Meat and creativity are seemingly incompatible things. But this is far from true. This selection contains business ideas, marketing moves and trends for meat producers, butcher shop and restaurant owners.

Meatballs are meatballs that appeared several years ago around the same time as smoothies and craft beer. Because meatballs can be easily baked in the oven, cooked in soup or grilled, the products are loved among students, young families and everyone who does not have enough time to prepare culinary masterpieces. Vizhu design studio from Russia showed how such products should be positioned. This is a stylish and youthful design and the association of meatballs with baseball balls.

Two chefs from Nashville, Tennessee, USA, decided to create the first premium online meat store. Customers can purchase premium cuts of beef, pork, lamb and chicken delivered to their door, sourced from verified, hormone- and antibiotic-free pasture-raised farms. Thus, James Parker and Chris Carter decided to help people who want to buy better quality meat, but want to spend a long time looking for it on store shelves.

In the United States, butcher shops that position themselves as “artisan” and “craft” are becoming popular. Recently, the first such craft meat store appeared in Louisville, Kentucky. Customers are offered everything from regular cuts of meat to homemade subs, sandwiches and wood-fired pizza. The store prides itself on selling exclusively farm-raised meats that are raised, as they say, using humane farming methods. Humane conditions usually mean maintaining the health of animals, the appropriate condition of premises and equipment, and humane methods of slaughter in which animals do not suffer.

To enhance the natural taste of beef for steaks, many restaurateurs practice aging the meat. As a result of this process, which can last two to three weeks, and sometimes several months, muscle tissue softens, moisture evaporates, the aroma intensifies, and the meat turns out juicier. Dry Ager is a German-made refrigerated cabinet for dry aging meat, which is suitable for both restaurants and cafes, and for home use. The air in the refrigerator is sterilized so that the taste and quality of the meat is not compromised, and thanks to the thermometer, drying occurs exactly at the set temperature. The cabinet is available in two sizes - with a capacity of 10 and 100 kg of meat.

The Piller's Fine Food company decided to turn ordinary sausages into interesting snacks. Salami Chips and Whips are pieces of salami in the form of sausage sticks or cut into thin slices like chips. The product is made in such a way that it does not need to be refrigerated. In addition, sausage snacks do not contain monosodium glutamate, lactose and other allergens.

The EXTREM meat packaging, conceived by the Spanish design studio Lavernia & Cienfuegos, was created to give additional status to Iberian ham, better known as jamón. To create a sense of luxury, an elegant black stock was created, reminiscent of a small tray with a lid. A piece of jamon is placed in this case. This creation is crowned with a handle in the shape of a small golden pig, from which you can guess the contents.

The food industry has noticed that more and more modern people are looking for ways to purchase ready-made foods containing protein. It is fashionable to call this category of goods protein in the to-go style, that is, “with you.” Snack Bacon Cup is one example of such products, which is a cup of thinly sliced ​​bacon pieces or bacon chips. It's no coincidence that the product is sold in transparent lids: in stores it is displayed on trays so that customers can see the contents and salivate.

You've probably already heard about such a topic as men's bouquets. Well, you know when men are given beautifully decorated sets of beer, dried fish, chips and sausages? So, the guys from Say It With Beef went further. They learned how to create flower arrangements using beef jerky. The result was an ideal gift - all kinds of sausages in the form of roses and other flowers, which can be presented in a beer mug or glass. An alternative is to use the meat bouquet for decoration and sell it for double the price at the butcher shop.

Parisian butcher shop L'ami Txulette has developed a vending machine for selling French meat delicacies. Inside you can find a whole range of gourmet dishes, including duck confit, beef carpaccio and Basque pate. All products are vacuum-packed to preserve freshness and aroma. The device is located in in the eastern part of Paris on the Rue de Charon and is open 24 hours a day, if someone suddenly wants to satisfy their exquisite desires in the middle of the night.

The Football Summer Sausage - This sausage is shaped like an American football football. Inside the package lies aromatic slow-smoked pork and beef sausage. To make the sausage look realistic and resemble a real ball, the creators decided to decorate the packaging with laces.

Auckland-based Devonport Chocolates now produces chocolate that contains 50% beef. Yes, attempts to combine meat with chocolate have already been made by many, but no one has yet thought of mixing them in such proportions. The meat is ground to the consistency of butter, and the end result is a sweetness with a structure reminiscent of Turkish delight. They say that chocolate completely eliminates the smell of beef and the end result is a very interesting, tasty and protein-rich product.

Loki is a smart WiFi meat thermometer. Whether you're cooking turkey in the oven, steaks on the grill, or brisket in the smoker, Loki keeps you on top of your cooking process. The device monitors temperature and reports meat readiness directly to your smartphone via an associated IOS or Android app. Thanks to the device, the cook can now not be afraid to go away for a while on his own business, leaving the meat on the grill. The project was successfully funded on the Kikstarter crowdfunding platform. Entrepreneurs raised more than $56 thousand for production and promotion of their business.

An interesting way to combat the food crisis was invented by former Harvard students from the Six Foods company. The young specialists realized that if they dried crickets and ground them into powder, the taste would be very good. After culinary experiments, the team created unique chips from insect “meat”. These are crickets ground with dark beans, pinto beans and rice flour. The chips come in three flavors: barbecue, cheese and sea salt. The chips contain 140 calories, 7 grams of protein and 6 grams of fat per serving, meaning they are lower in calories than potato chips.

Dutch designer Ineke Hans has created a series of cutting boards called CHOPS that are sure to please butcher shop owners. The boards are shaped like steaks, bones and chicken legs, and the marble covering is made in the colors of the cut sausage. The author presented her work in a rather original way, hanging more than 100 cutting boards above the ceiling of the pavilion in Soostdijk Park.

If you are selling meat and meat products, you need to take your store to a new level. A bright façade with a sign will attract attention, but promotion must be comprehensive. Therefore, we recommend using outdoor advertising and social networks. We propose to analyze the features of promoting a butcher shop, starting with advertising texts.

• "FRESH MEAT TO YOUR TABLE"
• "BRAND STORE OF PERVURAL MEAT PROCESSING PLANT"
• “MEAT ONLY FROM YAROSLAV PRODUCERS”

🔍 Promote the store on social networks

High-quality products are of interest to social network users of any age, so advertising on Instagram and VK will bear fruit.

🔹 VKontakte

Creating a VKontakte public page for a store is mandatory. If on Instagram marketers most like the audience from 18 to 35 years old (and this is the majority of users), then representatives of all ages regularly visit VK, especially 21-45 years old. With promotion, VKontakte becomes a more universal social network. Be sure to upload all kinds of data there that can highlight your advantages. Provide information about the farm, certificates, licenses, photos of products. Create discussions where people can leave feedback.

Pros of VKontakte:

• fine-tuning targeted advertising to attract audiences based on specific parameters
• the ability to conduct detailed discussions, surveys
• easy access to statistical data
• wider audience reach

🔹Instagram

Create a commercial account properly, provide contacts and address. The appearance of the “Current” section in “Stories” has transformed Instagram: use “Stories” as a product catalog. You can also add special offers here. You can also use commercial advertising so that users from your city see the news in their feed. Regularly add interesting content - recipes for meat dishes, photos from the store, interesting stories. Be sure to hold competitions: let your profile gather new subscribers, and they will tag each other in the comments. At a minimum, new potential buyers will learn about you.

Pros of Instagram:

• more fashionable platform among social network users
• nothing superfluous: only pictures, short messages and likes
• Properly designed advertising posts do not cause a repulsive effect and are perceived as interesting content

The following types of outdoor advertising will help attract customers:

• Signboard. It should be bright, backlit, you can make three-dimensional letters
• Banner on the facade. You need a beautiful picture of meat. A logo, text with a special offer or a selling description of the product is applied to the banner.
• Pavement sign. Installed near the entrance. If he stands near the sidewalk, draw a sign, this will additionally motivate the client to go to the butcher shop
• Billboard advertising- a worthy way to express yourself, but quite expensive. Therefore, we advise you to resort to such a remedy only with good product turnover, and not at the startup stage.

🥓 How to promote a butcher shop in a small town

In small localities, word of mouth plays a major role in promotion. The store owner is required to maintain high quality service and regularly monitor the condition of the products.

✅ Let's give an example:

An individual entrepreneur opened a butcher shop and independently produces everyone’s favorite products (kebabs, dumplings, cutlets). The client sees that a person approaches his business with soul, cares about the quality of the meat supplied, and controls the work of the staff. Having assessed the taste of the product, the buyer will definitely recommend this point to his friends.

Of course, outdoor advertising and promotion on social networks have not been canceled; the brand also needs to be taken care of. It is advisable to come up with an original name that includes the owner’s first or last name. This always increases the level of trust, the store is easier to recognize and remember.

✅ Good examples:

• "Meat from Rinat"
• "Pork from Zalinka"

🐖 Features of promoting a store in a residential area

When selling meat to nearby residents, you will encounter various nuances. Buyers expect meat products from you that are superior in quality to those offered by well-known national supermarkets. Prices for the most popular products should be low, and the slightest mistake can ruin your reputation.

What will interest the client in a residential area:

• discounts at certain hours (especially attractive to pensioners)
• promotions with significant price reductions for products with expiring dates
• special offers for different population groups
• wide range of meat products

Be sure to print flyers with a colorful design. They are often thrown away, so originality is needed. Each flyer should be presented as a personal discount coupon. Set a limited expiration date so that the person feels like they are missing out on an opportunity.

Use savings plastic cards. The successful practice of well-known retail chains proves the effectiveness of this method of promotion. Hire a courier and send cards to local residents. More people will know about the store, and sooner or later they will take advantage of the offer.

Organize a tasting. Even if you do not sell ready-made meat dishes, it will not hurt to demonstrate the quality of your product. Prepare delicious treats and evaluate the reaction of visitors.

🎯 It's time to act!

Knowing how to influence the minds of picky customers will help you quickly grow your butcher shop. You can get rid of competitors only if you maintain the quality of the product and regularly maintain the interest of the audience. Investments in advertising are small; the main cost item is the production of advertising structures and printed materials.

Your own butcher shop is a profitable business, and we are confident in your success!

Demand for meat products remains consistently high. This is understood by most entrepreneurs who are actively seeking to enter this business by opening their own retail outlet or an entire chain. However, despite the win-win concept, in this business you may encounter many difficulties, such as high competition, the need to sell goods as soon as possible, etc. That is why you need to know how to advertise a butcher shop so that it brings a solid and stable profit. This article is intended to help entrepreneurs choose the most correct and profitable methods of promotion and immediately eliminate ineffective methods of advertising.

Point design

Facade

Showcase

Signposts

Install pillars in front of your store - they perfectly serve as signposts. Moreover, it is not necessary to order signboards with ready-made printed posters. You can indicate special prices on them or attach sheets describing attractive offers.

Advertising in elevators

Advertising in elevators is a fairly effective way to promote a butcher shop. However, remember, placing such advertising throughout the city is simply impractical. In other words, you should only focus on the immediate area. You should also make sure that your poster stands out from similar advertisements.

Internet advertising

Website

Not every butcher shop needs to have its own website. So, if you open a small outlet in a specific area, such advertising simply will not make sense. However, if you supply meat to restaurants or to homes, these services can be actively promoted on the Internet, and you should start with your own website. It will be possible to place an order through it and, of course, it will allow each client to carefully study all the information he needs.

If you decide to create a website on your own, be sure to read our articles:

Here we have laid out our experience and opinions on the use of various tools that you will simply need in your work. This will allow you to reduce the time it takes to select the necessary resources for its creation and get profit from the site as quickly as possible.

Advertisements on classifieds sites

If you work not only in the store itself, but provide additional services, for example, selling a special marinade for barbecue with delivery, supplying meat products to public catering outlets, place such advertisements on free city resources. Such advertising is free, but very effective.

Printable advertisement

Leaflets

Posting and distributing leaflets is perhaps the main way to promote a butcher shop. You can distribute them through mailboxes, peck them out on porches, and hand them out near the store. This method is budget-friendly, but much more effective than, for example, sending out booklets or one-off newspapers.

Business cards

Despite the fact that not every store or butcher shop provides the customer with business cards, it is still worth printing out a batch and handing them to visitors upon their first purchase. This is especially true if you also provide targeted delivery of your products.

Other

Discount cards

Discount cards significantly increase customer loyalty. Having special discounts for regular customers motivates people to visit your store to buy meat products, even if they regularly visit the supermarket to buy other products.

Carrying out price promotions

Arrange interesting weekly promotions that will benefit both you and your customers. This way you will ensure stable sales of perishable products and increase profits.

What advertising doesn't work for meat shops?

1. TV advertising. Streaming videos and tickers are simply not useful for these types of outlets, even if you advertise on local TV channels. Moreover, it will cause almost irreparable damage to your budget.
2. Radio advertising. Such advertising is slightly more effective than television promotion, but it is also impractical for meat stores and even entire chains. It's better to focus on cheaper but more effective methods.
3. Billboards. Billboards are good for almost all types of businesses, but not for this one. In order for them to bring any significant benefit, you will have to order billboards throughout the city, and each of them will cost you from 10-20 thousand. This is impractical even for large companies and chains, and disastrous for small butcher shops.

Examples of butcher shop slogans

1. Excellent quality meat products!
2. The choice of your nature.
3. Nothing can replace meat!
4. Eating tasty food is healthy.
5. Life becomes more delicious.
6. Natural choice.
7. The desire to please everyone!
8. A thick slice makes your mouth happy!
9. Proven quality.
10. Healthy taste of life!

* The calculations use average data for Russia

600,000 ₽

Minimum starting capital

8 %

Profitability

22 months

Payback period

74,500 ₽

Profit per month

Having your own meat store is an attractive, exciting, but very complex business that requires the constant participation of the entrepreneur in all processes. Where to start opening a butcher shop and what are the most basic steps to take?

Many aspiring entrepreneurs are thinking about opening a butcher shop. There are several reasons for the external attractiveness of this business. The first lies in the product itself. Meat is a consumer product. Meat is always in demand by buyers; it has been and will be bought even in a crisis. The meat trade is, as a rule, a very lively and lively business, there is a large flow of buyers, it is a kind of drive. Moreover, the seller has the opportunity to increase his profit by producing and selling semi-finished products, sausages, dumplings, etc. Even if a large retail chain appears in the neighborhood - “the death grim” for any grocery store, a butcher shop can not only stay afloat, but also thrive due to the ability to vary the assortment and offer customers fresh and unique products that cannot be found in the supermarket.

Secondly, you can enter the meat trade with small investments (from 600 thousand rubles for a small point). It does not require large areas and expensive equipment, as, for example, in a restaurant or canteen. Even in case of failure, a ready-made business and its products can be easily sold, avoiding serious financial losses. The entrepreneur does not require any strict formalities - you can sell meat without a license and the need to obtain product certificates.

Where to start opening a meat business? After analyzing the advice of practical entrepreneurs, you can derive a whole chain of actions that should lead to success in this type of business. Please note that the division into steps should not be taken as a strictly regulated guide to action, since many stages must be carried out in parallel.

Step 1. Do I want to open a butcher shop?

Before you start opening a business selling meat, firstly, you need to think about whether you really need it. Experienced entrepreneurs who have made a name for themselves in this industry emphasize that people who come into the meat business are divided into accidental ones, that is, those who, having looked through all possible ways of earning money, by chance settled on selling meat, and those who for some reason for some reason I felt this activity was my own, I had some personal incentive to do it. For example, a person was not satisfied with the quality of meat sold in city markets, or he felt a desire to develop in an industry familiar to him (for example, raising pigs or calves and then selling them profitably). Well, or I was looking for a new outlet for my talent as a butcher cook or barbecue cook, when my heart is drawn to all things meat...

The point is that if in the first case there is a high probability of becoming emotionally burned out from doing something that is not your own, then in the second case the chances of success are noticeably higher, since a person initially has immunity to failures, losses and other adversities. But the main difference between “non-random” and “random” people in the meat trade is not even this. The main thing is knowledge, or at least a clear understanding of the specifics of working with meat on the one hand, and ignorance of these features on others. And the difference between the first and second will begin to appear from the very first minutes of work, as soon as a “random” person discovers that the pieces of beef that he stacked not in a row, but on top of each other, for some reason turned green. Or when he suddenly realizes that he has absolutely no idea what to do with meat that has not been sold for several days. And one hundred and one more nuances. Simply put, a successful meat selling business (like any other business in general) begins with a love for meat, a clearly understood and partly hard-won task, goal, mission. If in your case it all started with something else, then you should ask yourself this question directly again: “Do I want to open a butcher shop?

Step 2: Analyze your local market

If the answer to this question is yes, then the first thing you should do is conduct a local market analysis. First, you need to find out what kind of meat people want to see and at what price, who sells this meat, who brings it and who buys it. There is no need to waste time spent collecting information - in practice, it pays off many times over due to errors prevented. You should have a complete picture in your head about current competitors, prices, possible obstacles and ways to respond to certain events. The key task at this stage is to mentally fit yourself and your future store into the existing picture. Moreover, after analyzing the situation, sometimes you have to abandon the initial ideas that seemed brilliant. For example, when it suddenly turns out that rabbit meat, horse meat or lamb in a particular region is not needed by anyone for nothing - simply because it has happened historically and the tastes of the population are different.

Step 3. Determine the assortment, calculate the markup and profit

After you analyze the market, you will have a more or less clear picture of what you want to trade and what kind of turnover we are talking about. The strategic issue is finding a supplier. You will need to find affordable meat that is of excellent quality. The catch is that no one will ever say that their meat is of poor quality - everyone always sells only “good” and “best”. Much at this stage will depend on how you have analyzed the market. You need to get out of your comfort zone: communicate with buyers, sellers, suppliers, farmers and draw conclusions. At the same time, as a rule, you cannot find a wide range of prices within one city or region. The difference will be no more than 10%. In a word, digging on the surface, the advantages and disadvantages of this or that proposal are almost impossible to discern. There is no universal remedy in this matter - you need to search and negotiate yourself, travel, look, call, and so on.

At this stage, you also need to draw up a rough financial plan, which you should focus on in the future. There is one difficulty here - compared to other types of business, the pricing system in meat sales is quite complex. It depends not only on purchase prices, the purchasing power of customers, the entrepreneur’s fixed expenses, competitors’ prices and other traditional factors, but also on the characteristics of cutting and drying the supplied products. Once in a store, one carcass can be sold into dozens of positions, and each one must be assigned its own adequate, but at the same time profitable price. The way of calculations here is complex, scrupulous and lengthy, and you have to do them constantly, since you may need to change the cut, the supplier may suddenly raise prices, and the client may order a non-standard piece. At the same time, with a thoughtless approach, there is a real risk of not only losing some amount of profit, but also losing it altogether. Therefore, it is best to use automated electronic services for meat stores to select prices, which allow you to quickly make calculations using ready-made algorithms. It would also be wise to make such calculations at the very beginning, choosing the most acceptable wholesale price, and only then look for a supplier based on it.

The markup on meat in general on the market is quite low because buyers are very cost sensitive. The reaction to any price increase is extremely painful - they simply stop buying meat, switching to cheaper products. Therefore, markups in meat stores almost never exceed 20-30%, and the entrepreneur’s profit consists mainly of the number of sales. Of course, the markup varies depending on the type of meat. For example, for pork it can be 40%, and for semi-finished products it can reach 60-100%, but on average it is the same 20-30%. Much in the matter of pricing will depend on the region - in those regions of Russia that do not have large enterprises or farms nearby, meat prices are much higher. When making calculations, also do not forget to take into account product damage - at the very beginning, losses are unlikely to be avoided.

Step 4. Find a suitable premises for the purpose

The step on which 90% of the success of a meat store depends is the correct location and premises. It is extremely important that the butcher shop is located in a walk-through location - profits in this type of business come mainly from sales volumes, and not from markups. When choosing a location, experienced entrepreneurs recommend spending a day or two and personally counting the pedestrian traffic. The minimum traffic volume for a working day is about 2000 people. Of the resulting number, about 2-3% may become store buyers. This data can be used when planning revenue and net profit.

As a rule, meat shops do not require a large area: even 90 and 100 square meters. meters is a lot, the rent will be too large and unaffordable. For starters, 10-25 square meters may be enough. meters, the optimal area is about 30-40 square meters. The cost of renting such premises may, depending on various factors, vary from 15 to 120 thousand rubles. In Table 1 we presented the average rental cost according to the Avito website for Russian cities with different numbers of residents. Data is current as of September 2017.

Table 1. Average rent for retail premises 25-60 sq. m. meters in Russian cities*

Rent	25 sq. meters	40 sq. meters	60 sq. meters
Moscow (more than 12 million people)
St. Petersburg (more than 5 million people)
Rostov-on-Don, Kazan (more than 1 million people)
Lipetsk, Khabarovsk (more than 500 thousand people)
Tambov, Petrozavodsk (more than 250 thousand people)
Essentuki, Novomoskovsk (more than 100 thousand people)

*according to the Avito website as of September 2017

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Looking ahead, we will say that expensive renovations are not required for meat stores: the specifics of the business are such that customers, in principle, do not care about the design of the premises. There are no interior requirements like those of kitchen showrooms or catering establishments. The main criteria are store visibility and traffic. Of course, sewerage and toilet, water supply and washing are necessary. There are some other points to consider as well. For example, the room would benefit from wide doorways for unloading incoming products.

Step 5: Settle Legal Issues

Since the process of finding a suitable premises can take more than one month, from the point of view of economy it will be more profitable to register a business after there is a preliminary agreement with the supplier and a location has been selected. However, in order to conclude a lease agreement, it is already necessary to have at least an individual entrepreneur. For a small butcher shop, an individual entrepreneur is quite enough, and as a form of taxation, the so-called simplified taxation (6% of income) or UTII, the amount of tax in which is constant and tied to the area, is suitable. An individual entrepreneur is registered within three days, the state duty is 800 rubles.

The premises for selling meat, like the meat itself, must meet certain standards. An entrepreneur does not need to obtain any licenses, but some issues need to be resolved. Issues with fire safety and SES most often bypass tenants. The owners of the premises, as a rule, already have the appropriate permits. After opening a store within a month, it is necessary to notify Rospotrebnadzor about the start of trading activities. But the main thing you will need is certificates for meat and veterinary form for meat No. 4. The supplier must provide them, so the problem is solved by selecting a good supplier. You should also not forget about the consumer corner with a book of complaints and suggestions, and that employees must have health records.

According to the experience of practitioners, many of the standards imposed on meat shops are not always feasible in reality. For example, it is not always possible to arrange two entrances to the premises or regularly obtain veterinary certificates for products from the supplier. Issues are usually resolved with a veterinary inspector who periodically visits the store. In general, to ensure the satisfaction of inspectors, the room must have good ventilation, proper finishes that can be washed, the cutting deck must be installed correctly, and staff must have uniforms and gloves. In practice, no one usually requires fanatical adherence to legal norms.

Step 6. Purchase equipment

As a minimum set, you will need equipment for cutting, storage and display. The first category will include a cutting table, cutting block, knives, axes, hooks, etc., about 15-20 thousand rubles will be spent on these purposes. Also, a butcher shop cannot do without a band saw - it will increase productivity, work with frozen products and increase the quality of cutting. A saw is the most expensive equipment among the minimum required. Prices can exceed 80-100 thousand rubles, which discourages many entrepreneurs from starting a business. Here you can consider the option of used or ordering equipment from China - costs can be reduced by 1.5-2 times. It is not recommended to completely abandon the band saw - otherwise there will be a great connection to the butcher’s skills, and many product items will simply need to be abandoned.

Ready ideas for your business

To store and display fresh meat you will need a closed refrigerated display case. The cost of one such 1.5-meter showcase starts from 30 thousand rubles. You also need at least one chest freezer; prices for them start from 15 thousand rubles. For recycling, you must definitely purchase a meat grinder for preparing semi-finished products, for example, minced meat, all kinds of rolls, cutlets, dumplings and other things. Usually, professional meat grinders are purchased for meat shops, costing from 20 thousand rubles, but if funds do not allow, then a couple of ordinary household ones may be enough for a small store to begin with. You should also consider the cost of lamps. It's no secret that the quality of lighting directly affects sales volume. The store will also need scales, trays, uniforms for employees and other small items.

Thus, the required minimum equipment for a butcher shop will require 200-250 thousand rubles. Entrepreneurs with experience in the meat business advise that when choosing and purchasing equipment, it is necessary not to attach excessive importance to it - the assortment should come first in importance. So consider your savings options. To begin with, it is quite reasonable to buy used equipment. If you're lucky, you can find good quality equipment at a good discount of up to 50-70%. Many shops, restaurants, cafes are either closing, moving, or replacing equipment with newer ones, etc., so there will always be ways to save money if you look hard enough.

Step 7. Select staff

The key employee of a butcher shop is, of course, the butcher. Moreover, this should not be just a butcher-seller, but a butcher-cutter with knowledge of “store-bought” cutting. Without knowing the principles of such cutting, you can lose up to 25 kg of meat from each carcass. Even if the supplier is cutting the meat, this skill is necessary, since in the butcher shop there is always something to trim, prepare, mince, and so on. Here, entrepreneurs usually choose one of two strategies - some spend time and money searching for an ideal specialist with experience, others teach young people the necessary skills on their own. It is clear that not everyone can afford the first option; moreover, dependence on the skills of a hewer creates some lack of freedom and fetters the hands of the entrepreneur. For the second option, and generally ideally, the entrepreneur himself knows the entire meat kitchen from the inside and has all the necessary skills.

If we talk about the role of the entrepreneur himself, then he, of course, can independently act as a hewer, a seller, or as their replacement, especially if we are talking about a small point and the very start of a business. However, in any case, it should not be indispensable. In an optimal situation, the entrepreneur plays the role of a manager, only occasionally monitoring employees, and is engaged in promotion and strategic planning. All other responsibilities not directly related to making a profit - accounting, security, etc. - are transferred to freelance specialists.

How much should store employees be paid? There is no clear answer here: there are too many variable factors that depend on the financial capabilities of the business, the experience and skills of the staff, work schedule, etc. At the same time, there are some guidelines that can be taken as a basis when estimating future expenditure items. Table 2 shows the average salary of butchers as of September 2017, derived from an analysis of advertisements on the Avito website.

Table 2. Average salary by profession butcher in Russian cities*

*based on data from the Avito website as of September 2017

An important point is the identity of the butcher shop seller. This person must not only be well versed in meat, people must like him. The flow of buyers in this business is large, so you need to be as patient, polite as possible, and be able to interest them and tell them about the meat.

Step 8. Take care of promoting your butcher shop

There are passive and active methods of promoting clients. Passive methods include such mandatory things as store signs, pillars and advertising signs. To the active - everything else. The meat trade is not a business that will tolerate a big advertising campaign. Here it is more important not to make a splash throughout the country or city, but to be known in your area. That is, the most effective are low-budget local advertising methods - posting advertisements, distributing leaflets and flyers, the least effective are expensive television advertising. It is best to focus on the distance in the immediate vicinity of the store, namely within a radius of 800 meters. It is best to post advertisements at entrances and in elevators, where they can be read several times. In general, the meat market is a fairly traditional market, so standing out among competitors by advertising in it is not as difficult as it might seem at first.

The Internet can also be used to sell meat, but it is better to focus on individual tasks of the store - for example, to find new customers and markets. It is most advisable to create your own website if the store already has some significant competitive advantage. For a small point that practically does not stand out in any way, a website can only do harm, deceiving the client’s expectations and distracting the entrepreneur from more important tasks. At the same time, even a small retail outlet must be present in 2Gis, Yandex.Maps and Google Maps. Social networks are almost irrelevant in this type of business and require extra effort to maintain activity in them. Of course, the biggest, underwater part of the iceberg is word of mouth. It is thanks to the recommendations of other people that the flow is ensured that no other type of advertising will provide the store. And word of mouth, as you know, is mainly based on product quality. Also, don’t forget to follow trends in the meat industry and business ideas from foreign meat stores; sometimes something worthwhile appears among a sea of ​​junk.

Step 9. Become “one of the guys” for the buyer

From the very first days, a meat store should strive to win over its customers and become profitable within the first month. If you couldn’t make a profit even in the second month of work, this is a reason to sound the alarm. This means that one of the previous steps was completed with errors: the wrong location was chosen, the wrong seller, the wrong assortment, pricing policy, and so on. It is extremely important that the buyer sees as much fresh, tasty meat on the counter from the very beginning and wants to come back. Trying to trade with half-empty storefronts is a recipe for early failure. Even with the most conservative estimates, to cover expenses per month, you will have to sell almost 3.5 tons of meat with a 30% markup. Since meat is a perishable product and lives for 1-2 days, purchases will have to be made constantly or every other day. Moreover, if you sell stale meat at least once, the bad reputation of the new store can spread instantly.

It should also be remembered that buyers appreciate consistency. It is important here to know and master the principles of cutting meat from the very beginning. Experiments with cutting, when a new piece appears on the counter every day, are completely useless. We need to try so that the buyer is confident that tomorrow and in a month he will be able to buy exactly the same meat and the same quality that he bought today. Of course, you can negotiate with the supplier so that he cuts the meat in his workshop himself, but practice shows that this option will not bring success.

We must not forget about the seasonality factor in the meat trade - we need to build a response strategy in advance. This factor is most noticeably felt in the summer, when there is a general drop in demand for meat products. During this period, store owners purchase smaller volumes of meat, reduce cutting, and redistribute their assortment. A profitable direction for this period is the sale of kebabs and barbecues, active cooperation with cafes and restaurants. Many butcher shop owners manage to not only mitigate the effects of the season, but also earn more during the off-season than during the season. The main thing is to feel the buyer’s needs and respond to them promptly.

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I never thought that it was so difficult until I was faced with this task. I realized that meat for an advertiser is one of the most insidious goods! There are vegetarians and Greenpeace, and Jews, and Muslims, in a word - it is extremely difficult to please everyone.

For me, it all started with the creation of an advertising poster for a large Turkish meat producer (Ekol company). Posters were mainly to be placed in Auchan. (For those who have come across this network, it is known that there are also internal controls over advertising materials).

The first task was quite easy to implement. At the request of the client, the sign should have a cheerful family smiling broadly: mom, dad and son. Their radiant faces symbolized health! A great variety of models were prepared. In the final version, a series with a package of raw meat perched in the right corner was approved.

Honestly, from time to time a conflict flared up inside me, is raw meat like this aesthetically pleasing for advertising... Blood, meat... Brrrrrrr. In the end, this is not a hymn to cannibalism.. For thousands, hundreds of thousands of years we have been eating meat... and some prefer raw...

For the next poster, which was to be placed at an exhibition, the client asked to place a cow and a sheep grazing on the advertisement. Everything seems decent... But excuse me, even small children know that this is how it is customary to advertise MILK, not MEAT...

But this time the disputes were postponed, since the exhibition opened in 24 hours, and we still needed to produce a banner measuring 12 sq.m. Can you imagine what a piece of raw meat like this would look like?!

A couple of days later a new shock awaited me. I came across a previously printed booklet from the same company. And there …. Honestly, a nightmare on Elm Street... 10 pages of pictures of butchered carcasses of cows and sheep. You could use them to study anatomy, muscle structure, etc.

While working on this project, I seriously immersed myself in the topic of “meat advertising” and came up with the following characteristic features:

In different countries, it is indeed customary to advertise MEAT in different ways:

So in the USA, it is customary to advertise not so much meat, but a lifestyle. The meat is always cooked. Remember the burger commercials, at a minimum. Traditionally, this is an advertisement for grilled meat. The father of the family is on the lawn watching over a browned piece of meat. And in his right hand he has a bottle of beer or any other drink. So, a barbecue ad...

What in Russia? I noted that it is customary to place gold logos, frames and other decor on meat packages. This is a national disease - everything should be in gold (well, not in chocolate). Raw meat is not advertised. Animal carcasses are placed on packages. As a rule, they prefer to post pictures of ready-made meat dishes. From time to time they borrow other people's images - Bovarian ladies or Italian chefs...