Why Walmart Doesn't Carry Boar's Head Deli Products

If you're grocery shopping for deli meat at Walmart, you'll see many big-name brands like Sara Lee or Hillshire Farm, but you won't find the most famous name in the industry: Boar's Head. While it may not be available everywhere, Boar's Head has a reputation for quality that makes it known nationwide and in high demand. So, it is a bit strange that the country's largest grocery chain doesn't carry the brand other than a few condiments like Boar's Head mustard. But it turns out both Boar's Head and Walmart have pretty good reasons to not do too much business, as each's core strategy clashes with the other.

Boar's Head is known as a premium brand, and it goes to great lengths to protect that reputation, massive listeria outbreaks notwithstanding. And Walmart, of course, bases everything around low prices and its reputation as a budget retailer. Some of Walmart's low prices come from the scale that it operates at, much like Costco and other big box retailers, but the company also throws its weight around to get what it wants.

Because Walmart makes up such a huge percentage of the retail and grocery market, it has a high leverage over suppliers. It then uses that leverage to push them to lower prices so that they might live up to Walmart's specific standards. That may be fine for Coca-Cola or Frito Lay, but beyond cutting into profit margins, those low prices would also affect Boar's Head's image as a premium brand in the market, an image it fights hard to preserve.

Boar's Head's own weight throwing also probably impacts the inability of these two companies to come together. With its reputation as the country's premier deli meat brand, Boar's Head often uses that leverage to demand retailers it works with take competing brands off the shelf. That's why it's rare to see Dietz & Watson and Boar's Head deli meats in the same supermarkets. While this is not a universal rule, the brand has a reputation for driving hard bargains over access to its deli products, which some retailers and rival brands even see as anti-competitive.

For Walmart, a deal like this would obviously be a non-starter. Competition is what drives down prices, and it also gives retailers like Walmart the leverage they want in negotiations. After all, the chain isn't going to pull all of its Oscar Mayer and Hormel products off the shelf just to cater to Boar's Head. So, what you get is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

If you are Boar's Head and you're trying to be the champagne of deli meat, you don't want Walmart selling your product on the cheap next to the sparkling apple cider, and you don't want to be just one of many brands in a big box lineup. If you're Walmart, you are never going to settle for a supplier pushing you around and not lowering prices. It's a match that simply isn't meant to be.