 |
 |
|
Cattle graze in the Centennial
Valley, Montana. Photo by Edwin Remsberg. |
 |
Selling the Whole Carcass
When first starting out to market your own beef, one of the first
problems you will face is that it is easy to sell the high-end cuts
and hard to sell the low-end cuts.
Restaurants love buying steaks from local ranchers, but steaks
only make up about 10 percent of the carcass. You still have a lot
of beef to sell.
Conventional beef marketing deals with this problem by using price.
That’s why chucks, hamburger and rounds are cheap, and loin
steaks and tenderloin are expensive, because everyone wants steaks
and tenders. Every day, they have so much beef to sell, and they
get on the phone (just like the trading floor of the stock exchange)
and sell their beef. Because fresh beef has a limited shelf life,
they have to sell it before it spoils. As the industry saying goes,
“You have to sell it before you smell it.” They just
keep going down in price until all their beef is sold.
Marketing on a smaller scale, you can pick your customers and select
them in the right proportions to what you need to sell. For example,
if a restaurant wants 50 pounds of tenderloin a week, you will have
to match that demand with customers who are willing to buy 1,000
pounds of hamburger a week.
Of course, you can always sell your other cuts on the conventional
market, but you’ll have to accept a very low price. Most big
meat distributors only deal in huge quantities, which makes it hard
for small marketers to “dump” what they can’t
sell.
You’ll also find that the low-end cuts are much more price
sensitive than the high-end cuts. You might be able to charge double
or triple market price for your tenderloin, but you may have to
settle with just 10 to 20 percent more for your ground beef.
Initially, you will probably sell out of steaks and be left with
ground beef, limiting your overall sales. People seem ready to pay
for a premium steak but balk at $3-a-pound ground beef.
They may not realize there is a difference between yours and the
60-cent-a-pound supermarket version. Once they are hooked on your
steak, give them a free pound of ground beef. One pound will usually
convince them to buy a balance of all of your cuts.
To make things even more difficult, there are a few cuts in the
middle that no one really knows about. People know what a steak
is and what hamburger is, but what’s a tri tip? What’s
the difference between a flank and skirt? Being small, you will
have a lot of face-to-face interaction with your customers, so you
can educate them on how to cook the different cuts.
I’ve found that with a little planning you can proportion
your customers to match how you cut up the carcass and not be forced
to sell for a lower price just to get rid of all your beef. You
will want to find a lot of hamburger buyers, because about 50 percent
of your carcass will be hamburger.
Another way of dealing with the lower demand and lower-priced cuts
is to add value to them. The margins on a round roast are not very
large, but if you make that round roast into jerky or a ready-to-serve
marinated roast, suddenly you’ve got products that rival the
loin steaks in profitability. So if you can’t sell it, rather
than take a lower price, be creative and think what you could turn
it into.
There are also several other parts of the carcass that can become
more profitable.
Your creativity is the only boundary:
• Tongue, livers and kidneys can be mixed with fat, hamburger
and vitamins for premium dog food.
• Hides, tendons and “pizzles” can be turned
into dog chews.
• Bones can be used for dogs, zoos or wildlife rehabilitation
centers.
• Marrow bones are seeing a comeback at high-end restaurants,
health food stores and hospitals.
• Ground and dried liver and glands are used as supplements
in health food stores.
• Trim can be dried and turned into dog chews.
• Consider these specialties: summer sausage, beef bacon,
jerky, deli meats, hot dogs and marinated roasts.
I have had good luck with selling cuts at farmers markets that
I can’t seem to move elsewhere. Usually, I have had to be
a little creative. For instance, I once had a lot of skirt steak
that wasn’t moving. I added spices, rolled them up, sliced
them and labeled them “spiced pinwheel steaks.” I sold
out in one hour – at $4.50 a pound. These were skirt steaks
that we couldn’t sell at $1.50 a pound. The secret was that
I set up a grill and let people taste samples. I handed out a recipe
and cooking instructions for the item with each sale.
At this same farmers market, I sold 32 pounds of flank steak that
I had to move. I marinated it in a very simple marinade for an hour
and cut it up and stuck it on skewers. I had 10 people buy the whole
skewer for $3 apiece. That comes to about $30 a pound.
However, make sure that you check your local, county and state
regulations concerning sampling products and selling value-added
products such as spiced pinwheel steaks and marinated cuts. Depending
on the laws in your area, they may not be allowed at farmers markets.
If you alter a cut after it has been inspected (by adding other
ingredients) and labeled, you may void that inspection. Cooking
and giving away samples may require you to be inspected and licensed
as a restaurant.
Previous Section | Top
| Next Section
|
