After nearly a decade of cutting back on steaks, burgers, and pot roast, the USDA estimates that Americans’ red meat consumption will rise for the first time since 2006..
The trend away from cow corpse seemingly has ended..
Even outside the world of fast food, restaurants are seeing their food costs fall: Beef or steak dishes can cost a restaurant up to half of the menu price for ingredients versus a pasta dish, which may have a food cost of only 18 percent, Forbes reported. Even a decline of one dollar per pound makes a big difference to a restaurant’s tight margins.
But for many farmers, that Americans are eating red meat again doesn’t matter as much as what kind of meat they’re eating. As hog farmers are fond of saying, if a pig were made of pork chops, they’d all be rich—the same goes for cows and ribeyes. When beef prices went up, retailers focused on ground beef—mostly in the form of hamburgers—to keep customers coming in, financial services group Rabobank found.
Especially during a recession, diners gravitate toward the $10 burger over the $30 steak. But steak, with its high margins, is where the money is made in the beef industry. Due to the increased demand for hamburgers, “ground beef prices were up 87.5%, compared to 45% for steak” between March 2010 and March 2015, Quartz found. “You don’t raise animals for ground beef,” Jamie Schweid, executive vice president at burger chain Schweid & Sons, told Quartz. “We want middle meats to be in demand.”
Prices set to follow the increase.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Cow says..
Cow says who?
No.. the dead cow said moo.