Deli Business ‘Say it With Salami’

Feature Article

Say it With Salami

Venerable, varied category offers opportunities for distinguishing deli departments

Whether sliced to order behind the service counter, layered on a prepared sandwich or artfully arranged on a party platter, offered whole in consumer-sized chubs or pre-sliced for grab-and-go convenience, salami is a staple of virtually all deli meat departments.

While salami may never approach the sales volume of ham, turkey and roast beef, the category’s dozens of distinctive variations in taste, texture, size and ethnic heritage make salami a prime category through which deli departments can differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Salami Basics

Although semi-dry cervelats and mortadellas often make their way into broad discussions of salami, purists typically use the term “salami,” plural of the Italian “salame,” to describe highly seasoned air-dried sausages made of uncooked minced pork or beef. Traditionally, “real” salamis are not smoked and share a characteristic fermented flavor.

Beyond their fundamental features, salamis come in a dozens of varieties, distinguished by the type of meat and outer casings used, the coarseness of the grind, the ratio of lean meat to fat, the seasonings used, and the size and shape of the finished product. Most commonly, salamis are made of pork, beef or a combination of pork and beef, but there are varieties made from poultry, game meats, lamb, goat—even donkey and horsemeat in some parts of the world.

Today’s deli may stock bite-sized snack salamis, small chubs for customers to purchase whole, hefty “slicing logs” for the full service counter and, most recently, a growing selection of pre-sliced salamis. Popular varieties of dry salami sold in America’s deli departments include:

• Calabrese—Italian salami, usually all-pork and seasoned with hot peppers
• Cacciatore—small-sized “hunter” salami made of pork or a combination of pork and beef seasoned with black pepper, spices, garlic and dry white wine
• Chorizo—coarsely cut, spicy pork sausage, originating in Spain
• Cotto—a soft or semi-soft salami usually made of beef and pork highly-seasoned with garlic, salt, and black peppercorns
• Felino—from the village of Felino, near Parma, made with finely-ground pork mixed with pure pork fat, salt, pepper and wine cased in pork intestines
• Finocchiona—made with finely-ground pork or beef seasoned with fennel seeds
• Genoa—usually made with all pork, sometimes with beef added, relatively mildly seasoned with garlic, white peppercorns and red wine
• Milano—a very finely-ground mixture of equal parts pork, beef and fat, spiced only with salt, pepper and white wine
• Napoletano—relatively finely-ground lean pork meat mixed with a small quantity of fat and heavily spiced with ground peperoncino and black pepper
• Pepperoni—a hard, dry salami made from beef and pork generously seasoned with black and red pepper
• Sardo—a fiery red-pepper-spiced salami originating in Sardinia
• Sopressata—an all-pork salami, coarsely minced and seasoned with salt, red pepper, garlic and white wine and packed in natural casings

Of these, deli department essentials include a Genoa, a Sopressata and a Milano, according to Lorenza Pasetti, President of St. Louis-based Volpi & Company, Inc., maker of a number of Italian-style salamis.

“Genoa, Sopressata and Calabrese are the standards,” maintains Joanne Varricchione, vice president of marketing for the Casa Italia brand, made in Brampton, Ontario.

Salami Strategies

Looking beyond the popular stand-bys, creative deli department retailers are using strategic salami selections to define who they are and to differentiate their stores.

For Angelo Sgobbo, deli and bakery category manager for A&P’s Food Emporium division, offering numerous ethnic varieties is a priority. “We have products representing all the different countries,” says Sgobbo of the Dobbs Ferry, NY-based chain’s 34 stores in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. “In addition to Italian, we have Spanish, German, Hungarian and French-style varieties”

Food Emporium’s perennial best-seller is Hormel’s Di Lusso brand Genoa Salami. “That’s a brand and a variety everybody knows,” says Sgobbo, “It’s a staple.” The store’s offering both imported and domestically-produced ethnic-style salamis is in keeping with the chain’s reputation for stocking imports.

“We’re known for having lots of imported items in our delis,” notes Sgobbo, who estimates the salami category accounts for between five and eight percent of the chain’s total deli meat sales volume. “We do a fairly good job with the salami chubs flavored on the outside with different herbs,” he adds. “Just in the last month or two, we’ve had a product from Canada—a salami coated in Parmesan cheese—that’s doing pretty well.”

“In fact, our Parmesano Salami is our number one seller, ” notes Michelle Dickens, marketing manager for Freybe Gourmet Foods, a 160-year-old company based in Langley, BC, that makes the product, as well as a Gypsy salami dipped in a blend of spices and a variety coated in pepper. Freybe also manufactures traditional-style Italian, German, Hungarian and French salamis.

At Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, MI, the salami strategy is sharply focused on superior quality. “Instead of four Genoa varieties, we have one—the best one we can find,” says deli retail manager Andy Hanna, “Right now, we’re featuring several salamis made out of free-range, organic pork and beef products from Niman Ranch in California. These salamis are just fantastic!”

Hanna likens the manufacture of the salamis Zingerman’s stocks to processes used in artisan bakeries. “It’s food being made by people—not machines,” he says.

To further distinguish its retail store, Zingerman’s negotiates exclusive deals with selected suppliers. “As part of our relationship with Niman Ranch, we have exclusivity in our geographic area on some of the items,” Hanna notes.

For Heinen’s Fine Foods, a 15-store Ohio chain based in Cleveland, the deli department’s strategy for the category is based on offering an extraordinarily large number of selections. “We carry a lot of brands and a lot of varieties,” says Paul Solomon, Heinen’s meat, deli, seafood and bakery buyer.

Heinen’s is currently considering adding a salami imported from Italy to its deli meat case. “Our customers travel a lot, and they like a flavor profile that’s a little more authentic,” Solomon says. “Having an imported product to complement what we already have brings a little romance to it and gives us another point of difference at our stores.”

The strategy appears to be paying off. While the chain’s salami category has remained at a fairly consistent 10 percent of sales volume, Solomon says, “It’s up about half a percent in proportion to total deli sales, which isn’t bad.”

From 2000 to 2003, Heinen’s salami category sales increased nearly 70 percent, “and this year we’re trending higher,” notes Solomon. “If you exclude our biggest seller—a Swift Premium hard salami we slice to order behind the service counter—the category has grown by more than 225 percent.”

Any Way You Slice It

Solomon attributes a good part of the category growth to pre-sliced products, the fastest-growing segment of the salami category—at least in many retailers’ deli departments.

“The pre-sliced products are great for convenience,” says Solomon. “They have a better shelf life, and there’s a lot less labor cost than with sliced-to-order. The fact that these products are sold by the package also takes the customer’s focus away from the per-pound cost and makes them look at the unit cost instead.”

“Although the full-service approach, where our whole salami is sold, is extremely important,” notes Freybe’s Dickens, “the notion of convenience is very strong in today’s busy society. Grab-and-go items are a must to have available for the consumer. The best opportunities are in offering a wide variety of pre-sliced salami.”

“Pre-sliced is a huge category because people don’t have time to wait in line anymore,” says Casa Italia’s Varricchione. “For the retailer, the pre-sliced product means they don’t necessarily have to have the space for the slicing equipment and they don’t have to hire someone to slice it.”

“There’s only so much real estate in the deli counter, so there are limits to the number of salami varieties full-service sections can offer,” says Volpi’s Pansetti. “While the full-service deli is a base we never want to ignore, having a wider variety of packaged, pre-sliced salamis available in small quantities encourages consumers to try new products.”

“Consumers like to try different things today,” agrees Joe Petruce, vice president of sales for Citterio USA Corporation. “They may have grown up eating a specific salami, but people are now willing to look beyond the familiar products. And the only way they’re going to be able to try a new salami is if you offer it. That’s one of the good things about pre-sliced.”

As the pre-sliced category expands, so do the available packaging options. Last year, Citterio USA, based in Freeland, PA, introduced re-sealable, controlled-atmosphere packaging for more than a dozen of its deli meats. “Pre-sliced has been growing increasingly popular in all segments of the business,” says Petruce. “With the new re-closable packaging, consumers can see the quality and consistency of the product. And it’s so convenient.”

Volpi & Company recently added modified atmosphere packaging to its vacuum-sealed pre-sliced salami lines. “It’s too soon to tell which is going to prevail,” says Pansetti. “Some of our customers still hold to the vacuum package, while others like the new package. It depends on the retailer.”

Still, all manufacturers have yet to offer pre-sliced product. “The market has been going toward single-serve, consumer-sized pieces, and we offer those,” says Simone Bocchini, general manager for Fratelli Beretta USA, Inc., an Italian-owned specialty meat manufacturer based in South Hackensack, NJ. The company makes Fratelli Beretta brand Italian-style salamis and Olé brand Spanish-style salamis. “The product we sell is a specialty item, so for now, we’re not offering a pre-sliced product although we are looking into it.”

Even as retail sales of pre-sliced salami booms, there are those deli managers who, like Bocchini, distinguish themselves from competitors by not carrying pre-sliced product.

“We don’t carry any pre-sliced meats. Everything we sell in our deli departments is sliced to order,” says Sgobbo. “It’s a Food Emporium thing—a kind of signature or standard. There’s pre-sliced in the meat department, but it’s for a whole different customer.”

“Nothing is pre-sliced here,” notes Zingerman’s Hanna.

Sidebar:

Importing Salami

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) requires foreign countries exporting salami to the United States to establish and maintain inspection systems equivalent to those of the U.S. The foreign country’s governments certify and document individual producers.

The FSIS may suspend a country’s eligibility to export to the U.S. as it did last February when it suspended certain French meat and poultry imports following an inspection visit. Citing sub-standard sanitation practices, the agency “de-listed” three of 11 plants it inspected and notified two others they would be taken off the list of approved facilities. The ban, still in effect, does not apply to fresh meats, but it does apply to salami and other specialty meat products.

The FSIS audits foreign inspection systems on-site and re-inspects imported meat at the port of entry. The FSIS randomly tests dried and semi-dried fermented sausages for E. coli 0157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxin and Salmonella.

In November 2002, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) agreed to allow imports of cured meats from Italy aged fewer than 400 days, provided the products were made in a dedicated plant from raw materials from countries thought to be free of animal disease. The meat must be de-boned before processing. Ferrarini was the first Italian producer to begin exporting salami to the U.S. under the agreement.

“So far, they’re the only company that has an approved facility to produce the product. Nobody else has invested the money,” says Jim Marsh, vice president of sales for Atalanta, a privately-held food importing business based in Elizabeth, NJ. “Our first shipment from Ferrarini came in a year ago last November,” he adds.“ At first, we couldn’t keep it in stock because you don’t just turn a switch on and produce more product. It takes months to manufacture authentic salami. And this is the real deal. It says, ‘Made in Italy’ right on it.”

Marsh says Atalanta is also bringing in chorizo salamis made in Spain using Danish pigs. For many years, Atalanta imported salami from Hungary’s leading meat processor, Pick, but Marsh says, “No Pick salami is being imported into the U.S. right now because the company doesn’t want to bother with meeting the USDA requirements.”

Sidebar:

America’s “Italian Salami”

In 1967, a group of six San Francisco-area salami manufacturers launched a campaign to convince the USDA to let them market their domestically-produced products as “Italian salami.”

Calling their coalition the Dry Salami Institute, they justified the request by documenting their Italian ancestry, tracing their lineage directly to salami makers of Milan, Lucca, Parma and Modena. They documented that their methods and recipes were identical to those used by their ancestors and essentially the same as techniques dating back to the fifth century B.C. Furthermore, the San Francisco climate was very much like the Italian climate, providing a similar range of curing temperatures.

In 1970, the USDA granted the Californians’ request. Since then, advances in technology have enabled salami manufacturers throughout the U.S. to match Italian weather conditions in their own climate-controlled storage and curing rooms. So long as they meet the criteria for authenticity, established in 1970 and subject to minor revisions during the past three decades, they too can manufacture “Italian salami” right here in the USA.

The rules could change, however, if an Italian trade group has its way.

An agreement struck in November 2002 between the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Italy’s Ministry of Health has given Italian companies the opportunity to export to the U.S., and a consortium of Italian meat processors has asked the USDA to reconsider the ruling.

“Now that we have real salami from Italy on the market, we’ve approached the USDA about it,” says Sebastiano Brancoli, managing director of Washington, DC-based Consultants International Group, which represents the Italian trade group in the U.S. So far, Brancoli says the USDA has not ruled on their request.

Sidebar:

Customers and Cultures

When considering which ethnic varieties of salami to stock, deli retailers “need to know their markets,” says Edgar Soto, vice president of sales and marketing for Cibao Meat Products, Inc., based in Bronx, NY. Cibao targets specific sub-segments of the Hispanic market with about 40 different items. Consistent with traditional recipes, all Cibao’s salamis are fully cooked.

“You have to be careful not to lump the Hispanic market together,” advises Soto, who has been marketing products to Hispanic consumers for more than 20 years. “You need to know your customer base and what ethnic background they are. Are they South American? Mexican? Caribbean? That will influence the choice of what to carry.

“Our salami is a very versatile item that can be used a lot of different ways,” Soto continues. “Some customers might cut it in pieces and eat it as a snack while watching a football game, while in other places, it’s served with rice and green plantains as the primary meat for dinner. It’s also a very popular breakfast item—egg and fried salami—in certain Hispanic markets.”

A pre-sliced salami product Cibao introduced in 2002 “bombed,” according to Soto, because “it was too advanced for my market. Many of our Hispanic customers tend to have large families, and they look for value more than convenience. They looked at the pre-sliced pricing, and said, ‘I can save 25 or 30 percent by slicing it myself.’”

The latest addition to the company’s product line is Salapeño Salami, a smoke-cooked pork and beef salami studded with jalapeño peppers and marketed as part of the company’s Ver-Mex Mexican product line. “We’re going a little mainstream with Salapeño,” Soto says. “Our formulation is not as spicy as most Mexican food to make it appeal to a broader market.”