This Week in Retail: Wing Demand Feeling the Madness
The first round of the college basketball tournament dubbed March Madness is officially underway—and retailers are certainly going mad over food promotions for the nearly month-long event.
On the wholesale side of the equation, wings are in high-demand as foodservice and retail buyers alike look to secure inventory for March Madness. This has driven prices up in recent weeks, as supplies grow increasingly tight. Spot market prices for small sized wings are currently up nearly 12 percent over last year at this time, or 17 cents per pound, and up about 4 percent compared to the 3-year average. Wholesale prices on jumbo wings, more often found at retail, are up a whopping 36 percent year-over-year. Buyers are paying nearly 50 cents more per pound on the spot market for jumbo size wings this week—that’s up 14 percent from the 3-year average.
This is the second “peak” of the year for wings in 2019, the first summiting in early February. The downslope was relatively short-lived, bottoming out later that month. The current uptick, while seasonal, is especially...
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