True return from quality in Christmas turkeys

In marketing Christmas turkeys the key is to ensure customers get the best experience so they will come back next year, says Paul Kelly, managing director of Kelly Turkeys.

He urges retailers to go for quality and recognise the true return in terms of cash margin as well as customer satisfaction.

“Gross profit is the measure of price points for most retail butchers and quite rightly so,” says Paul Kelly in his autumn newsletter. “However, to enable you to supply your customer with a higher quality turkey, then maybe margin per turkey vs margin per kg should be the way to decide which turkey to offer your customers?

“A 30% gross profit on a KellyBronze will give the same cash margin per turkey as a 40% gross profit on standard turkeys — and your customer will get a far superior product.”

Another aspect of quality is the value you get with a superior turkey. “For example, our slow growing, mature KellyBronze turkeys typically have 50% more breast meat than a young kill commercial breed. We need to get this message across to customers.”

The comparison was made with a 4.7 kg (10.4 lb) KellyBronze tested against a similar sized standard turkey for breast meat yield.