High On The Hog

Brandweek, Oct 11, 1999 by Matthew Grimm

IT'S A TOUGH JOB TAKING ON A TENDER CHICKEN, BUT HORMEL'S KURT MUELLER SET OUT TO BRAND FRESH PORK THE WAY PERDUE HAD DONE WITH CHICKEN. 'ALWAYS TENDER' DID THE TRICK.

We're not just in business to kill hogs and sell meat. We're in business to take pork and meat products and make them into something of real value in the consumer's life."

A few years into his 20-year tenure with Hormel Foods, Kurt Mueller took a job back in the company's Austin, Minn. headquarters that would prove a harbinger of big things to come. After four years in the field, often in beef-hungry Texas, Mueller signed on as associate product manager, a role in which he set about realizing a more appetizing pork product for the company's broad portfolio. That next step: a "value-added" pork cut, which basically involved removing the bones from the meat.

Sixteen years later, Mueller has resumed the mission as director of sales and marketing for Hormel's fledgling Fresh Pork Division, and his "next step" taken back in 1983 has turned into a sprint, with Hormel leading the race to do for the hog what Perdue and Tyson have already done for the chicken. Spicing up a section of the supermarket traditionally as exciting as its styrofoam trays and cellophane coverings, and perhaps even changing consumers' overall perception of pork, Hormel in late 1996 began approaching supermarkets with Always Tender, a line of pre-trimmed, prepacked (or "case ready") fresh pork and pre-seasoned products specially marinated to cook up tender whatever the means of preparation. Three-and-a-half years later, Always Tender has become something of a master brand, dominating sections of the refrigerator aisle in chains such as Hy-Vee, Super Valu, Albertson's and Randall's, with its brand mantra, "Pork you can cut with a fork." Mueller and team have for a year taken to the TV airwaves with that message, itself an unprecedented step for fresh-pork marketers, and left no medium unturned, from air to street, in selling consumers on a more vital role of pork in the harried lives of the new consumer--with no small success.

By the end of Hormel's fiscal year last October, Always Tender accounted for 35% of Hormel's fresh pork sales; 11 months later, that figure tops 60%, according to Mueller. Although Hormel won't release specific data, an informed estimate would peg shipments of Always Tender meat last year at about 500 million pounds, a figure anticipated to rise to 860 million this year. Commensurately, the number of retail doors carrying the brand had grown from roughly 3,800 to 7,000 by the October conclusion of Hormel's last fiscal year, motoring on to a likely 12,000 by around Thanksgiving. That's a lot of sizzle in a pork industry where growth in consumption is tapering off from a 6-7% rate last year to just 1% in the first half of 1999, per the National Pork Producers Association,

Mueller and his team have not just gone out to put a contemporary face on the base product, as the Pork Council's "other white meat" ad campaign has attempted for 11 years, but to bring to consumers a revelation that something fundamental has changed in that less-trod section of the refrigerator section between chicken and beef. To do that, they needed to adapt to the grocery business' broader trend of offering products that accommodate consumers' lifestyles, rather than just processing and shipping a product and waiting for consumers to come to it.

"We don't really consider ourselves a meatpacker per se," Mueller said. "We're already a consumer brand company, and have been for a long time, with our Dinty Moore and Jennie-O products and so on. We're not just in business to kill hogs and sell meat. We're in business to take pork and meat products and make them into something of real value in the consumer's life."

While "value-added" has become an overused buzz-term in marketing, a new value equation has been long due in the fresh-pork business. Cured and processed products such as hams bacon and cold cuts have for years benefitted from brand marketing, given their longer shelf life, and the erstwhile Geo. A. Hormel & Co. has long been ready to exploit that, from its storied Spain to Cure 81, the first national ham brand, rolled out in 1963, to its Kids Kitchen microwavable meals. But where those products had their particular usage occasions--breakfast, lunch-on-the-go, holidays--Hormel has set its sights on driving traffic into that much broader, higher-margin section of the store from which consumers choose their nightly meal centerpiece.

"For a hundred years, it's been a commodity industry," said product manager Mark Morey, Mueller's point man on the Always Tender launch campaign. "When the consumer went to our aisle, they saw white trays and price stickers with the store name on it, but nothing else really branded about it."

By the early '90s, Hormel execs resolved to do more than ride the tide of pork. R&D set about developing products whose added value would truly distinguish a Hormel product in the market, eventually addressing the "shoe leather" factor with a now-patented marination process that would become the foundation of the new Hormel pork business. In 1995, the effort broadened to include preseasoned products--such as peppercorn pork tenderloin; lemon garlic, mesquite BBQ, honey mustard and salsa loin filets; boneless teriyaki and peppercorn chops; and apple cinnamon and Southwest roasts. Meanwhile, the grocery business was abuzz with "meal solutions," the idea of creating product and merchandising them such that the "new consumer" could make a quick pass through the supermarket after work and be pointed quickly to what he or she would need for a full, quickly prepared meal. In essence, product development, merchandising, marketing and retailing had intertwined into a singly-directed endeavor. The Always Tender marination and cutting process not only promised "case-ready" to retailers, but gave those products shelflives of as long as 24 days, assuring more product on shelf at the pivotal after-work shopping timeframe.