Three companies account for a major market share in this category—Kraft, Northfield, Ill.; Sara Lee, Chicago; and ConAgra, Omaha, Neb. Mintel notes that the market leaders began to refocus their efforts toward core brands in the late 1990s. While this increased marketing and support benefited some of the best-known brands (including Oscar Mayer, Jimmy Dean, Swift, and Hebrew National), the companies' smaller brands suffered as a result. In fact, Mintel foresees these efforts as a possible precursor to phasing out some of these smaller brands.
An example of this could be found in Kraft's Louis Rich brand. The company's Oscar Mayer brand has five times the sales of its next closest sliced lunchmeat competitor, Mintel reports, but growth of the brand has been moderated somewhat by sales declines in the Louis Rich brand, a major component of which is turkey, whose sales have been flat. The report states, “Kraft's energy to build core brands may be going more in the direction of Oscar Mayer.”