Foul wind blows chicken sales off course
Published:Monday | May 11, 2020 | 12:07 AM
IN THE remote, rural district of Mexico, St Catherine, as the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic hits home, one family, in its determination to survive, is pooling resources, rethinking its business strategies and innovating to take advantage of any opportunities for success in these challenging times.
Sheldon Raymond, who operates a poultry farm with sister-in-law and business partner Melonie Lee, agonised last Tuesday over the decision to slaughter more than 200 chickens the next day, given the fact that he was already short of storage space.
“Right now we have close to 200 (chickens) on fridge, another 250 that is due for killing now, and there is another 400 that is coming up in about two weeks’ time, so it’s a whole lot of chickens and we’ve just had to be innovating,” he told The Gleaner.
The chickens were not spared the last rites.
Lee was off to St Mary, where she had gone to secure a range of fruits, vegetables and ground provisions to add to the banana, plantain, yam, coconut, jackfruit, mango and June plum from the five-acre property. She expanded the delivery service in a bid to boost sales.
The flyer telling people to ‘Tan a Yuh Yaad, We Will Deliver’ offered COVID-19 special deals - whole chicken at $190 per pound, inspected by a public health inspector; cut chicken at $220 a pound; and farm fresh eggs at $650 a flat.
Deliveries, free of charge within St Catherine and Kingston, are done on Fridays and Saturdays; also, discounts are offered on volumes of over 50 pounds. Circulated via WhatsApp, it had gain some traction to the extent that customers were asking for an expansion, to include items such as banana, yam and vegetables.
This initiative was inspired by innovation born out of desperation, given the recent lockdown of St Catherine, has seen demand for chicken meat fall drastically.
IN A BIND
The fallout in demand has been compounded by the fact that most farmers have a ready market for their chicken and so stagger production to ensure year-round supplies and have limited storage capacity, and, therefore, find themselves in a bind at such times. It is a problem with which Raymond can identify.
”In our fridge now, there are still birds from the last two crops that we killed, which is what we still supplying from, and we have a crop to start killing, like, tomorrow.”
More than a week ago, the advertising innovation paid off to the extent that about 150 pounds of chicken was sold, representing the highest sales uptick in some time. It can’t compare, though, to the days when one man would take 800 birds – about 1,000 pounds of chicken – which he would distribute to supermarkets and elsewhere.
Raymond, who is part-owner in The Door Factory in May Pen, Clarendon, has seen his staff complement fall to 25 per cent because most of his raw material is sourced from China. With that market closed, inventories have not been restocked in some time, leaving the store with a limited range of goods to sell.
But, COVID-19 has not been all gloom for the businessman-turned-marketer, who has benefited from the misfortunes of a farmer in Linstead who, caught between rising feed costs and falling egg sales, was faced with the dilemma of having to kill some of the birds or giving them away.
Having benefited from the farmer’s kindness, Raymond converted a section of his fowl coop, which before only housed broilers, and separate them from the layers. He has since embarked on the construction of a new coop to house them.
With the combination of hard work and innovation being put in by his family, and their commitment to stick it out for the long haul, he is convinced that their business will continue to grow, but there is one opportunity that this pastor of Berwick Gospel Lighthouse Church will not be party to.
“It’s ridiculous, everybody is hiking prices. My faith will not allow me to do so. During the week, I am a businessman, and on the weekend I am a pastor by profession, and that faith will not allow me to seize that opportunity to ‘kill’ the people with prices,” Raymond said.