Overheard a customer say they'd never pay more than $4 a pound for any cut of meat

I was at the farmers market in Springfield last Saturday and a guy was telling his friend that. He said all meat is the same and price is the only thing that matters. It made me think about how we explain value. I spent ten minutes after my shift just listing the differences in feed cost, aging time, and butcher labor between a cheap chuck roast and a dry-aged ribeye from a local farm. How do you guys handle customers who don't see the work behind the price? What's your go-to example to show why quality costs more?

3 comments

3 Comments

taragibson13d ago

Knowing the steer's name is nice, but that doesn't put food on my table. Some of us just need the calories.

paige_martin13d ago

Oh man, that attitude drives me up the wall. Had a guy at my counter last month say basically the same thing about ground beef. I just pointed to the two packs in the case, the cheap one and the grass-fed, and asked him to just look at the color and fat content. You can literally see the difference. I told him the cheap stuff mixes meat from who-knows-how-many animals, while the good stuff is from a single local steer we know by name. Sometimes just making it visual clicks for people.

robinson.holly13d ago

Yeah, the visual thing paige_martin mentioned is so true. I just show them the fat. The cheap stuff has that weird, waxy white fat, but the good steak has fat that's almost creamy looking. I tell them that fat is where the flavor lives, and you can't fake good feed and time.