High quality, affordable U.S. beef took center stage in Guatemala Thursday (J...

High quality, affordable U.S. beef took center stage in Guatemala Thursday (June 8), as U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) held a media conference to kick off a three-month marketing campaign to heighten consumer awareness and excitement about U.S. beef.

With a population over 11 million, Guatemala is the largest country in Central America. And as standard of living increases, foodservice and tourism are expanding to create new opportunities for American goods, such as U.S. beef.

“This consumer awareness campaign is one part of a four-phase program USMEF has developed to make high quality, grain fed U.S. beef affordable for Guatemalan consumers,” Ricardo Vernazza-Paganini, USMEF director for Central and South America, told newspaper and television reporters at the five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Guatemala City.

The media conference was opened by Steve Huete, USDA Agricultural Counselor for Guatemala and included representatives from the importing company participating in the USMEF plan.

Additional media coverage includes television advertisements featuring a popular cooking show chef talking about U.S. beef cuts and dishes and news releases on activities issued to the media each week to continue generating excitement.

Billboards, materials such as posters and menu inserts and U.S. beef samplings in participating restaurants further help draw consumer attention to U.S. beef items.

The economy in Guatemala has improved in the last decade as purchasing power has increased 376 percent, expanding the variety of goods consumers can purchase.

With the signing of the Central American Free Trade Agreement last year, eliminating tariffs on U.S. prime and choice cuts and reduce tariffs on other U.S. beef products over a 15-year period, U.S. beef is becoming more affordable for Guatemalan consumers.

“U.S. beef will always cost more than regional beef due to higher production costs, but we intend to take advantage of U.S. beef’s competitive advantages: superior quality, taste and tenderness,” Vernazza-Paganini said.

Guatemalans generally prefer beef to pork and believe local products are superior to imports. In addition, higher production and import costs mean high-end U.S. beef items, such as rib-eye, tenderloin and strip loin, can be out of the price range of mid-range consumers.

“Last year we saw opportunities in fine-dining restaurants where increases in tourism expanded demand for U.S. beef,” said Vernazza-Paganini. “But tourism is only a part of total consumption. To really grow the market, we needed to concentrate on Guatemalan consumers.”

USMEF started the first phase of its approach by translating the checkoff-funded “Beef Value Cuts: New Cuts for the New Consumer” guide into Spanish to use as an educational tool for chefs and foodservice operators so they could see how underutilized U.S. beef cuts could be cost effective and how to create favorable dishes with those cuts.

In the second phase, USMEF identified a business partner in Guatemala that imports and sells a sizable amount of U.S. beef to participate in and support the program.

“Instead of working with several competing companies, we decided to work with just one importer,” said Vernazza-Paganini. “This helped us create a strong sense of project ownership with the company, which now has great deal of loyalty to our efforts in expanding U.S. beef in Guatemala.”

A two-day seminar for 60 sales, marketing and production workers of the company provided education on U.S. beef attributes, hands-on cutting methods used to create the underutilized cuts and cooking ideas for each cut.

“By providing training to the importing company on how to fabricate underutilized cuts, they are able to create more affordably priced U.S. beef items for consumers while still maintaining a profit margin,” said Vernazza-Paganini. “This increases the importer’s willingness to sell U.S. beef and creates products average consumers can afford to purchase.”

In the third phase, USMEF worked with the importer to identify 20 companies that operate casual dining restaurants attracting middle and upper income consumers. Using underutilized U.S. beef cuts creates more affordable, yet still desirable, dishes for a wider range of consumers.

Antonio Vidal, an executive chef at Ranch 616 in Austin, Texas, who has worked in the Central American region before, visited 50 Guatemalan restaurants training chefs how to prepare underutilized U.S. beef cuts into flavorful dishes. Vidal demonstrated many recipes the chefs could taste and spent a half-day at each restaurant to ensure they felt comfortable cooking with U.S. beef.

“Learning how to cook with U.S. beef was an important step since restaurant chefs play a key role in creating dishes consumers will enjoy,” said Vernazza-Paganini. “Having a master chef demonstrate techniques and answer questions gave the chefs a head start in creating dishes with U.S. beef.”

The United States’ discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in an imported dairy cow in December 2003 closed the U.S. beef market in Guatemala temporarily, but it then reopened less than a year later to boneless and bone-in U.S. beef.

U.S. beef and beef variety meat exports to Guatemala through the first three months of this year are up 24 percent in volume at 122 metric tons and 180 percent in value at $485,000.

The U.S. Meat Export Federation is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry and is funded by USDA, exporting companies, and the beef, pork, lamb, corn, sorghum and soybean checkoff programs.

– USMEF –