Premium should not be ignored despite trade down within red meat in UK

Nearly three in five consumers whose household finances have worsened claim they are going to spend less on eating out (AHDB/YouGov Tracker, May 23). This offers the opportunity within retail for trade up of certain treaty meal occasions, specifically consumers replicating out-of-home (OOH) meals in-home and special events such as parties and BBQs. When treating OOH, we know consumers favour meat-based dishes such as lamb, steaks and burgers, and what is evident in recent demand data is that some of these areas are actually seeing some positive trade up within retail, bucking the overall grocery and total MFP trend. Within beef, steaks overall are seeing volume declines of -7.3%, driven by all steak cuts. However, when delving deeper into the data we can see that among the cheapest steak cut, rump (average price of £15.40 per kg versus total steaks at £16.37 per kg), the premium tier has actually grown by 0.2%, stealing 0.5% share of the rump category. Looking at how people are ...