Deer Industry New Zealand says a trial promotion of Cervena venison in the Netherlands during the northern summer went down well with many chefs and their customers.
Farmed deer in central Hawke's Bay. Photo: RNZ / Peter Fowler
The promotion is part of the Passion2Profit strategy, a Primary Growth Partnership programme between Deer Industry NZ (DINZ) and the Ministry for Primary Industries.
Passion2Profit manager Innes Moffat said for the first time, New Zealand venison was sold as a spring-summer grilling item to 1200 Dutch restaurants.
He said there was a bit of confusion amongst diners because the Dutch generally only expect to see venison on their menus in October, November and December.
Mr Moffat said consumers were generally very positive when venison was presented to them as a summer option, or when it was introduced as Cervena.
"DINZ and exporters are trying to grow year-round demand for our venison at chilled prices in new markets and new segments of existing markets."
Mr Moffat said New Zealand was aiming to create a new market segment in the Netherlands which was outside of their game season.
"So we need to position Cervena as a novel product. To reinforce this and to maximise value from the whole animal, five new cuts were trailed this year. Three of these struck a real chord - shoulder tenders, spare ribs and tri-tips." (Tri-tips are the caps of the rump.)
"There have been many lessons from the trial. Where chefs made a feature of Cervena, it sold well and the feedback from diners was overwhelmingly positive. Where it was sold with game meat associations it didn't sell well," said Mr Moffat.
He said Cervena had the greatest success in restaurants which sold it as part of a fixed menu and feedback from diners was very positive.
"One of our biggest successes was demonstrating that we can get Cervena venison, out-of-season, into chefs' heads and that they will buy it. The chefs who backed Cervena came back with repeat orders … with some selling more than 150kg over the summer.
"Their feedback on quality was unanimously positive. We are currently designing a promotional programme to increase the sale of Cervena venison in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2016."
