FURTHER READING
-
, by Jacob Wolki "Entremanure at Misery Farms"
-
, by Jacob Wolki Father, not friend.
-
, by Jacob Wolki Albo's 47%
Why We Don't Do Beef Quarters and Halves
- , by Jacob Wolki
- 4 min reading time
Why We Don't Do Beef Quarters and Halves
When Mrs W and I started Wolki Farm (by accident) in 2019, we started the way many do.
Beef quarters and halves. If you read the books and watch the videos, this is the way to go. Many producers still work this way, and I'm not knocking them for it. There are limitless business models out there, which is a beautiful thing.
I get asked almost daily whether we do quarters and halves, and the answer is no. I'm writing this so that I can reply to those inquiries with more than just "no, buy this instead." I want to provide some context around why we made the decision we did.
I'm a lifelong retailer and giving people what they want is built into me — I really struggle saying no. So I'm here to explain, rather than be dismissive or give a rushed answer.
As we matured as a business, beef quarters and halves started becoming a genuine choke point.
Challenge 1: Custom Cut Requests
Consumers expect to organise their own cut list when buying a side of beef, and honestly, that makes sense — the industry has trained them to expect it. We ran into problems with this for a few reasons.
Consumers generally don't have a realistic understanding of the yields from a body of beef. We started receiving off-menu requests we weren't familiar with, which created production friction and killed productivity. And despite being clearly communicated upfront, some customers were still disappointed by how few steaks they ended up with.
Challenge 2: Lead Times
I much prefer selling from inventory and keeping lead times shorter. Taking orders for quarters and halves that are cut to order means you need those orders in the system before you slaughter.
Once you have enough orders — or close to enough — you still need to yard, draft, freight, slaughter, freight again, hang, butcher, pack and deliver. In a small business like ours, that chain can blow out badly.
Challenge 3: Who we could actually sell to
Not everyone can drop two grand on beef at a time. Not everyone has the freezer space. It's easy to say "it works out in the long run" and "freezers are cheap," but shopping habits are hard to change and I like to meet customers as close to where they are as possible — without compromising on our values.
What we do instead
When we butcher a body of beef, prime cuts — scotch, eye fillet, porterhouse and rump — represent approximately 15% of yield.
That fluctuates by animal, breed and cut list. (T-bones and ribeyes push the number up because of bone weight.)
Years ago we decided to build beef boxes that still represent the whole animal. After trial and error, we landed on something that looks roughly like this:
20% Prime steaks
20% Secondary cuts
20% Mince
20% Sausages
20% Roasts
Slightly more steaks than a traditional quarter, and a solid spread of everything else.
We also offer mince and sausages as separate items, which sells through consistently and keeps stock moving.
If you're paying attention, you'll notice we do offer individual cuts for lamb and pork alongside the boxes — but not for beef. We tried. We gave it a genuine crack for about a year.
Here's what happened. People go absolutely nuts for beef steaks. I'd put stock online and someone with a fast trigger finger would spend a few thousand dollars on steaks and clean out the site.
Great problem to have, right? Instead of selling steaks in a mixed box at $35/kg, we were moving them at $70–80/kg.
Except nothing else would sell. It would just sit there. After watching and listening, I think I worked out why — customers would load up their cart with mince and sausages, notice there were no steaks in stock, and decide to wait.
So while the steak prices were strong, the rest of our inventory stalled. It hamstrung the whole operation.
The obvious fix was supply and demand pricing — mark the steaks up, subsidise the rest of the range with the extra margin, and let it flow. I didn't love that idea.
Our steaks were already premium priced, and to be honest, I was a bit embarrassed marking them up further.
(Apparently I'm not quite the capitalist I aspire to be.)
We've never had this problem with pork or lamb. Our customers are far more even-handed when it comes to those, and offering the boxes alongside individual cuts has worked really well.
So — we don't do beef quarters and halves. But a standard beef quarter is really just two of our 20kg beef boxes.
Plus, in our boxes, you'd actually receive slightly more steaks than you would from a traditional quarter.
If it's in stock on the website, it ships nationwide every Wednesday.
Comments
-
Thank you for your clarification on this, it makes sense and I appreciate what you do and how you run things. I’m looking forward to my meat boxes :)
-
Thanks Jake. Good clarification and makes perfect sense 🙂
-
Good read, thank you.
- Share on:
- Send in WhatsApp
- Share on Facebook
- Share to X
- Pin it
- Send to Messenger
- Send to Email
- Share
