Ball Park bets big on beef jerky craze with new line

If you eat hot dogs, Ball Park bets it probably wouldn’t be a big culinary stretch for you to also start tearing into beef jerky. That’s why the nation’s largest seller of hot dogs is launching a new line of beef and pork jerkies this week.

Consumer demand for a diet high in protein is reviving the staple of gas station pit stops, and Ball Park’s strategy to become a jerky master shows just how big this snack trend has become.

The new line of dried meat has been three years in the making. Ball Park’s parent company at the time, Hillshire (which was acquired by Tyson Foods last year), smelled opportunity in jerky starting in 2012, when it started doing market research on the roadside staple, which included acquiring higher-end jerky brand Golden Island in 2013 as a test case.

In 2014, the company built a 50,000 square-foot production facility in Martinsville, Va., solely for the Ball Park jerky line.

And this year, Ball Park is investing more of its marketing budget in the jerky launch than in its larger hot dog and hamburger patty lines.

“We have the ability to sell a lot of jerky,” says Tim Smith, vice president and general manager of Ball Park’s emerging brands group. “We do absolutely think it’s a big opportunity.”

Ball Park’s line includes five different flavors, three beef and two pork, which have already started rolling out in nearly 10,000 grocery stores, including Walmart, Kroger and Safeway. Packages boast that the meat is not just dried, but “flame grilled,” a technique Ball Park says makes the meat more tender and flavorful and will help its product stand out. Smith also says the brand could help jerky shed its masculine reputation, because Ball Park is known as family-friendly.

Jerky and other dried meat snacks have benefited from a wide intersection of food and diet trends, including consumers looking for high-protein foods, bold flavors and convenient snacking.

Innovation in cooking tech- niques and snack forms, plus elevated nutritional value, have also boosted sales and helped beef jerky shed its reputation as a salty snack consumed by road trippers. Premium brands have turned it into a desirable pick-me-up by reducing sodium, getting rid of preservatives and infusing the meat with enticing flavors like chili lime and Korean barbecue. Some brands also cater to conscientious consumers by offering snacks made from grass-fed beef and free-range poultry.

The trend is “part and parcel of our rejection of junk food snacking and our busy lifestyles that demand more satiety,” says Kara Nielsen, culinary director at brand consultant Sterling-Rice Group.

In the past year, sales of jerky and other dried meat snacks rose more than 12%, according to IRI, a market research firm. That’s more than any other snack category, including cookies, crackers, nuts and seeds, granola bars and salty snacks, such as chips and pretzels. Yet overall sales are still far below other snack categories — roughly $2.8 billion in the 52 weeks ended Sept. 6 compared with more than $21 billion in sales for the largest category, salty snacks. To Ball Park, that represents a huge opportunity.