The Retail Academy: The Meat Department

We’re back to our perishable products sections for this edition of the Retail Academy. Alongside the Produce Department, the other heavyweight and significant department in the total sales of our stores is undoubtedly the meat department.

What distinguishes our Latino supermarkets is our unique but special assortment in our butcher shops.

Exclusive meat cuts that cannot be found in other supermarkets make us a distinctive alternative for customers to visit and shop with us.

But as always, to retain and attract new customers, excellence in the daily maintenance of meats must be paramount.

3 key points in the meat department

The three key points in the Meat Department that we must maintain are:

Product presentation.
Professionalism and preparation of our staff.
Total control over the quality of the meats we handle in each store.

The store manager and the meat department manager will follow a daily routine similar to that of other sections, such as:

A checklist and review at OPENING: SHIFT CHANGE and CLOSING, ensuring that we open with a fresh assortment and quality control, reviewing our inventory at shift change and closing with the general cleaning of all products unsuitable for sale the next day.

While we have already reviewed control over cleanliness and maintenance in other articles, we will focus on the commercial area of the Butcher Department with several tips:

Remove all cuts that no longer have an appropriate color or are past their expiration date.
It is recommended that cuts on sale be placed in a special deals section to highlight them.
Project orders in the concise term; if we want to maintain freshness and quality, our management in Meat must be 100% “just in time”, from order preparation to maintenance and display operations.
Custom meat cuts. We must always respond positively to our customers’ desires without imposing any additional charges.
Remember that the perfect image of the Meat Department is what we would like to see if we were buying cuts to take home.
Communication among different members of the meat team is vital for the day-to-day operations to run successfully.

In summary, with organization, order, total control of the meats received, validation, food safety, handling of cuts, production, quality, and price added to those meat cuts that only Latino businesses know how to work with, we will gain a significant advantage over our competition.