What's the LVMH of meat & dairy?

Prime Future 147: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

LVMH is a French holding company with 75+ luxury goods brands like Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Tiffany & Co, and Dom Perignon, across categories of wine & spirits, fashion & leather goods, watches & jewelry. LVMH has a market cap of ~$450 billion making its founder the (current) wealthiest person in the world.

I recently listened to an Acquired podcast episode on LVMH. While luxury branding is not a topic I'm particularly interested in, this was an exercise in unexpectedly delightful learning from another industry because after listening to that episode, I’ve been noodling on this for weeks:

What are the luxury brands in meat & dairy? Are there any?

An important concept to anchor in is the difference between premium and luxury, which it turns out is an important distinction.

According to the book "The Luxury Strategy", luxury is more than just trading up from premium and super premium to something higher on the quality spectrum. Luxury is its own thing, characterized by:

• a very qualitative hedonic experience or product made to last

• offered at a price that far exceeds what their mere functional value would command

• tied to a heritage, unique know-how, and culture attached to the brand

• available in purposefully restricted and controlled distribution

• offered with personalized accompanying services

• representing a social marker, making the owner or beneficiary feel special, with a sense of privilege

"Premium is based on objective superiority when comparing alternatives. The more you pay the more you get. Luxury instead is non-comparable. The pricing power of luxury rests on high intangibles, making the brand singular, unique. Essential attributes of luxury are the prestige, the intangible, the dream, the imagination, the identity. Luxury is superlative, never comparative."

This all lines up with what you find on the LVMH website:

Or this language of identity, artistry, & vision on the Dom Perignon homepage:

So, are there any luxury brands in meat & dairy?

The first candidate that came to mind was Snake River Farms with their American Wagyu beef.

So is Snake River Farms American Wagyu a luxury brand? Snake River Farms is more than premium, arguably an ultra-premium brand considering they have their own quality grade scheme that is above and beyond USDA quality grade Prime. And while they certainly have great product and beautiful branding, their marketing strategy is to position the product as better than, a comparative measure of quality, which is a premium or super-premium brand strategy….it’s not luxury.

Or take HeartBrand, which sells Akaushi beef. Again, the market positioning is based on comparison to the rest of the market:

The differentiation point for both SRF and Heartland are the extreme marbling of the meat, compared with anything else you'll find in the meat case. While premium and super-premium brands are about extremely high functionality and quality like SRF’s American Wagyu Black Grade or Akaushi genetics…

…luxury brands are about a dream. The authors of The Luxury Strategy book say, "Upper-premium brands desire to be chosen rationally for their excellence. Luxury is about elevation. Luxury brands engender emotion and diffuse their values."

Other meat & dairy brands have done a phenomenal job positioning themselves in the market as a signal of quality on some dimension to some segment of consumers:

• Certified Angus Beef has established itself as a strong indicator of a predictable quality beef eating experience.

• Niman Ranch has built its brand around pasture-raised pork and other proteins with ‘better for you’ positioning.

• Clemens Foods has their foodservice brand “Premium Reserve Pork” for steakhouse quality pork.

• Kerrygold has….I mean, have you had their butter?? Enough said.

Not to take anything away from these brands, they are all in the upper range of their respective markets.

But are they luxury?

If we accept the definition above, then no.

I took this 'premium vs luxury' lens to Whole Foods. Even though the retailer has been Amazon'ized in a lot of ways since the acquisition, this is a retailer with the legacy nickname of "Whole Paycheck". Surely there's some luxury brand somewhere in there?

Maybe Mary's Organic Chicken: organic, air chilled, $9.99/lb…pretty bougie brand signals, right? Except the sign on the refrigerated case definitively negates the idea that what's inside that case could be considered luxury: “value you can sink your teeth into”. Hardly the type of messaging that LVMH brand managers would allow; more premium brand behavior.

As I worked my way through the store looking for signals of what could be an actual luxury brand, it occurred to me that if luxury means the brand is positioned around a creative identity and a dream, not comparisons of quality or price, then there really are no luxury brands in food retail given that regardless of the retailers pricing strategy, everywhere you look the signals and signage are about price and quality. Because that’s what matters to food shoppers.

Perhaps this is a distinct feature of mass retail, and there are luxury brands in high-end independent food retail. Or, perhaps there is a fundamental mismatch between the channel of food retail stores and luxury food brands.

So maybe direct-to-consumer brands are the only way to establish a luxury brand, by avoiding the historical habits of food retailer merchandising which are fundamentally at odds with luxury marketing strategies.

Or maybe, luxury in meat and dairy are limited only to restaurant experiences, and not standalone products simply because most meat and dairy products are not durable goods meant to last. Hats off to prosciutto and hard cheeses, amirite?

All of this leads to the conclusion that likely there are not any truly luxury brands in meat & dairy. There is no LVMH in the making.

If that conclusion is accurate, it raises questions like, could there be an LVMH in meat & dairy?

What would it take to do so?

And perhaps more philosophically, should there be an LVMH?

We'll tackle those later. For now…

What's your view on the closest thing to an LVMH in meat & dairy?

Oh and here’s what ChatGPT 4 had to say on the topic. Not a bad response but these aren’t really brands:

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