The Future of Breakfast Meats

Taste may be the reigning attribute that determines which breakfast meats make it into the consumer’s basket but value, convenience and quality follow close behind when it comes to what is driving purchasing decisions. Suppliers are noting this and bringing innovations to what some have described as a dormant category. Similarly, given consumers’ growing tendency to exercise their values regarding sustainability and animal welfare with their spending, companies are ensuring better transparency and education for why their products stand out from the crowd.

“With respect to recent trends, we are seeing consumers' demand for convenience and on-the-run offerings leading the charge, as is evident in our breakfast sandwich growth,” Dough Skeoch, National Sales Manager for Swaggerty’s Sausage Co., said this spring. “We have supplied snack-size breakfast sandwich offerings for several years. However, the launch of our ‘large size’ sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, croissants and muffins has done phenomenally well since our launch in the summer of 2022. We also created a waffle and sausage variety that is unique to the category and has been well received.”

With its new offerings, Swaggerty’s has not deviated from its adherence to quality. “From the point of harvest to finished goods and into the freezer, the total time is less than 90 minutes,” Skeoch said. “We coarse-grind our products to produce a breakfast sausage that is not mushy nor rubbery. Our product texture literally crumbles in your mouth. Combine that with our generations-old recipe which provides a flavor that is, ‘quite possibly the best tasting sausage in America!’ The biggest compliment we often get is, ‘This tastes like the sausage I grew up on.’ We have maintained our exacting standards and purposely avoid any changes to the quality of our products. We only use primal cuts of pork, never adding any trim or fillers to our products.”

In speaking with Grocery Insight last fall, Ben Warren, Retail Marketing Manager with Pederson’s Natural Farms, shared his insights on where the com- pany could be focusing in 2023. “We’ve noticed some kind of complacence in the various categories: dinner sausages, breakfast sausages, the breakfast meats and bacon where there’s opportunity, where maybe some of the competitors have not necessarily seen possibilities and acted on them yet,” he said.

For this year, “we’re looking to start some new fun things we haven’t done before and work in some new markets as it pertains to sausage,” Warren added.

On the nutritional value front, Alicia Baker, Director of Marketing for North Country Smokehouse, said suppliers have been resting on their laurels. “The sausage category is in need of innovation, primarily in the better-for-you food space,” she said. “It’s challenging for consumers to find humanely raised and organic offerings, even in the more traditional recipes that lead the category. Other categories are more advanced in terms of sustainability and the sausage category tails a bit. It would be great to see the category advance with more humane and environmentally savvy product innovation.”

Baker’s comments precede the US Supreme Court’s ruling last month that upheld California’s Prop 12, a 2008 ballot measure approved by more than 62 percent of voters that bans the sale of pork in the state from anywhere in the country that uses extremely confined gestation crates to hold pregnant pigs— an arguably inhumane practice used in modern pork production.

The decision puts commodity pork in a tight spot, but suppliers like Niman Ranch are leading the way. “Everything we do is centered around our four pillars, which are great taste, supporting small US family farmers, agricultural sustainability and animal care,” said Kay Cornelius, VP of Retail Sales. “We know those are important to consumers and so we will create products whether they be in the right portion size or in the right format, convenience items, we will make sure all our packaged products are convenient and so forth and that, combined with our steadfast pillars, that creates value in an inflationary time. That supports the retailer offering

what we have to offer.”

Earlier in 2023, Niman Ranch unveiled its premium Iberian Duroc pork program but there is more. “In our regular Niman Ranch pork line, we have a robust prepared bacon ham sausage, all the things that come off that pig that you then make into something else, like bacon, ham and sausage. So, we are also currently launching some new pork items. We have some of the best sellers according to SPINS data in the sausage category with our sweet Italian or hot Italian and apple gouda sausage but consumers always want variety. So we have launched a new smoked bratwurst and a Bavarian style bratwurst, both in the bratwurst category, but our shoppers can now choose between the two and really find something delightful in the category, something different than their main space smoked sausage.”

Between pickled sausages and beer bratwursts, Pederson’s Natural Farms has kept options fresh for its partners and consumers. The dexterity to be able to try new things goes back to the company’s vertical integration. “We’ve invested heavily into that vertical integration,” Warren said. “We’ve grown some more farms with that. Additional challenges are carcass utilization—being able to utilize the whole animal appropriately and be able to move those things. The opportunities that have come from those challenges is like we get to work in some new markets and disrupt some established markets and come in with some new things. It gives us the opportunity to think outside the box. Get a little out of our wheelhouse. As people change their tastes and want to eat more naturally and healthier, we need to make one of these in the natural version.”

Baker with North Country Smokehouse looks ahead. “At the end of the day there’s big changes happening in the food system for the better, and navigating those changes in a way that helps everyone succeed is at the center of our relationships. Our customers can see and feel that, and it makes it easier for them to put their trust and confidence in us and lean on us to help build their better-for-you sausage offering.”