Lamb dishes on the menu for AFL games in fast food push

Meat & Livestock Australia has announced the return of the Lamb Paddock, located in the MCG members' section, which dished up value-added lamb products last AFL season.

The return of the outlet follows a project with CSIRO centred around creating value-added lamb products suitable for quick service restaurants, which comes following recent competitive pricing.

Over the summer the trend towards lamb in fast food, saw Australian burger chain Grill'd partner with Gundagai Lamb to launch new product offerings, while Domino's dished up a range of new lamb pizzas.

MLA's product and business development manager and corporate chef Sam Burke said MLA wanted to elevate lamb from a "limited offer" product to a regular menu item in QSRs nationwide.

"MLA worked with CSIRO to understand the barriers that QSRs and full-service restaurants had in featuring lamb products on their menus," he said.

"The aim of the project was to identify and address these barriers, to drive the demand for Australian lamb products in this sector.

"To resolve this, we worked with over twenty fast food and quick service outlets to discuss how to overcome these barriers and increase the likelihood of lamb products in QSRs."

CSIRO animal protein lead researcher Aarti Tobin said the interviews with key QSR stakeholders provided significant insight into understanding the role of lamb within fast food restaurants and hospitality venues.

"The interviews showed that lamb was traditionally eaten as part of a meal, as roasts and chops, hence is not considered a fast food," Dr Tobin said.

"According to the outlets interviewed, there are several challenges with featuring lamb on the menu.

"The main barriers that these companies identified were ensuring consistent product quality, reliability of supply and costs compared to other proteins."

Following the interviews, Mr Burke and CSIRO developed and tested two lamb products, including a high-quality lamb burger patty with a Middle Eastern spices and a pulled lamb product.

"A 28-day frozen storage trial showed that both products maintained their sensory quality after cooking and reheating," Mr Burke said.

"These two lamb products will provide the industry with a great opportunity to value add to lower value lamb cuts and trim, as well as address an unmet need of the QSR market."

Culinary director for catering company Delaware North's Australian and New Zealand operations, chef Markus Werner, was one of the chefs interviewed as part of the project.

"When the issues around product quality, consistency, reliability of supply, and costs are addressed, lamb can feature on the QSR/FSR menu all year round, rather than as a special occasion meat," Mr Werner said.