How To Manage a Mexican Meat Market: 6 Steps to Success

Mexican meat markets are a community staple and a source of authentic flavors that are difficult or nearly impossible to find in a typical grocery store. However, with rising prices and pickier customers, running one isn’t always easy.

Running a carniceria requires a deep understanding of the products, the customers, and the market itself. 

Managing the operations of a Mexican meat market can be challenging, but with the right strategies and tools, you’ll be the proud owner of a rewarding and profitable business that serves a staple role in your community. 

In this article, we will discuss the key aspects of a Mexican meat market's operations, including sourcing and purchasing meat, maintaining food safety and sanitation, and marketing duties.

1. Build Strong Connections With Local Meat Suppliers and Food Businesses

One of the most important aspects of managing a Mexican meat market is sourcing and purchasing high-quality, fresh meat at a competitive price. 

As the owner of a carniceria, you should have a strong understanding of the products you’re selling: Knowledge of different cuts of meat, their uses, and how to properly prepare and cook them. 

Make sure to have a selection of traditional Mexican meats, such as beef, pork, and chicken, as well as more unique options like chorizo, tripe, and beef tongue.  

Find reliable, high-quality meat suppliers to ensure you’re getting consistent quality and the cuts you need. Also, understand their lead times and how much they can give you per month. Ideally, you can diversify into a few suppliers so you never run out of your most popular cuts. 

In addition to meat, people also enjoy visiting Mexican meat markets for their unique selections of salsas, breads, queso fresco, beans, fresh tortillas, and more. If you can’t make them in-house, form partnerships with other local businesses. That way, you’ll be able to supply locally-made favorites for your customers while giving those brands boosted visibility. 

2. Offer a Selection of Pre-Marinated Meats

While many American butchers offer some pre-prepared meats, many carnicerias are famous for their selection of marinated meats. 

In addition to standard cuts, have a rotating selection of diezmillo, pollo preparado, and other meats that are ready to throw on the grill. Make sure the pricing of your prepared meats reflects the extra ingredients and time you put into making them. 

Use your meat market point of sale (POS) system to create custom products, so you can easily weigh and price your in-house creations and track their sales performance. Over time, you can see which of your homemade items sold the best and expand your selection or start prepackaging them with custom labels to sell on the floor or to other local supermarkets.

3. Stay in Compliance With Food Safety Rules

Maintaining high food safety and sanitation standards is crucial for any business that sells raw meat and other fresh products. Failure to maintain proper sanitation standards could result in loss of customers at best, and legal consequences at worst. 

Make sure you are educated and up to date on health regulations and proper food storage and handling procedures. Keep your cuts refrigerated at the correct temperature, and label and date them properly. You can also add expiration dates to your POS system to know when cuts are at the end of their shelf life, without having to walk the floor.

It’s also essential to clean all knives, cutting surfaces, and tools every day to ensure everything is spotless and odor-free.

Having a clean space will help immediately build trust with customers who might be more wary of smaller butchers and meat markets. 

4. Invest in the Right Tools

To run a successful Mexican meat market, you’ll need the proper tools to serve up the cuts that people want. However, getting everything at once can be a huge investment.

Start with the essentials: 

• Quality knives (scimitars, cleavers, boning knives, etc.) and sharpeners
• Grinders
• Cutting boards
• Deli scales
• Commercial work tables and stations
• Cash register and card reader
• A walk-in refrigerator for storage and prep
• Standing fridges and freezers for customers
• Display cases
• Gloves, pens, butcher paper, and miscellaneous equipment

Once your business grows and you start to understand the types of products your customers gravitate to the most, you might then consider some more niche upgrades like:

• Smokers
• Vacuum sealers for selling frozen meat or marinated items
• Meat and bone saws
• Slicers
• Curing stations
• Sausage stuffers

As we mentioned earlier, having every tool isn’t as important as having the right tools. Listen to your customers and use the reports on your meat market system to understand what equipment is worth investing in. 

5. Use Inventory Management Software and Integrated Scales

When talking about how to run a Mexican meat market, it’s impossible not to talk about inventory. The average carniceria stocks a wide range of meats, marinated cuts, salsas, and more. Keeping track of all those items by hand can be a nightmare. 

Instead, upgrade to a modern inventory management system to get a bird’s eye view of inventory, which will help you:

• Reduce food waste
• Optimize inventory levels and cut costs
• Reduce stockouts 
• Track homemade products 

An inventory management system lets you enter information about all the products you sell, including their names, prices, and stock quantities. Then you can quickly price items and update inventory levels every time you make a sale. 

Specialized inventory systems for butchers and meat markets can also track meat:

• By weight
• By the cut
• Or both (entering the average weight of a single cut and calculating the remaining weight)

You can also scan barcodes to enter standard, prepackaged items into the system, or create custom SKUs for items you make in-store, like salsas or tortillas.

To speed up checkout, you can use scales with integrated barcode printers. This allows you to weigh an item, enter its product code, and print a barcode based on the item and its weight, which can be scanned at checkout. 

6. Bring Customers Back With Creative Advertising and Marketing

Last but not least, be sure to promote your Mexican meat market to the community. There are a variety of marketing strategies, such as social media, sampling events, sales, and discounts, to help expand your client base and establish your store’s brand. 

The easiest way to strengthen the bond between your store and the community is offering a customer loyalty program. Though establishing a customer loyalty program sounds complicated, modern POS software makes the process as easy as the click of a button. 

Customize your loyalty program to specify how customers earn points and how to redeem them. During the checkout process, customers can sign up for your market’s loyalty program by entering their contact information. 

A good loyalty program will make customers feel an emotional connection to your brand, keeping them coming back to your carniceria. And you’ll see the results in your profit margins: A five percent increase in customer retention results in, on average, a 25% boost in business profits. 

Better yet, you can use loyalty members’ contact information to send them special deals and promotions. 

Create an Authentic Mexican Meat Market Atmosphere With the Right Technology

A great Mexican meat market isn’t just about the products you sell; it’s about creating the right atmosphere. The right technology gives you the tools to modernize the market shopping experience without sacrificing authenticity. 

IT Retail has over 30 years of experience building specialized POS systems for independent grocers, international markets, and butchers. 

With affordable and easy-to-use inventory management, reporting, customer loyalty, and more, IT Retail gives you the tools your Mexican meat market needs to cut costs and compete with the big chains.

Talk with one of our experts today to see how IT Retail helps meat markets be more efficient and keep customers coming back for more.