Who doesn't love mowing down a good burger? But thinking about your meat's origins could take the joy out of every juicy bite. That's why new startup Honest Beef Company is quelling people's meat fears, allowing consumers to go in together on a whole cow and share the cuts of high-quality, ethically raised beef.
Hannah Raudsepp, founder of Honest Beef Company, grew up in rural Nebraska - so rural that she didn’t even want to bother trying to explain where - on an Angus cattle ranch. The small town gal decided to take on the big city, moving to Boston after graduating college. With her degree in exercise physiology in hand, Raudsepp landed a job as a personal trainer at an all-women’s gym in Cambridge. And after a couple of years consulting people on their lifestyle habits, it became apparent that many folks had a beef with beef.
“It was like another planet to me,” Raudsepp told us. “I’d speak with my clients about what they ate, why they chose it, how important protein was and, more specifically, how important beef was to them. I was shell shocked at the resistance and mistrust I found around beef.”
Raudsepp, who had been immersed in the Midwestern cattle industry during her childhood, believes there’s a widespread misconception about beef and how it impacts humans’ healths. She believes a lot of it stems from tactical fear campaigns from the media, meanwhile ranchers, the majority of whom are families running small-scale operations, don’t have the PR prowess to communicate their mission.
You can see the pedigree, which I have never seen for any other food product.
According to Raudsepp, most farmers don’t want to poison people with antibiotic- and hormone-laden meat. On the contrary, they take great pride in properly raising cattle to be high-quality meat. The real problem is a lack of transparency in the traditional method of getting meat to the masses. Which is why Honest Beef Company is stepping forward.
“You can go to your local market and pick up package of ground beef or a New York strip, but you’ll still have no idea exactly who raised it, how it was raised and what it ate,” Raudsepp said.
Honest Beef Company has cut out 60 percent of the conventional distribution chain for beef. It has eliminated feeding lots, packing plants, distributors and retailers from the equation. Instead, the startup uses hand-selected, reputable ranchers in Nebraska and pick the cattle being used for meat. Then, the beef is made into cuts by local craft butchers and hung to age before being delivered to the doors of customers.
“It’s direct and we use at least what the USDA would consider ‘high choice’ or ‘prime’, so it’s very good product,” Raudsepp explained.
The quality of meat will be higher than Whole Food's inventory and will be more affordable than Omaha Steak's delivery packages. Prices vary depending on the cuts you wish to purchase, but you can buy everything from a whole lot of offal for $75 to pounds of ribeye, top sirloin, round steaks and ground beef for $140. And there will be no question about the meat's origins because the degrees of separation between you and your beef are nominal.
Raudsepp has leveraged her network in Nebraska to provide the cattle. They’re all pure-bred Angus producers and they’ve been knocking down her door for the chance to be recognized for their prime products raised with integrity, as well as to be paid more.
"I can speak to beef: 97 percent of farms are small and family-operated,” she explained. “40 is the average herd size, which is very small… We're not paying all of the middle people, so it brings back value to both ends: ranchers and consumers."
Honest Beef Company launched a month and a half ago and it’s already gone through two cattle. All shares purchased come from a single animal - including the ground beef, which, when purchased in stores, is typically made up of more than 100 different cows. Raudsepp said the two cattle shared so far were both heifers and she rattled off their exact tag numbers. “I can tell you more than you want to know about them,” she laughed. “The fact that we can provide that, on principal, adds to the trust… You can see the pedigree, which I have never seen for any other food product.”
The company has been bootstrapping so far, but finances haven’t posed much of a problem. Raudsepp explained that because crowdsource for the cattle, Honest Beef Company doesn’t purchase an animal until the majority of shares are purchased. A pre-ordering structure allows her to operate with little risk.
In general, Honest Beef Company is moving to redefine the Localvore movement. Rather than having people fixate on exclusively buying local, Raudsepp wants people to buy familiar.
"I want to talk about what local means,” she said. “I really appreciate that, especially in New England, people are building their own breadbasket by supporting local food sources, but... individual climates are not conducive to raising all of the food we need, from a nutritional standpoint."
She wants to enable farmers to do what they do best with the geographical resources they have, encouraging consumers to buy from them - but with the utmost transparency. The most important component of purchasing food, according to Raudsepp, is "to know where it comes from, to be able to look the rancher in the eye - even if in a photo - and be in touch with where your food is coming from."
Basically, Honest Beef Company does all of the work for you, so you don't have to have conversations like this:
