
e-mail at: meatpoultry@sosland.com.

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Meat + Poultry - September 2008

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