Retail butchers shutting up shop: Fewer shoppers buying unpackaged meat

The number of shoppers visiting butchers each year has fallen from 5.4 million pre-covid to 4.7m in 2022, as Victorian butcher shops close their doors for good.

Gourmet butchers and those next to supermarkets are doing well, but not so the average meat retailer. Picture Yuri Kouzmin

More Victorian butchers shops are closing their doors for good, with Primesafe reporting a steady decline in licence numbers, from 927 in 2017-18 to 845 by June 30 last year.

The Primesafe findings reflect Meat and Livestock Australia’s research, which found that while butcher numbers nationally may be incrementally declining, it doesn’t appear to be equally spread across all butcher stores.

Butchers next to supermarkets and those who “offer something above and beyond the basic red meat available in sealed packets in the supermarkets” were thriving, the MLA reported.

“It might sound paradoxical that more expensive butchers are doing well because price is such a huge driver of meat purchasing. But customers are happy to pay more if they feel that they are getting something they can’t get for less in a supermarket.

“That could be as simple as ‘quality’ or as complex as gourmet culinary expertise.”

Once inside butchers’ stores, beef shoppers spend 1.93 times more per trip compared to supermarkets.

But across the entire market, research conducted by Nielsen Homescan found the number of shoppers visiting butchers each year had fallen from 5.4 million pre-Covid, to 4.7m in 2022.

Of those shoppers who visit their local butcher, their frequency of shopping has also dropped from a pre-Covid average of 7.6 times a year to 7.3 times last year.

High prices for beef have forced down the volume of domestic retail sales of fresh beef by 6.4 per cent and lamb by 6 per cent in the 12 months to November last year.

While the volume of beef sold has declined, shoppers overall are still spending 2.7 per cent more on beef.

However retail spend on lamb appears to be far more elastic, declining by 1.2 per cent overall.