IT TAKES a special mix of confidence, marketing talent and customer service to stop the powerful supermarket juggernauts in their tracks, and it seems your local butcher might have the winning formula.
The big retail chains have launched a relentless salvo of marketing blitzes to lure shoppers to their discount prices and impressively stocked meat cabinets this year, but butchers are proving remarkably battle-savvy and difficult for the big supermarket guns to blast out of the game.
The local butcher is not only likely to be a lot younger than a decade ago, the shop looks different and butchers across Australia have actually regained a lot of red meat market share they lost to the supermarket chains in the 1990s.
"There's no doubt 2011 has been a tough year to be an independent butcher shop operator - Coles and Woolworths have been fighting hard for extra market share and shoppers are cautious about spending," said Australian Meat Industry Council (AMIC) chief executive officer, Kevin Cottrill.
"But its amazing how resilient individual operators have been and how they've responded to the competitive retail environment, including the way fast food is eroding home cooking routines and confidence."
Semi-prepared meals now occupy increasing space in the butcher's display cabinet - typically 20 per cent, and up to 90pc in some - compared to almost nothing a decade ago.
Butchers are also more likely to market their own shop-made meat pies and pasties, smoke their own ham, specialise in adventurous gourmet sausage recipes and in some States sell wine to accompany customers' Sunday roast or barbecue meat orders.
They are also expected to be better versed in how to prepare and cook meals, especially if they sell special cuts, and Western Australia leads the way in having in-store chefs cooking meals for busy, time-poor shoppers.
Email alerts and mobile phone applications promoting meat specials, meal ideas and recipes are also offered by a growing number of butchers in city and regional areas.
While AMIC concedes retailing is a tough business and Australia's 3000 butcher shops are shrinking in number by 80 or more a year, those remaining are successfully blocking the supermarkets from absorbing additional market share.
Mr Cottrill said not all butcher shops were notably different to the way they traded a decade ago, but across the industry typical proprietors were now more likely to be aged in their 30s or 40s, compared to 50-plus.
Shop owners were also more tempted to take opportunities to buy a second or third premises if they could see an existing butcher retiring, or a new shopping centre opening in town.
"It's quite amazing to note the number of capable shop managers in their late 20s and 30s these days, and the number of girls coming through butchery apprenticeships," Mr Cottrill said.
"The availability of pre-cut boxed beef has taken a lot of the heavy work out of many shops, making the trade more attractive to women, and young blokes too.
"It means butchers don't need to start work at 5am cutting up carcases."
Meat and Livestock Australia's (MLA) retail marketing manager Roger Bond said butcheries had grown into "a very outward thinking industry in the past decade".
Red meat sales initiatives developed with MLA, like the spring lamb fashion boutique promotion or summer barbecue giveaways, gave local butchers a chance to promote points of difference between themselves and supermarkets - and sales were responding.
"It's not uncommon for shops to report sales rising five to 10pc during a special industry-wide promotion,"said Mr Bond, who runs MLA's Red Meat Marketing Network.
"It personalises the local butcher and gets customers talking about what's going on." Butchers pay a $130 one-off membership to the network to access special in-store promotion material, marketing advice and join tour groups checking out how other successful retailers do things differently.
New shop counter design and lighting ideas, big screen televisions and promotion messages that link the butcher's town or suburb to a national campaign are now widely adopted by network members.
"TVs work well. A promotional video about preparing specific meat cuts will often translate into impulse buys or give customers the confidence to ask questions, building their relationship with the butcher and the product," Mr Bond said
