MacFarlane Pheasants sells pheasant across the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Canada. Just a few years ago, MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. had a huge inventory of thigh meat. Huge inventory meant about 35,000 pounds of delicious thigh meat sat in cold storage waiting to be used! To get the inventory moving, we offered thigh meat at the lowest price possible. We passed the promotion to distributors, offered special pallet pricing, and sold the meat on our retail site. Many buyers took advantage of the deals.
We came up with some creative ideas in our Food Product’s division to use the inventory that didn’t sell. The new products that we developed were four different kinds of brats and three kinds of snack sticks. These products have become huge sellers because they are so delicious! Several retailers, like Woodman’s, began selling our products, and soon we solved the thigh meat problem. After all of this success, we then became concerned that we might not have enough thigh meat to keep up with demand.
Then in 2020, at the start of the Covid Pandemic, our sales slumped. One of our biggest distributors purchased breast meat for cruise lines. Cruises were not moving, and neither was breast meat. Without the production of breast meat, we were unable to produce thigh meat. Most distributors, who still had a market, were buying whole pheasants.
The future is looking brighter. Vaccines and other health measures give us hope that Covid will slow down, and sales have picked up again. So has the need for thigh meat, so we put together a deal for distributors: For every pound of breast meat purchased, half a pound of thigh meat can be purchased. This opportunity has been very popular with many of our distributors who have customers who use thigh meat to make their own sausages and brats.
We are continuing to produce MacFarlane brats and snack sticks from thigh meat, also. What this blip has shown us, is that when situations arise, MacFarlane Pheasants’ employees find solutions. Visit our website for fabulous pheasant deals!