The Economics of Taste in Grassfed Beef

Taste

There is a story we often tell during our ranch tours, and we thought it might be helpful to share it with you here.

For a long time, we raised cattle that ended up in the Whole Foods supply chain. Those animals met every standard you’d expect: they were organic and animal-welfare certified. But in that world, the actual "finish" of the animal–the eating quality and intramuscular marbling–wasn't the priority, and the reasons were structural. The goal was to hit a minimum weight target, usually right around 1,100 lbs, to move them through the system. In that model, time is money, and capturing that extra 200 to 300 lbs of weight is often very expensive and doesn't make financial sense for many beef operations.

The biggest reason we started our own program is that we realized we couldn't find the quality of grassfed beef we actually wanted to put on our own table or share with friends at the grocery store–or even at high-end butcher shops. Even other grass-fed beef shares we found didn't meet our standards. 

We were looking for beef that was local, grass-fed and finished but also had a high degree of intramuscular marbling, something that actually tastes like high-end choice or even low prime beef. We wanted beef that didn't taste "gamey" or off, and we wanted to know that if an animal got sick, it received appropriate therapeutic healthcare without being withheld just to meet a specific label requirement. Finally, we wanted to know that those cattle were having a measurable positive impact on biodiversity and the health of our grasslands.

The Energy Challenge

To truly marble grass-fed beef, it takes an immense amount of energy. You need locally adapted genetics that allow shorter-framed animals to build their skeleton first, then put on muscle, and finally marble.

The hardest part of the production process to manage is the California Mediterranean weather cycle of six months of rain and six months of drought. When the hills turn brown in June or July and the feed dries out, cattle naturally start losing weight. That weight loss affects the taste and the performance of the beef. To keep our cattle on an increasing plane of nutrition so they actually taste good at the end, we ensure they always have access to premium feed by moving them to irrigated pasture in the summer and providing protein supplementation with alfalfa in the fall and early spring. 

We don’t harvest until they are truly finished, which for us means they are in the neighborhood of 1,300 to 1,400 lbs–well over the minimum requirements for most other grass-fed programs. We do this in mid-June, when the cattle have reached their peak in fatness and energy consumption for the grazing year. All this matters whether you are looking for grass-fed beef in Sonoma County, San Francisco, or anywhere that you want to have a BBQ. 

The Economic Reality of Taste

Here is why it’s almost structurally impossible to regularly find this quality of grassfed beef in a grocery store or butcher shop: the amount of energy and expense that goes into capturing those extra calories is very difficult to recover at a wholesale level.

When you go to a butcher counter, those businesses have to mark the product up 30% or 40% just to function. They have to pay for the counter space, the labor to cut it up, waste, spoilage, theft, and health insurance. These retail operating costs limit the amount retailers are willing to pay ranchers, and as a result, we literally cannot produce our level of quality and sell it to wholesale accounts without losing money. 

To make the math work, most commercial beef programs harvest animals "almost finished." That results in the leaner, more variable grass-fed beef you see in the store that often just doesn't taste as good.

In the end, if you want to enjoy the taste of your grassfed steak and feel good about how it was produced, there are a lot fewer options, and you will likely not find it in any regular way at the meat counter. The only way it works economically is for the rancher to sell directly to you if they are managing their operations specifically for values of taste, welfare, biodiversity, and price. That’s why we believe in being "first-person certified,” where you can look us in the eye, ask these questions, and see the land for yourself. We’d love to see you on our next tour. Contact us if you’d like to visit.

Ready to skip the grocery store and stock your freezer with meat on a mission?

1. Select Your Share: Visit our online shop to choose your size.

2. Place Your Deposit: Secure your portion of this year’s upcoming harvest.

3. Ranch Pickup: Join us on pickup day to see the land and meet the people behind your food.