Classic Main Courses Gaining
Brand Recognition Nationwide

By Colleen Schreiber

ALMA, Kan. — More and more companies across the country are attempting to cash in on value-added products that provide "meal solutions" to modern consumers. Convenience is the name of the game.

Flint Hills Foods LLC, with their Classic Main Courses modeled after the old-time, home-cooked "classic" meals that our mothers and grandmothers once prepared, has made tremendous strides in the last two years. Their marketing outlets have grown from just a couple of hundred to the point where their product is now sold in more than 3000 grocery stores in 15 to 18 states across the nation.

Flint Hills president Bernie Hansen attributes that phenomenal growth in large part to his partner, Koch Beef Company.

"We didn’t have the ability to get there," Hansen remarks. "Koch did."

Koch Beef, interested in expanding into the value-added market, learned what Flint Hills Foods was doing. After lengthy discussions beginning in early 1997, a joint marketing venture between Koch Beef, a division of Koch Agriculture Company, and Concept Foods, Hansen’s production company, was formed on April 1.

Hansen’s company owns the research and development and production, Koch owns the cattle, and together the two own the marketing. Koch Beef supplies the cattle to the Concept Foods processing facility in sub-primals. Additional trimming and the cooking prepartion are handled at the Wamego plant.

A newly formed company, Flint Hills Foods LLC, is the joint marketing company and handles the selling of the product.

"We have an excellent relationship with Koch," Hansen says. "They (Koch) have most of the money and all of the brains.

"I knew this would take an awfully big horse to make it roll. Over the years I’ve had offer after offer, but I’m as bad as the cattle boys. I’m independent, and I want to stay independent. The relationship has worked for both parties, and without their help we could never have gotten to the point we’re at today," he remarks.

Originally the line, then called Minute Main Courses, consisted of one pork item and three beef items sold in two different size packages. The first products, Hansen says, took several years to develop and get to the marketing stage, but now that he understands the system, his company can generally roll out a new product in four or five months. He believes their cooking and portion control experience gives them an advantage over others when it comes to developing new products.

Flint Hills Foods LLC now has six products available in their line. They include beef tips and gravy, pot roast, shredded beef with barbecue sauce, pork roast, shredded pork with smokey barbecue sauce, and chicken with marinara sauce. Two or three more products, Hansen says, are ready to come out in the near future, and they have another six to eight in the hopper.

The most recent addition to the line was the poultry item. Hansen says they’ve been criticized by some in the beef industry for that move, but he says retailers forced their hand.

"We continued to hear from the retailer that poultry outsells beef two to one in their stores," Hansen explained, "and the research we got back from our consumers showed that the consumers considered the chicken product higher quality, more healthy, less fat. It had the things that consumers want in today’s product.

"We had a couple of retailers tell us that they wouldn’t take on our product until we offered a poultry item," he continued. "Others told us that we had to have a poultry item just to get trial on the line. Once they tried the poultry product and liked it, that would encourage them to want to try the other products.

"That’s what we were told, at least," Hansen says. "We haven’t proven that theory yet."

Whatever it takes, Hansen is determined to get "trial" on his products. His goal is for 25 percent of the meat case to be made up of these kinds of convenience-minded products.

"We need to get these new products out in front of everyone. There’s several brands of green beans, hams, etc., and car companies introduce a new model every year to keep the consumer’s interest. We need to expand the category in the beef section," he stresses.

Flint Hills Foods was founded in 1969. The company began researching and developing their value-added precooked line in the early 1990s and they’ve been changing and perfecting it ever since, Hansen says. They had five years of consumer input studies accumulated before Koch Beef came on the scene. They did in-store surveys and an 800 number is printed on the label for customers to call. The response from that, Hansen says, has been "beyond our wildest dreams.

"We learned that consumers are extremely willing to give us their input, and lots of times their feedback doesn’t coincide with what the retailers are telling us they think will sell," Hansen contends.

Flint Hills has utilized this information to make changes and improve the salability of the product. For instance, one consumer questioned why they called the product line "Minute Main," when it took more than a minute to prepare. That resulted in the name change to Classic Main Courses.

They’ve improved their label and packaging, as well. Now the product is packaged in a box that slips out of a sleeve so the consumer can view the product.

"Consumers tell us that our package is fine and the label as well, because it carries so much information," Hansen says. "Retailers, on the other hand, think we need a package with a window so the product can be viewed."

They’ve had customers send them recipe suggestions or different ways to use the product in a meal. Flint Hills Foods intends in the future to compile these recipe suggestions from consumers and include them in the meat case alongside their product.

When Hansen first began working on the marketing aspect, experts told him that his product fit only certain age groups and married couples who both work, period. Hansen has contended all along that the product fits the gamut, and he has proof to back that statement.

He has received numerous correspondence and feedback from the old to the young and several ages in between. One letter came from a man who wrote that his wife’s 92 year-old mother loves the pot roast.

"She’s active, but she didn’t want to have the family over because she didn’t want to go to the trouble of cooking for a big family. Now she has them over and feeds them my pot roast," Hansen says.

Another letter came from a 77 year-old couple who are living in assisted care in Tennessee. They have a small refrigerator in their room, and when they found the Flint Hills product, they started having friends over for dinner.

"This product fits today’s lifestyle," Hansen declares. "A kid who comes home after school could eat Sugar Puffs three days a week or he could have a barbecue beef sandwich which he can fix himself. College students can prepare it in their dorm room when they don’t have food service on Sunday nights."

Hansen has proof that the brand is already gaining recognition. Most recently he received a phone call from a customer in Florida who had tried Flint Hills Foods product, but when another brand came into the meat case he gave it a try. The customer called to tell Hansen that he wouldn’t be trying that brand again, that he was sticking with the Flint Hills Food line.

From the beginning, Flint Hills believed it was best to keep their products flexible but simple. For instance, they haven’t added any side entrees like noodles, broccoli or potatoes to any of their items, but the pot roast could be used in a handful of different ways, Hansen says.

"Our concept from day one has been, ‘we’ll cook the main entree and you can add whatever side dishes you want.’ You can do some additional cooking, or you can simply have a barbecue beef sandwich or roast beef sandwich. We purposely used a mild barbecue sauce so that it wouldn’t be too spicy. Those who want more spice can add their own," he explains.

Flint Hills Foods was in expansion mode even before the joint merger, and building and remodeling continue today. The plant at Wamego was redone and is now a fully approved, 100 percent HACCP plant. They more than doubled their cooking process capabilities. That, along with other modifications, has made the plant extremely efficient, Hansen says. They’re also in the process of installing HACCP in their Alma plant.

Since Flint Hills Foods teamed up with Koch, Hansen has changed the production line three times. One of the biggest production changes came when they made all the packages even weight. That change allowed the product to be scannable at the checkout counter, which in turn allows Flint Hills Foods to track the product and determine how it’s selling and in which stores it’s selling best, Hansen explains.

Flint Hills Foods uses only Select graded whole muscles, specifically the chuck, in their product. The reason is that consumers reported time and time again that they want a lean product. A carcass grading Select fits that niche, but extra trimming at their own plant is necessary before the product goes through the cooking process.

Reception from the retail sector has been positive, Hansen says, but he adds that the battle continues over store placement of the product.

"We don’t have the total answer on the best approach to get the product to the consumer, but we’ve contended all along that the product should be offered in the fresh meat case."

He says they continue to struggle with retailers who believe these prepared convenience-oriented meals belong in the deli.

"Consumers simply need to be made aware of one particular place where they can go to find these types of products, but that place," he insists, "isn’t the deli."

Some grocery chains, Hansen adds, are beginning to put in a "heat and eat" section for this particular category of new products, which is becoming known as the "seven minute" category. Retailers haven’t yet experienced much volume in these new categories to impress them, Hansen says, but like him, he insists retailers know this "seven minute" category is the wave of the future.

The Classic Main Courses meal for two to three people retails for $4.99 to $5.99. Consumers, he says, are willing to pay for convenience. Because it’s a finished product, Hansen believes there shouldn’t much mark-up at the retail level, but Flint Hills Foods has no way of controlling that.

The company is geared up to run a considerable amount through their plants, but he can’t reveal the exact production numbers. Taking tonnage out of the chuck market and adding value to it rather than grinding, he says, will help counter the decline in demand for beef’s end cuts. The product responds well to advertising, and Hansen says he’s confident that in time the demand for these kinds of products will in turn filter back down to producers in terms of more dollars for the raw product.

"The beef industry must focus on market share instead of arguing about such things as mandatory price reporting, labeling and checkoffs," he stresses. "If they think labeling is such a sales advantage for us, why are there so many Hondas and Toyotas? Consumers obviously don’t care about where the product comes from, or else this complaint would be coming from the consumers and not the producers."

Hansen is pleased with the success his company has enjoyed thus far, but he’s far from satisfied. "This is a changing deal and we’ll continue to make changes and improve our product line based on feedback from our consumers," he says.