By Justin Green
Staff Writer
Americans love holidays. They also love to grill. Put those together and you have a recipe for success in the protein market.
During the grilling months in 2015—April to September—the U.S. sold more than $17 billion of pork and beef, according to beefretail.org.
Those sales consisted of 2.3 billion pounds of beef and 3.9 billion pounds of pork. In Texas, with more cattle than any other state, beef is king of the grill.
“Summer months help drive the protein markets, specifically beef. Not only burgers, but steaks also enjoy those summer months’ increase in pounds sold,” Russell Woodward, senior manager of Product Marketing at the Texas Beef Council, said.
During the summer months, consumers have numerous holidays—Father’s Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day—to celebrate.
Ribeye is one of the most popular cuts during grilling season. Americans purchase nearly 8 million pounds of ribeye steaks for each of those holidays, Woodward said.
Brisket is growing in popularity for Texans during the summer months, selling 2 to 3 million pounds during those holidays.
Beef demand is expected to grow this summer.
In the past, consumers bought less expensive proteins, like chicken. But as the cow herd continues to grow, the supply of beef is on the rise and retail prices are slowly coming down.
“I believe as we go into the summer, because prices are going to be coming down on retail for beef in the marketplace, we’ll see some deflation in beef prices across the board, but I believe our total poundage will be up this summer,” Woodward said.
More beef on the grill is good news for ranchers.
“I believe that we have a lot of cattle around us at the moment, our total beef production numbers this year will be up,” Woodward said.