Supermarket Perimeter - June 2019 - 40

Meat & Poultry

BY ANDY NELSON

Make room for healthier options in your meat case
"It's showing a wider audience of consumers just how easy and
delicious turkey is for breakfast," she says. "The most common thing we
hear from turkey consumers is that they want all-natural offerings that
taste great to support their healthy lifestyle."
Conﬁrming that sentiment, a 2017 national consumer survey found
that among all consumers who purchase turkey, more than one-third
said all-natural is important to them when deciding what to buy.
"Butterball works to provide turkey consumers with delicious tasting
options that also meet the USDA's requirements for 'natural products,'"
Welch says. "Consumers are also very interested to know that animals
are treated humanely."
For that reason, Butterball relies on the American Humane Society for
third-party auditing and certiﬁcation. Products even have the American
Humane Certiﬁed seal on the fronts of their packages.
Also on the fronts of many Butterball turkey sausage products are
nutrition labels, a response to a greater demand for transparency.
"It's a necessity for food companies to be transparent to customers,"
Welch says. "We want to clearly communicate the most important
product beneﬁts right from the gate."
As important as all-natural, transparency and other health and
ethical concerns are, taste still reigns supreme when it comes to turkey
sausage, Welch says.
"The most important must-have is a great-tasting product. At the end
of the day, our sausage offers consumers what they want - a healthy
protein with truly superior taste."

It's a necessity for food companies to
be transparent to customers. We want to
clearly communicate the most important
product beneﬁts right from the gate."
Rebecca Welch, Butterball
40 - JUNE 2019

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BUTTERBALL

TURKEY SPECIALIST BUTTERBALL offers a variety of turkey sausage
options for the grocery perimeter meat department, says Rebecca
Welch, senior brand manager.
In the meat case, the company's fresh Italian sausages - available
in both hot and sweet varieties - are big sellers, she says. Butterball's
packaged goods portfolio, meanwhile, includes hardwood smoked,
polska kielbasa and All Natural Uncured Smoked Turkey Sausage.
The company rounds out its sausage offerings with a line of breakfast
sausages including all natural fully cooked patties and links and fresh
and frozen raw breakfast sausage rolls.
In 2018, Butterball revamped the formulations of many of its sausage
and other products to include more all-natural ingredient labels, minimal processing and updated packaging, Welch says.
"In addition to our fresh sausage, which has always been an all-natural
option, we now offer an all-natural smoked sausage and fully-cooked
breakfast sausages, which feature 60% less fat than pork sausage," she says.
New this year, Butterball has changed the formulation of its fresh
sausage to move to a plant-based casing rather than a pork casing in
response to consumer requests for a pork-free sausage option. And the
company isn't done innovating in the category - Welch says to expect
additional new turkey sausage products before the end of the year.
Turkey breakfast sausage is one of Butterball's fastest-growing
categories, Welch says. The success is due in large part to the
proliferation of healthy turkey breakfast sandwich menu options from
places like Starbucks.

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Supermarket Perimeter - June 2019

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