Young Britons don’t eat Sunday lamb roasts like their parents do, and Alliance Group is finding ways to connect to that younger generation.
Those young people do, however, eat koftas, pies and nibbles. They go to pubs, football games, concerts, a percentage enjoy white-tablecloth fine dining and they buy food online.
Alliance Group’s UK and Europe manager Helen Scott said retail remains an extremely important market for lamb, but consumer trends are shifting and exporters like Alliance have to adapt, which it is trying to do by adding value.
“Retail is very important to us as it is to all red meat companies, but we are also looking to create value by targeting food service, hospitality and online sales.”
Alliance has employed Matt Owens as head of culinary, and it is his job to create new products from Alliance’s Pure South, Lumina lamb and Handpicked aged beef ranges and to also work with chefs, hospitality and food service outlets.
This involves finding flavours for pie fillings, burgers and koftas and, potentially, creating new lamb or beef dishes, such as in tortellini pasta, dim sims, pizza topping or lamb and prawns in an Asian broth.
“I’m lucky I know a lot of people who have a lot of ideas and we are close to London City and some of the best restaurants in the world,” said Owens.
Scott said this new product focus and Owens’s culinary skills contributed to Alliance supplying meat and meat products to the New Zealand team and supporters at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games and at NZ House during the recent Paris Olympics.
Alliance lamb and beef products are also supplied to corporate fans at Premier League football side Tottenham Hotspur’s newly owned 62,000-seat Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
A typical game will see 8000 burgers and 6000 koftas eaten.
Scott said the stadium is also hosting an American Football League match and a concert by Beyoncé at which Alliance products will be sold.
The company that runs hospitality at Tottenham operates a further five stadiums that now serve Alliance products.
Scott said the new range also features on menus, from pubs to high-end hotels in the UK, Europe and the Gulf States, where it is served alongside beverages, room service and at conferences.
Scott said Alliance is also targeting high-end restaurants with its Lumina lamb, which is now on the menus of Michelin star-rated restaurants in the UK and Dubai.
These are small but important steps that Alliance needs to take.
“This is the future for NZ farmers, creating value,” she said.
“We are a sheep, beef and venison red meat co-operative and we’re proud of it, but we are also a culinary food supplier and that is how we are attracting younger consumers.”
Scott said Owens’s extensive contact network from a career work in the culinary industry and as a former chair of the 139-year-old Craft Guild of Chefs, has been crucial in getting a foot in the door of potential clients, but also getting them to try new or existing products.
A commercial kitchen has been built at Alliance’s appropriately named Shepherdess Walk offices in central London, at which Owens can experiment with products, network with other chefs or brainstorm new ideas, and where the company can host potential customers.
Once a product has been developed it still needs to satisfy commercial and market criteria.
For example, the super yacht industry is a new potential market but will have to satisfy logistic as well as financial criteria.
“We’re very specific – we have to be – and that means we won’t be seen everywhere,” said Scott.
Nearly a third of UK transactions are conducted online and Scott said its Silere lamb range is resonating with young consumers and has an exceptionally high five-star satisfaction rating lodged by customers.
She said consumers relish the story behind Silere lamb, which is told in online marketing.
“It’s the high-spend consumer that is buying Silere. It targets a new consumer.”
The NZ-UK free trade agreement has opened access for NZ beef. Scott said products have been successfully received, in part due to NZ’s existing reputation for lamb but also due to its quality.
The first shipment sold out within a week, she said, with Alliance’s hand-picked, aged product proving especially popular.
Scott acknowledges NZ sheep farmers are having a tough time but has some encouraging words.
“We are very optimistic with lamb and beef here in the UK. Protein consumption is high and it is growing.”
More: Wallace is visiting seven countries in six weeks to report on market sentiment, a trip made possible with grants from Fonterra, Silver Fern Farms, Alliance, Beef + Lamb NZ, NZ Meat Industry Association and Rabobank. Read more about his findings here.
