It ran completely contrary to the pride we have for our world class Canadian beef and it also brought to light one of the most overlooked aspects of our industry that is quickly becoming the bane of the food industry overall and that is our ability to remain insular.
In this era of social media and a 24 hours news cycle, this mode of operating isn’t good enough anymore.
Another word that has a substantial impact our industry is millennials - a term applied to the youth who are ever more aware and demanding the food they consume not only be nutritious – and the labeling better show that accurately – but also raised ethically and slaughtered humanely. Millennials are defining the direction of this generation much like hippies did in the 1960s and look what they did to change human rights, demand world peace, ignite the environmental movement, etc.
Millennials are the reason Earls and other restaurant chains have combined the nightlife experience with gourmet steak dining and have had to pay attention and they focus their attention on this demographic. Yes, us older steak eaters go there as well but let’s be honest, these chains are marketing to a younger crowd who are concerned and vocal about animal rights and food quality issues.
How does insular play into the modern day food industry? Some may defend that position as blasphemous because Canada is at the leading edge of sustainability, humane treatment of animals, and we’ve set the bar with bio security. We’ve forged ahead with ground breaking initiatives to secure better deals for our exported product.
That is all well and good but we’re still only devising methods and tracking to report to industry watch dogs and satisfy trading partners. We’re basically being accountable to the stakeholders within the industry and hence we’ve insulated ourselves from the consumer. What have we done to show the average Canadian consumer the landmark strides we’ve made to ensure Canada’s beef is setting the standard around the world?
In my opinion, almost nothing.
Other than A&W’s slate of ads offering beef raised without hormones, there are no real visible ad campaigns targeted directly at consumers. Certainly Earls and their competitors are not doing it. They’re promoting the experience, not the food, so it’s not their job to do that for Canadian beef. It’s our job as an industry to develop a visible, effective campaign that millennials can identify with and to spread the word of the great job we’re really doing.
Perhaps in our drive to meet government standards mostly aimed at securing exports, we’ve overlooked the fact we still need to clue the millennials into the idea of the progress our industry has made.
Otherwise, we’re still just operating within the industry.
Because at the end of the day, I think that is all Earls was looking for and couldn’t find.
But the bottom line really came down to the simple fact that when the beef industry did flex, Earl's had no choice but change their PR stategy and minimalize the backlash.
Source: Meatbusiness