Grocers testing ways to spice up sales of rotisserie chicken

SALISBURY, Md. — Has rotisserie chicken, once the darling of groceries, lost its sizzle?

The ready-cooked birds flew off grocers' shelves in the 1990s, but sales have begun leveling off, industry estimates show. A growing number of grocers worry customers are getting a little bored of the chickens, even in lemon pepper or barbecue flavors, and they're throwing new meats on the skewer. Coming soon: rotisserie pork loins and beef.

"You don't want to eat chicken every day," said Barry Loy of Supermarket Operations, an eight-store grocery chain based in Mississippi. His stores still sell rotisserie chickens, but now they're experimenting with hot baby-back ribs, smoked sausage and ham. "It's probably growing faster than the chicken," he said of the beef and pork, even though they cost more.

The competition from other meats has not gone unnoticed by chicken producers. Although about 750 million rotisserie chickens were sold in 2005 — two-thirds of them in groceries — sales growth of the birds was just about 3 percent, about the same as chickens overall, according to the National Chicken Council, based in Washington, D.C.

"It was growing in the double digits there for a while," said the council's vice-president, Bill Roenigk.

The slackening growth is being tackled in a test kitchen in Salisbury, headquarters of Perdue Farms, the nation's third-largest chicken producer.

Cutting into a steaming chicken nearly black with a spice rub of garlic, basil, rosemary and oregano, Perdue product-marketing manager John Moore says shoppers still love rotisserie chickens. They just want their birds to have more zip.

"We're thinking more robust flavors," Moore said. "Americans are becoming more sophisticated in their palates."

So Perdue is rolling out a spicier Italian flavor, called Tuscan, and has already tested a new line for Latino shoppers, called Perdue La Cocina.

One large grocer, Cincinnati-based Kroger, has regional chicken flavors such as tandoori and apricot glaze. Company spokesman Gary Rhodes said the grocer hasn't ruled out selling other rotisserie meats, though.

"We believe there may be opportunities to expand into other fresh meats," Rhodes said. Kroger owns QFC and Fred Meyer stores.

Andy Seymour, a vice president of sales and marketing for Perdue's deli line, conceded that the rotisserie chickens offered in groceries haven't changed much since the concept took off more than a decade ago.

"There's not a been lot of new flavors in that category, and there's a real need for that," he said.

It didn't used to be this way. Starting in the late 1980s, fueled by the popularity of rotisserie chickens in restaurants such as Boston Market, chicken processors started pre-marinating birds so groceries could join the trend. A few years later came different flavors — cue the lemon pepper and barbecue — and time-pressed shoppers snapped them up for easy dinners.

But maybe grocers haven't done a good job selling the birds, said food-industry analyst Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com.

"It has to be theater," Lempert said, noting that high-end stores that keep their rotisserie cases gleaming, sometimes with shooting flames, have maintained sales growth of rotisserie birds.

"In traditional supermarkets, you look at that rotisserie case and you get sick to your stomach. They haven't done a good job keeping it clean and making it appealing," Lempert said.

And new meats will give chickens more competition. Lempert noted the Brazilian steakhouse fad that has people packing restaurants that serve hot cuts of steak and pork.

"We're going to see more rotisserie everything," he said.

At Food Lion, a North Carolina-based chain of 1,220 groceries, spokesman Jeff Lowrance said rotisserie chickens are still popular, though the grocer is considering adding other meats, perhaps this year.

"You want to offer things customers want," Lowrance said.