Pandemic Results In A Surplus Of Wings

Washington Post photo

The meat market just missed another holiday: March Madness.

The Washington Post reports the NCAA basketball tournament is the second of two annual festivals for chicken wings (the first is the Super Bowl). Wing prices and production run in predictable cycles each year ramping up for the NFL playoffs and championship game in the beginning of February, then again for college basketball’s frenzied tournament a month and a half later.

American consumers have relatively predictable patterns when it comes to meat consumption. They buy more in the spring and summer, experts observe, so they can grill or entertain, or while they’re away on vacation. Certain types of meats peak at different time of year: think turkey on Thanksgiving or ham for Christmas.

But with the country locked down because of the spread of the novel coronavirus, and the NCAA tournament canceled, a whole bunch of wings are lying around, and now they’ve flooded the market.

Wings, the most expensive part of the bird, haven’t been this cheap since September 2011, according to Agriculture Department data. They sold for close to $2 per pound the weekend of the Super Bowl. Now, they sell for just over half of that: $1.09 per pound.

Poultry producers sold 1.24 million pounds of wings the week the tournament was scheduled to start. Last week, they sold barely 433,000 pounds.

“Those are millions of pounds of wings that people don’t eat,” said Erik Oosterwijk, president of Fells Point Wholesale Meats in Baltimore. “And if [coronavirus] happened in January and February, it would have been the Super Bowl that got hit. There’s no doubt there’s a lot of food out there today.”

So how’d all this happen?

• The restaurants that would serve wings aren’t doing as much business.
• They’re not placing orders for wings from vendors, even though vendors’ supplies keep growing.
• The small share of wings sold at grocery stores are sitting on the shelves, or are being purchased as a meat of last resort.

“All the stocking up the consumers did in March, that’s over,” Sawyer said, “and prices for the industry are at or even a little below break-even.”