WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - After COVID-19 precautions led to a beef shortage throughout the United States causing high cost and demand, experts in the industry say prices are back to a level that can make customers and retailers happy.
“I’ve been doing this almost 50 years. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that, but when the prices go up, they always come down,” explained Dave Jagler, owner of TownLine Market. “We tell people, ‘No, don’t fill your freezer, don’t buy more than what you need right now because prices will come down.’”
According to Jagler, those prices are as low as they were before the pandemic, adding it has been one of the butcher shop’s best years ever.
Tammy Vaassen is the executive director for the Wisconsin Beef Council. She explains the challenges the supply and demand put on those in the industry.
“On the beef processing plant side, they were working to ensure worker health and safety so either having to slow down their lines or close plants to kind readjust to what was happening within the plants to ensure worker health and safety,” Vaassen said. “Then we were, of course, seeing shifts in demand from the restaurant level over to the retail level. As consumers were spending most of their time at home, they were going to the grocery store more often and, of course, not visiting restaurants.”
Jagler says even though restaurants are now reopened, business at TownLine is still booming.
“The restaurants have reopened, but they’re still not seeing the crowds that they want to see,” Jagler said. “The inside eating, people still aren’t doing, so they’re still relying on their own cooking at home and it has been awesome for us.”
That wasn’t always the case, however, as Jagler admits the shortage in the supply chain did present some challenges.
“You could still get what you wanted but you had to pay for it,” Jagler explained. “Some things were double, if not triple the price, and you couldn’t mark it up as much as you wanted, so the margin was a little bit tighter, and people still bought, that’s what the problem was. The meat companies had no reason to lower the prices. Then, finally, the demand subsided just a little bit and then prices started to come back down.”
Back down to a price that benefits shops like TownLine and the customers that frequent them.
“It’s always a benefit,” Jagler says. “We can pass the savings on to our customers. They’re happy, we’re happy. I don’t want to sell somebody a ribeye for 18-dollars a pound when now I can sell it for 12-dollars a pound. We want them to be happy and us to be happy.”
“We’re very optimistic,” said Vaassen, “that the trend will continue for stabilization of pricing.”
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