Carnes ViBa has begun to market cuts of meat in an unconventional format for this product: vending machines.
Ricardo Moreno, the company’s director of operations and sales, comments that the idea arose from a business trip made by the sales team to Japan, a country where these vending machines are used to market different foods, as well as snacks, sweets or soft drinks.
After maturing the idea, the meatpacker finally decided to install 20 machines in various points of sale in Monterrey, Nuevo León. The first two already operate in shopping centers in San Nicolás de los Garza and Escobedo, one of which operates 24 hours. The company’s idea is to install the rest of the vending machines in housing units, bus stations and airports.
In each of these machines, Carnes ViBa sells 80 pieces of meat, from five varieties of cuts: 800-gram cowboy, 400-gram porterhouse, 340-gram rib eye and New York, as well as 510-gram fillet, packaged in a individual.
Moreno believes that the new sales format will help him further position his products in the market. “The presence of the brand is important. We do not do this (the installation of the machines) by sales volume, because 20 machines will move a small number of packages of meat in proportion to the total production, but we are interested in the consumer knowing us end,” he declares.
With this first deployment, in one of the main consumer markets for cuts of meat in the country, the company wants to identify some behaviors, such as hours of influx and demand, data that it will use to fine-tune its expansion towards Mexico City and Guadalajara.
So far, they have found that most purchases are made after 10:00 p.m., and that there are days when the first purchase is made around 5:00 a.m.
“The number of units (for total deployment) will depend on the results in Monterrey. This is going to help us determine how many machines we need for the other states,” says Moreno without revealing the investment amount.
In 2021, the average consumption of beef in the country was 15 kilograms per person, which places Mexico in fifth place in the world ranking, according to data from the Mexican Meat Council (Comecarne).
