00:00Talk to us first about how prices compare to this time last year.
00:04Obviously, you have a very unique seat here.
00:07So what sort of trends are you seeing when it comes to food inflation?
00:11Well, the good news is that we're seeing prices the same or in some cases lower than what they were last year for turkeys for Thanksgiving.
00:19As you mentioned, we've seen retailers coming out with a lot of very strong pricing to help the consumers out there.
00:26And the lead on that is Turkey.
00:27The consumers are telling us they do not plan to compromise on Turkey.
00:31And the retailer is certainly passing on some really attractive feature prices so that consumers will get into their stores and get their holiday basket there.
00:40That's interesting.
00:41I mean, and you think about Turkey being the centerpiece of any Thanksgiving meal.
00:46It makes sense that that's not the item that you would want to compromise on, Jay.
00:50But I know that you've been with Butterball since 2002.
00:53So certainly you've seen plenty of economic cycles.
00:56And I wonder, you know, this resilience and this hesitation to compromise on Turkey specifically, how does this compare to past periods where we have had sticky higher prices?
01:09Well, it actually has been very consistent from a pricing standpoint.
01:13And we see that in the data and talking to consumers.
01:17Eighty-nine percent of the consumers that we talked to this year prior to the holiday plan to celebrate Thanksgiving.
01:22And 84 percent of those plan to have Turkey on the table.
01:25And that's very consistent with what we've seen over the last numbers of years.
01:29So we're fortunate that with this very unique American holiday, folks don't want to deviate much.
01:34They want to kind of stick to the tradition and do what they've done in the past.
01:38And that's certainly good news for the turkey industry and great news for Butterball.
01:41I am curious, Jay, just overall, and not just with the holidays, with regards to turkey consumption, have you seen any changes in consumption habits based on what we've all been talking about, at least on this show, the idea of the rise of GLP-1 drugs, people being more conscious about their weight and other things?
01:59Has there been any sort of shift that you've seen in consumption patterns?
02:02Well, it hasn't shown up in all the data just yet, but we certainly do hear a lot of consumers talking about more of a focus on protein, particularly low-fat protein.
02:12And turkey is a perfect candidate for that.
02:15You know, we have a very good value for the consumer when they're looking for a high-protein source.
02:21There are certain categories that we've seen tremendous growth in, particularly ground turkey.
02:26Our Butterball brand has continued to grow throughout this year, double-digit growth.
02:30So we're seeing consumers really paying attention to those, which is great because that goes into their everyday meal, and not just as we think about turkey often as the holiday food, but it's something they can eat year-round, and it does fit great with that lifestyle.
02:44Have you had any issues with regards to sourcing your birds and rearing them as well with regards to either availability or, more importantly, the cost to raise and get them out the door?
02:54No, we actually have a number of family farmers across the country, over 600, that grow turkeys for us.
03:01We've got a great partnership with those folks.
03:03We provide the turkeys to them, give them the feed to make sure they can grow the animals to our specifications.
03:09It's a great situation for us to work with those farmers to grow those.
03:13So we have a constant supply.
03:14We don't have to go out and look to purchase product from other companies.
03:20It works within our system, so we can plan very, very carefully for it throughout the year.
03:25And if there are any bumps in the road, we can make adjustments throughout the year to make sure that we've got an adequate supply to ensure that the consumer has a product on the table.
03:33Well, Jay, related to that, bring us up to speed on what's going on with bird flu, because certainly we saw a lot of concerns about what that meant for the nation's chicken supply and also the egg supply.
03:43Was that as much of an issue for our nation's turkey flocks as well?
03:49Well, it has impacted turkey, for sure.
03:51We've seen that for the last several years.
03:53We're very, very fortunate that we're not in a short supply standpoint.
03:58We're confident that the consumer is going to find the turkey for the Thanksgiving table, so that's great news.
04:02And we're also very, very positive that the federal government has invested in trying to find a solution to this.
04:11They're looking for prevention and intervention systems.
04:15They've allocated a billion dollars to go to help prevent the spread of this disease.
04:20So we're very positive in our thoughts about finding a solution that ultimately will help eradicate this disease that we've been facing for the last several years.
04:30All right, Jay, enough with the hard-hitting questions here.
04:32I want to get down to brass tacks here.
04:35Do you roast?
04:36Do you fry?
04:37Do you smoke?
04:38Do you grill?
04:38How do you cook your turkey?
04:40Actually, all of the above.
04:41So it's funny you say that.
04:42I always do two.
04:43I always have one that's roasted.
04:45And I actually just ask my kids to put in their vote for what the second one's going to be.
04:49Is it going to be fried, smoked, or grilled?
04:52So you hit on every process that I look at to make a turkey this year.
04:57And the jury's still out.
04:58I'm waiting for all the votes to come in, and we'll decide what we're going to do for that second turkey.
05:03I think my family is frying this year, which really makes me nervous.
05:06It feels like there's a lot of ways where that can go wrong, Jay.
05:09But you touched on this a little bit earlier in the conversation.
05:12And I do wonder how you make turkey extend beyond just Thanksgiving.
05:17Of course, there's ground turkey.
05:18That seems to have its use cases.
05:20But how do you sort of appeal to the average American consumer and make them think of turkey outside of just Thanksgiving?
05:28Well, you might be interested to know that about a third of our business is evolved around the holidays, between Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter.
05:35And the rest of it is year-round.
05:37So one of the things that we're doing is really looking at how we're talking to those consumers.
05:41And we're finding, you know, our consumer base is changing.
05:44The people who are making the buying decisions now are getting younger, as they are with many other categories.
05:49So we're finding new ways to talk to them, to reach them in the places they're getting their information,
05:54and to make sure that as they're now beginning to be the shoppers in the household, that they look at for turkey as a good option.
06:01And great news, as we mentioned earlier, it fits in very, very well with the kind of the diets that folks are looking for these days.
06:09It's a very healthy protein, and it's great for people who are active and looking to get the most out of their food dollar as well,
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