The consensus among most of the competitors in the meat snack categories of the American Association of Meat Processors’ (AAMP) annual American Cured Meat Championship is that the growth in the demand for meat sticks and jerky products is on the rise and has been growing at a steady pace over the past decade or more. Grand champions in the two jerky categories (whole muscle and restructured) of the 2024 American Cured Meats Championships (ACMC) agree that meat snacks have become an important part of their business.
Ryan Schmidt, owner of Schmidt’s Meat Market, based in Nicollet, Minn., said his company’s success as the 2024 Grand Champion in the restructured jerky category wasn’t the company’s first victory since attending AAMP’s annual conference and participating in the ACMC.
While the company makes about 12 different types of snack sticks that are sold at its retail store, that was not one of the categories it competed in this year.
In other categories entries can be more innovative. For example, rules may permit entries to incorporate inclusions, but that isn’t the case in the restructured jerky category. So, Schmidt’s entry was its original recipe, which it regularly produces and sells to customers on a daily basis.
That’s not to say there isn’t some extra time and attention paid to the products that are entered into the competition each year to ensure the colors are spot on and quality issues are addressed.
“We bring in products to the competition that we manufacture, that we sell to our customer base,” Schmidt said, with the goal of those meat snacks being a product that delivers a flavorful and robust eating experience for the judges.
“When we’re developing products and developing flavor profiles, we do have product flavor options that are really subtle, but we also want to offer something that’s a bold statement in your mouth.”
He added that just because Schmidt’s regular restructured jerky is a retail mainstay and an award winner, doesn’t mean the company’s other restructured products that incorporate inclusions, like its hot pepper cheese restructured jerky, as well as its honey barbecue flavored jerky, aren’t wildly popular among customers at its store. The same can be said for the growing demand for its meat sticks (regular and flavored).
“We definitely make products that would fit in both of those categories on the snack stick side,” Schmidt said, “and we do really, really well with our snack stick volume that we produce. But from an ACMC side of things, we just decided to skip that this year.”
Schmidt’s Meat Market has competed for about the past eight years. It was the Grand Champion in the restructured jerky category in 2023 and 2024.
Winning ACMC entries, including Schmidt's jerky, were quickly picked over after the judging process. (Source: Schmidt's Meat Market)Competitive spirit
Extra preparation time and a little TLC are required for some of the other categories of the ACMC, which Schmidt’s also prepares entries for. This year, for example, it entered 15 products in total, including the restructured jerky category. Some of those products required more planning and attention.
“Depending on the product, some of them are prepared a few weeks ahead of time, specifically for the bigger, whole-muscle type products. If you’re in a bacon category, a ham category, a dried beef category, you want that whole-muscle product to take in those flavorings and have time for that whole cure process and flavorings to get distributed throughout the whole muscle.”
On the other hand, Schmidt said just the opposite approach is true of products like meat sticks.
“For those, a week is almost too much ahead of time, especially if it’s got a nice smoke flavor to it,” he said. “The closer we can manufacture those to when the actual product competition is, the better. We’ve found that aroma and flavor is much more enhanced the closer you make it to the competition.”
To create Schmidt’s award-winning restructured jerky, the company starts with meat blocks supplied by its distributors. The blocks are first broken down using a mixing-and-grinding process (the plant doesn’t own a bowl chopper) followed by adding ingredients to the mix. For competitions, Schmidt said it isn’t uncommon to let those ingredients meld with the meat overnight, a step not typical of the normal day-to-day production. The mixture then goes through the typical steps of proceeding into a stuffer, which extrudes it onto a screen before going through the smoking and cooking process.
“There’s really not much of a difference between what we do for our everyday product versus what we do on the competition side,” Schmidt said.
The success of a product that is entered into a competition like the ACMC is always subjective and some years, the very same product that won the category the year before loses to a less traditional flavor profile or appearance, often due to the personal preference of the judges in a particular year.
“It’s hard to guess what a judge is really looking for,” Schmidt said, “so we just stick to what we do and what we know.”
Booming business
Looking back at the growth in Schmidt’s meat snack category, it’s been easy to judge the popularity among customers.
“There’s no doubt, it’s huge,” Schmidt said.
In the past decade, he said there has been a 70% growth in retail sales of jerky products, including whole muscle and restructured varieties. That translates to processing 20,000 lbs of raw product in 2014, to 33,000 lbs this past year. On the snack stick side of the business the growth has nearly topped 80%, processing 42,000 lbs a decade ago to 76,000 lbs through 2023.
The company isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to innovations in its meat snack offerings. As recently as last year it rolled out its newest flavor of snack stick, which was its honey barbecue.
“That one just took off immediately once we started making it and getting samples out there for our customers. And it’s almost become one of our top sellers in a really short period of time,” Schmidt said.
Regional appeal
Dustin Strickland’s Hattiesburg, Miss.-based family-owned business was started nearly 50 years ago by his grandfather. It was originally operated as a convenience store and barbecue restaurant before evolving into Strick’s Specialty Meats, which includes a retail store and a processing plant.
He and his siblings grew up in the business as it grew and changed, including back when the business focused on catering, operating a barbecue restaurant and for several years transitioning to a deer processing operation only, which came at the cost of the retail and foodservice efforts. More recently, the company has operated as a custom processing plant with a growing retail presence.
Strickland said in the business’ retail segment, meat snack demand has grown exponentially, with an emphasis on one regionally popular product that just happened to be the ACMC’s 2024 grand champion in its category.
“Where we are in the deep South, it’s whole-muscle jerky and really that’s kind of been it,” he said.
That type of product is part of Strick’s DNA, and Strickland recalled when he used to help make beef jerky as a kid, in the back of the family’s restaurant, and sold it to customers in a paper bag.
“There was no expertise involved really at all,” he said, as long as the jerky was hand cut, dried and a little smoky, customers in the area were more than satisfied.
As he got older, Strickland learned more about the broader meat processing industry outside of Hattiesburg, thanks to joining trade associations like AAMP. Strickland also learned about more opportunities in the meat snack segment.
“I got out to see how some of the other plants worked by being involved with AAMP and getting a broader picture of what’s out there, from meat sticks to whole-muscle jerky, restructured jerky and meat bars,” he said, but his customers weren’t exactly quick to embrace something new.
“It was eye opening because restructured jerky down here in the South is like Greek to everybody; they’re like, ‘what is this?’ It’s whole-muscle jerky or nothing,” Strickland said of his core customers. But there was more positive acceptance of the introduction of meat sticks, which were offered to the company’s deer processing customers, and eventually were sold refrigerated in the retail store and still are today. He added, however, that when the shop got innovative and rolled out a line of shelf-stable meat sticks, formulated with shelf-life-enhancing ingredients, like lactic acid, the local customers initially were not keen to the acidity and the newfound tang of the sticks.
“When our demographic got a taste of that, they were like, ‘What is this; is this spoiled or what’s wrong?’ It was just a big change,” Strickland said.
The Strick’s team tapped the brakes on the shelf-stable item and went back to the drawing board to develop a flavor profile that was more mainstream, which meant a lot of trial and error.
“We found ways to kind of combat that acidity, you know with some sweeter flavor, so it wasn’t so potent and then it started to pick up some momentum at retail.”
Those sticks are now sold at about 400 grocery outlets and convenience stores in the region. And Strick’s whole-muscle jerky is only sold at its retail store, including its 2024 Grand Champion Coastal Black Pepper jerky, which features a subtle tropical flavor.
“It’s kind of got a little Caribbean vibe to it, I guess you could say,” Strickland said.
Dustin Strickland and his son, John Sawyer, proudly displayed awards from the 2024 ACMC, including the Grand Champion award for whole-muscle jerky. (Source: Strick's Specialty Meats)Tough love
Strickland said the hand-cut, hickory-smoked product is slightly different tasting than traditional heavy black pepper jerky sold by many companies. Somewhat surprisingly, he said, the winning jerky is decidedly tough in its texture and requires a bit of tugging and plenty of chewing, which is somewhat of a novelty in today’s jerky market.
“There’s so much out there now with tender bites and steak bites and restructured and many are trying to make jerky softer and softer,” Strickland said.
“But at the end of the day, there’s a certain percentage of the population that just wants good old-fashioned jerky — just sliced, smoked jerky.”
He added that previous versions of award-winning whole-muscle jerky the company experimented with had a slightly sweeter flavor and it was more tender than the product it makes today, which uses less sugar.
“As far as mouthfeel, it was a great product, but it was messy — it had a slightly tacky exterior,” Strickland said of the earlier versions of the Coastal Pepper jerky. “It just wasn’t something you could eat in the vehicle without having to wipe your hands on something. And to me, that’s not jerky. It might be a good snack; that’s not jerky. Jerky shouldn’t be messy.”
While appeasing his core customer’s taste for whole-muscle jerky is important, the process is labor intensive and the cost of the raw product is higher than most other items, especially given the current market challenges in the beef industry. As a busy deer processor during the fall and because of the labor heavy process of producing whole-muscle jerky, Strick’s made the decision to no longer make it an offering for its custom processing customers, reserving that product only for sale in its retail store.
At Strick’s, most custom order requests include at least 50% of the meat be processed into meat sticks or summer sausage, with many of those order requests including up to 90% meat snacks and the remaining product including commodity product, such as ground or bulk sausage.
He said many in his community, and hunters in general, prefer meat snacks because they need a quick and convenient source of protein. Customers are involved in kids’ sports and want something that is grab and go. Plus, they want something they can stockpile through the winter and utilize in the spring when kids need snacks to take back to school or for family road trips, ball game trips or even something to snack on during the next hunting trip.
“Snacks that you can eat on the run — that’s been a huge part of our business that we are continuing to grow,” Strickland said.
