The Poultry Boom
US - Food inflation is taking its toll everywhere from high-end restaurants to megamarketers like Sara Lee. Higher prices for essential inputs like milk and beef (along with the weak dollar) are chopping profits and tamping down growth in consumer demand.But there's one sector of the food world where the sky isn't falling: the chicken economy. The companies that buy, process, and peddle chicken parts are doing quite well. While many foods are getting more expensive, chicken seems to be getting cheaper. And while food fads come and go, chicken consumption has been rising consistently.
Chicken businesses are clucking about their stellar performance. Buffalo Wild Wings, a 300-store wings chain (based, naturally, in Minneapolis), pre-announced higher earnings on Jan. 10. Earnings for the quarter were projected at as much as 50 percent above expectations because sales rose smartly and because "chicken wing prices average $1.30 per pound—lower than the originally anticipated $1.40 per pound."
27 January 2005
1 minute read
