Last year this time, you were first introduced to my blog Millennial Musings as a guest blog, and since then I’ve penned a full year of blogs. I continue to be humbled and amazed at all the kind notes I receive via email, on LinkedIn or in person at conferences. I can’t say thank you enough to all the readers out there.

I thought this thirteenth blog on the thirteenth would be a good opportunity to look back at what has happened in meat over the last twelve months since I started my blog.

Naturally, I turned to Google to see what was trending with meat over the past year (11.12.17-11.12.18). I did a quick search for the term ‘meat’ on Google trends and found this:

Top Related Search Queries (based on search volume)

Meat market
Chicken meat
Meat recipes
Red meat
Meat sauce

In this list there was nothing out of the ordinary if you will, but when I toggled to look at the top rising related search inquires, I became surprised.

Top Rising Related Search Queries (based on search percent increase)

Monster hunter world lump of meat
Mhw lump of meat
Yulin dog meat festival 2018
Beyond meat sausage
Beyond meat ingredients

Instead of you having to go look up the top two searches (like I did), I’m going to give you the answer, so #spoileralert. The first two are inquiries about a game called Monster Hunter and how to find a lump of meat within the game, which appears to be some sort of power coin or token. The third rising query is about a festival in China that encourages the consumption of the dog meat. But, it’s the last two top meat related rising search queries that caught my eye and should yours too. The two inquiries related to the meat alternative company Beyond Meat.

While the search volume is low relative to the top related search queries for meat, they are rising. In my opinion, this indicates interest among a broader group of consumers which was a shocker for me. We know there is a loud vocal minority when it comes to animal rights. Additionally, you will see spikes in search when an animal welfare topic comes up, so my perception was that a vocal minority is leading the charge on the meat alternative bandwagon (I even talk about this in a previous blog) and I didn’t think a sustained related rising search query would be the result of my quick search.

So, if after twelve months of collected search data, Beyond Meat is still the #1 rising related topic to meat, it’s probably not going down any time soon. The best we can do is prepare for the change and strategize accordingly. So, have you done your research to understand the changes that are coming? Are you equipped to fight for traditional meat’s share in 2019?

This industry has made strides over the past year, and I’m confident will continue to evolve over the next year. As the holidays approach I wish us all good luck.

Anniversary musings

Join for free* to continue reading.