An article regarding Coles possibily making instore butchers redundant.
A nearby Coles ditched both the meat department and the deli months ago and only sells pre-packed items, and both the revamped Coles and the new Woolies in the Cairns Central Shopping Centre only sell pre-packed meat.
The meat department manager at another nearby Coles tried to tell me a few years ago that there is no such breed of cattle as Angus, and only cattle from some southern property named Angus are actually Angus beef.
The majority of items on display in the meat section in Coles are all pre-packed, and many are also cryovaced or otherwise sealed, including the mince, the sausages, the steaks, and even the âpretend meat productsâ
The only thing I see the meat department employees doing at Coles or Woolies is wheeling out heavy trolleys stacked with cartons of pre-packed products and placing the contents on the shelves.
It is a vast cry from our local Supa IGA where almost all of the meat department items are prepared and packaged instore and customers can request meat to order like the âolden daysâ.
Interesting. Our Coles still employs butchers. I sometimes get them to dice up some chuck for me if theres none already out on the shelf. They are behind the shelves/fridges chopping, dicing, carving.
Woolworths âstreamlinedâ their meat department some time ago, and the quality of their prepacked red meat immediately noticeably declined. The chicken is OK though. The butcher shop staff were not happy at the time and those remaining still arenât. My local Woolies still has a small inhouse butcher counter which is generally OK for quality, although the quantity/range is limited.
Westfield installed a fancy dedicated butcher/fast food shop opposite Woolies. It has seen three tenants go bust since it opened a few years ago, combined with long periods of no occupancy and hence no rent for Westfield!.
Nearly all of us are used to this common layout with fresh meat, chicken, seafood, F&V retailers located close to the big supermarket entrances. Itâs hard to see how these small businesses can survive against the big supermarkets. These can offer many low cost volume backed specials, long overwhelming displays with the appearance of variety, personal choice, all offering the convenience of grab and move on to entice the shopper. One stop shopping and checkout.
The thought of having to follow up at the specialty butcher, seafood etc, with the ice cream melting in the trolley might be too much for many. Itâs been a frequent point of discussion when we have been shopping together for the whole family, two trolleys in tow. Itâs the allure of the supermarket fir a customer choosing which packed cuts vs the unwanted choice of the butcher of the hidden chops hidden under the prime display samples. Some shoppers are more assertive than others. Some butchers play these games - short term gain for longer term - no customers.
We shop at the local butcher in our small shopping area, because itâs convenient, and we can get exactly the cut or quantity over the counter. The nearest big super market is in the next town.
The shopping center near me , Altona Central , has a Coles New World complete with butcher and bakery .Outside Coles in the Mall there is a Hot Bread Shop that you have to que up to be served , a butcher nearby who is doing a thriving trade a green grocer that is usually packed to rafters with shoppers , a Deli that does brisk business and a fish monger . Goes to show that good product line and service are appreciated ,
Unfortunately when Coles New World opened up in Pier St Altona the 3 green grocers and 3 butcher shops we had soon closed down mores the pity .
No real surprise. Our local Coles has only been selling prepacked meat for quite some time now and the next closest Coles removed both the butchersâ work area and the deli displays, and replaced both with prepacked meat and deli items.
The fresh produce staff now do the meat and deli markdowns.
This suggests the prepackaged meat products at Coles may come from far far away. How old is the product on the shelf? Does Coles have a packed date on their meat products, or just a use by date?
I wonât question the use of the fresh produce dept to manage the prepackaged meat products.
Being not so young supermarkets using âfreshâ resonates with an informal or slang innuendo. IE the marketing department are just trying it on to see how far they can get you to go.
Our local Coles gave up in house butchers a while ago. Everything is prepackaged and has been for a while. While the experience in FNQ and similarly remote locales may be different we have never had âstaleâ meat from our Coles. Our biggest gripe is some weeks it rivals the best butchery and others it appears to have been hacked by a newbie.
I had equally bad experiences with the local butchers from time to time. Our Woolies still has an in house butcher that sometimes is a hit, but most times what is in the vacuum packed pre packaged product appears to be clearly better.
6 of one, half dozen of the other, in the end probably deuce save for the ability to exactly customise a purchase, and all seem variable. Surprisingly the least variable IME are the vacuum packed Woolies meats. YMMV.
Much of the meat in supermarkets is prepacked centrally now. I am surprised Coles as taken so long to make this move. The others will not take too long to follow.
Prepacked meats are likely to be âfresherâ and less denatured/degraded than fresh meat cuts. The packing used is modified atmosphere or shrink type packaging which is known to retain freshness and reduce the rate of degradation over time. It can also provide a longer shelf life as a result.
Meats also usually came from the same meat processors as there are a limited number of abattoirs in Australia. Abattoirs in the past have had contractual relationships with the supermarkets for supply of meat and meat products. So irrespective of pre-packaged or cut in store, the distance travelled would most likely be the same.
Vacuum packed meat certainly has a good shelf life unfrozen.
Looking to@Fred123 back door there is Stuart Abattoir Townsville owned by JBS and a number of small regional operators - Tolga on the tablelands, Tully and Ayr.
My previous reply was not intended as a cheap shot at Coles meat quality or condition on the shelf. It was intended as a rejection of âfreshâ as a reliable indicator of the packaged age or food miles of the product.
For our local butcher we know the beef, pork and chicken products are from the Darling Downs. 200-300 km on the road. The sheep stuff varies with how the season is.
The instore butchers might be gone but it appears that Coles is committed to preserving some of the old butchersâ traditions such as always putting the rubbish under the lamb leg and loin chops in a pack of half lamb and putting the daggy chops under the prime chops in a tray of lamb loin chops.
I bought a couple of marked down boned out cryovaced beef shins the other day and we cut them up to cook our Beef & Guinness Stew today.
Each pack looks like a pair of cryovaced lamb shanks but is a beef shin beboned and cut in half
The meat looked great through the front of the packaging but the other side of each piece had plenty of sinew, gristle and fat which could not be seen before unpacking.
I worked at a place called be Campbell meat providor. I saw the packaging for Coles woolworths and aldi. It was like a huge production line. Only lasted a day. Shocking place. Its only to please the supermarkets. So much if you are old-style worker and told to re deploy⊠Its all business to them.
