For processed poultry meat, there are several outlets and groups or communities that the industry has, to date, failed to fully reach.
The success of Facebook is perhaps the best example of bringing together and serving a community where something that was once a novelty has now become part of everyday life.
How the poultry industry can replicate the success of Facebook is, perhaps, not immediately obvious, but there are communities into which, with the right technology, processed poultry could be sold.
Finding poultry consumers
Consider, for example, the following: places of education, shopping malls, sports and medical centers, airports and ground transport terminals, and public parks. These are all places that are visited on a daily basis by large numbers of people -- all of whom have to eat.
Typically, the above mentioned “communities” have little time buy and consume food. Their needs are met via vending machines, allowing them to spend as little or as much time as they may have available in purchasing.
These vending machines tend to offer products that do not really meet their users’ needs, and this represents a huge opportunity for the poultry industry to replace the commonly stocked items with their own products.
Various easy-to-eat chicken-based products are already widely available in supermarkets, including nuggets, skewers, hot dogs, breast tenders and wings, but all are currently sold in large or family-sized quantities, usually exceeding 10 pieces. Additionally, for obvious reasons, they are usually sold frozen, ruling out their sale in vending machines.
While easy-to-consume poultry products are already widely available, they are not presented in a way that puts them within reach of the consumer on the go.
But because this type of product is usually sold in large quantities does not mean that it could not be sold by individual serving, offering a nutritious product to the consumer and a new outlet for the producer.
Innovation in presentation
The sticking point would appear to be that traditional vending machines tend to sell chilled products, so would not appear to be suitable for selling hot food.
However, there are vending machines that, in addition to selling chilled products, can also dispense hot food. Installing this type of product in places where there is high footfall, for example sports centers and the other destinations mentioned above, consumers would be able to eat the type of food they typically may choose to eat at home.
Additionally, this personalized portion of poultry meat could be made available in supermarkets and other retail outlets, allowing consumers to purchase in-store and eat at home.
There are huge numbers of poultry cuts in storage, and developing this new route to market could well reduce such storage costs, and potential risks. Vending machines could be used to sell various types of chicken meat.
Alongside developing a network of vending machines, there is also the opportunity not only to develop new presentations of existing products, but also to develop completely new products. One route might be to look at what is successful in other areas, and replicate that for poultry. What about kibbeh, traditionally made of either lamb or beef? Might not chicken-based kibbeh be an excellent choice for poultry meat vending machines?
Retailing through vending machines could encourage the development of new products, for example chicken kibbeh.
Innovation and imagination
