The summer grilling season has arrived and it has the potential to be extremely fruitful for supermarket retailers.

With the decline in beef middle meat prices to 2005-2006 levels, there are many opportunities for featuring cuts from the rib, loin and sirloin.

Some cuts—including the Beef Top Sirloin, which has historically been a top-seller during summer grilling months—already are generating strong sales.

FreshLook Marketing Group, a Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based supplier of perishables data, reports that 33.4 million pounds of Beef Loin Top Sirloin Steak Boneless were sold in the first four months of 2009, up 10.1 percent from the year-earlier period.

In addition to attractive pricing, retailers can offer customers even more value on middle meats by providing recipes and complimentary products.

The Easy Fresh Cooking program, an on-pack labeling initiative that is funded in part by the Beef Checkoff, enables merchandisers to deliver whole meal solutions to customers by affixing labels to products that contain recipes, photos of plated meals and cooking instructions.

Recipes and photos for Beef Top Sirloin and other steaks can be found in the special “Middle Meat Mania” section of beefretail.org.

Retailers also can provide value with promotions and cross-merchandising.

The Beef Checkoff’s 2009 campaign, for instance, includes a beer and burger program with Kraft A.1.  and Anheuser-Busch.

Additional activity involves partnerships with Snyder’s of Hanover Tortilla Chips; Hormel salsa brands CHI CHI’s and Herdez; and House of Tsang Asian sauces.

More than 61 million coupons also are being distributed to consumers for savings on beef purchases.

To further help retailers increase middle meat sales, the Beef Checkoff has a new Beef Alternative Merchandising (BAM) program that details marketing methods for various middle meat subprimals, including the Top Sirloin.

Other merchandising tools available to retailers include point-of-sale materials and cutting videos.

More information on summer grilling trends and middle meat promotions can be found at beefretail.org.

Randy Irion is the director of channel marketing for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which contracts to manage retail programs for the Beef Checkoff.