FURTHER READING
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, by Jacob Wolki "Entremanure at Misery Farms"
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, by Jacob Wolki Father, not friend.
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, by Jacob Wolki Albo's 47%
Supply problems... and solutions?
- , by Jacob Wolki
- 4 min reading time
As we crack into more mainstream markets, which should be the goal if “we” (read “regen ag”) want to action some real change, we constantly come up against inventory and supply expectation.
“Why aren’t the scotch steaks available all the time?”
“Why did my beef offal mince go to backorder?”
“Pork belly was in stock last week, how come it isn’t now?”
“Do you do Picanha steak? My mate wants some.”
Now, we can wear our heart on our sleeve and profess that the goal should be about educating the consumer and changing their habits, creating offers like CSA’s (community supported agriculture) and beast shares, so that people get equal splits of the animals.
To date, we have had relatively good success doing some of these things. I don’t think I’ve had a single customer query or complain about our meat being frozen for almost 2 years. That’s a win.
There is no doubt that supplying a customer who is interested and engaged enough to honour and consume the whole animal is exciting and rewarding.
Alas, not everyone will get there.
There are so many reasons why a consumer who may be interested enough in regenerative grass fed beef doesn’t want a 40kg beef quarter sitting in their freezer.
Storage space, cashflow, cooking ability, interest, taste.
Maybe they are discerning consumers who only want to eat prime cuts. It might rub some people in our scene “up the wrong way”.
I love it. Sell more steaks to them and use the high value sale to subsidise the mince for the families that are stretching to obtain our meat.
I believe that to suggest that these bulk offerings are the only solutions to the issues that I am talking about is a bit self righteous. I do understand it. I’ve also drunk the cool-aid.
I love honouring the whole animal.
If Mrs W and I were consumers, we would probably buy beef halves too. (We actually are consumers who got forced into farming because regen ag couldn’t supply us - but that’s a blog for another time)
But we would likely top it up with choice cuts of our preference as we got through it. This is just realistic consumer behaviour.
So how do we manage this in a scaling business?
For years (and still) we have struggled to keep inventory of beef scotch, porterhouse, eye and rump. Lamb cutlets & loin chops. Pork belly and bacon.
Every producer knows what cuts are worth the most and of course they are in low supply per animal unit.
We have worked hard to promote sausages and mince and offering them in value packs, as when we process a beast we yield approximately 50% of that animal as sausage and mince.
Well, the marketing and offers worked. Now we are out of stock of mince and sausages all the time. Overstocked in roasts & secondary cuts. Good problems to have, to be sure. Solutions are still needed.
Between beef, pork and lamb we currently run an inventory consisting of around 60 SKUS. (Stock Keeping Units - individual products) This is down from around 100 SKUs due to my “ruthless” culling over the last few years, and it does not include ANY of our value added products of which there are around 20, and growing.
The problem with this is that you end up with a very broad range with no depth, which makes it hard to market and sell. Examples; One of our bodies of beef (232kg carcass weight Nguni steer for you nosey farmers) will have 1 hanger steak, 2 skirt steaks, 8 portions of eye fillet, 6 portions of brisket, 86 portions of mince and 78 portions of snags.
You can see the difficultly is even supply. Pure price driven supply/demand hasn’t worked for us.
One potential solution that I’ve been thinking over is the mince & sausages everything that isn’t a high value cut.
EG: In a lamb we would cut and market cutlets, loin chops and then mince and snag the rest.
We would take a lamb which currently has around 12 SKUs and reduce it to 4.
2 that are high value and 2 that are very popular and we would increase stock depth and available a lot.
Beef is currently around 20 SKUs for us. If we kept eye, scotch, porterhouse and rump and minced + snag’d the rest we would work it back to 6 SKUS. Music to my ears.
This would also mean that we could justify building some efficiencies into mince and sausage packaging, currently quite labour intensive. With the new volume we would potentially be able to justify some new equipment.
How would you feel if your local regenerative farmer stopped supply topside roast, round steak and oyster blade?
Comments
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Honestly I feel it needs to be a win / win for both the farmer and consumer, and your thought on how to resolve the present issues you are facing is a great solution and I would not have a issue with those cuts not being available.
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A fascinating topic and can definitely see the logic in reducing SKUs. We are in QLD and buy 1/2 beast at a time more local to us and then top up from various places including yourselves. Buying 1/2 at a time certainly brought us a new appreciation for prime cut volumes per beast. We now rarely top up on prime cuts or roasts as we’ve adjusted to what we get from the 1/2. We ask for all mince/no sausages from our 1/2 beast, and buy Wolki sausages because they’re so much better haha. Really appreciate the luck of the draw with your value box as a trade off for price too as we, like most, are stretching our $$$ to get the best food we can source for our family. So personally I’m all for efficiencies that will aid stock and affordability of your outstanding meat, particularly your snags!
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Interesting idea! I am a stay at home mum with young kids. We currently buy half cow but I top up with Wolki Farm sausages and mince (which are delicious btw). I love cooking but having the young kids makes it much easier to reach for the mince, snags, steaks etc most of the time, as the more time intensive roasts or tougher cuts need that love and dedication in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong I love a slow cooked stew or roast, it’s just my least preferred cooking style for current season of life chasing after kiddos. So for me I personally wouldn’t mind if there was more mince/sausages and less roasts!
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Fascinating read Jake. I look at the sales we get from topside and blade roasts and think why bother with the extra labour?
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