Retail Marketing of Meats: Agencies of Distribution, Methods of Merchandising, and Operating Expenses and Profits

Excerpts from the report: The retail meat trade is less routine in character than the trade in other foodstuffs, and the dealer requires both extended experience and thorough study of the business in order to achieve reasonable success and to meet his responsibilities to customers and to the general public. Three characteristics of fresh meat are instrumental in making the problems of retailing difficult. (1) Meat is highly perishable and must be held at low temperatures or be sold promptly. (2) The difficulty of precise standardization and the lack of understanding of quality by the average consumer, and in some measure by dealers. (3) Lack of homogeneity and uniformity in value. In this investigation a complete personal canvass was made from January to August, 1920, of 28 cities and of the rural districts of 8 counties. Information was obtained from dealers regarding their experience, previous occupation, nationality, and the general character of their business as to permanency, type of store, class of business, volume of sales, grade of meats sold, advertising and accounting methods, sanitary conditions, character of the locality, and certain other items serving to give a general picture of the trade in these representative districts and thereby of the entire country.