"We are a house of beef brands, non a branded house," explains Jay Theiler, executive director of marketing for Agri Beef, a family-owned and operated Boise-Idaho company that he's worked for over the past 18 years. "We operate four different brands under the Agri Beefiness buying," he explains. "Each brand is focused on producing different types of beef products for different customers who love beef and want to eat it."

The visitor started as a ranching and feeding functioning and grew to comprise every step of the beefiness lifecycle. Instead, Agri Beef runs what is called a airtight-loop system. The visitor has ranching, cattle feeding, brute nutrition and processing operations, like what's called "vertical integration" in the poultry manufacture, where convenance, hatching, and raising chickens all feed into processing. "Yes, we're kind of like that," Theiler agrees. "We have an unusual setup for the beefiness industry, but it works very well for u.s.a.."

Agri Beef's brands produce different products for different market segments who similar to eat beef. "Then, we're really a sum of all these parts, the different brands and the different production stages, from raising the cattle on the ranch, feeding the cattle with skilful animal nutrition, and then eventually to slaughter and processing."

The company's tiptop brand is Serpent River Farms, an iconic brand that's known best for raising and processing American Wagyu cattle. "American Wagyu is a type of cattle now raised in the U.s. that originally came from Nihon. The beefiness is created by crossing Wagyu (the give-and-take means "Japanese cattle"), with American Angus, besides as sometimes Hereford cattle."

One of the products coming from this top-of-the-line cattle is Ophidian River's Wagyu ground beef. At $14 a pound, this meat is certainly at the upper cease of the ground beef spectrum. But Theiler plays this downwards, saying this price reflects the cost of meat ordered online, including the packaging and shipping. If the basis beef is purchased in brick-and-mortar retail stores, the price is less, betwixt $five and $x a pound.

Snake River Farms produces just under 2 million lbs. a year of its premium ground beef products.

G Wagyu

Premium quality

Theiler terms it equally a eatery-quality product that'south rich in flavor and amazingly juicy. "I'd describe it as sweet and buttery," he says. It's made from 100 percent American Wagyu beef, and this gourmet ground beefiness is used by acme chefs and restaurants to make signature hamburgers, sliders and primary dishes. The pre-measured, 1-lb. packages, or "bricks," work well for consumers to use at home to make juicy burgers or tin can be used in other recipes. People willing to pay this much for ground beefiness accept an outlook towards food that has changed, looking for an infrequent feel when eating.

"By combining these 2 types of cattle, one from the East and 1 from the W, we get the best of both worlds – a marbled meat with a beefy flavor," Theiler says. (Marbled ruddy meat contains various amounts of intramuscular fatty, giving it an appearance like a marble pattern). The company uses the Japanese marbling scale to measure the marbling in its beef. Snake River Farms has adopted many aspects of the heritage-steeped Japanese feeding method, which takes much longer than the traditional Us cattle production methods.

The bulls get out to Agri Beef's partners, family ranches in the Western United States. The calves then come back to the feeding operation, which is located between Boise and Yellowstone National Park, virtually the Snake River. Instead of existence fed for a typical 150 days, these animals are fed closer to 500 days.

"And then the animals are sent to Washington Beef, our processing institute in Washington State, USDA Establishment 235, a 270,000-sq.-ft. construction in Toppenish, Washington, near Yakima," Theiler says. "We non just procedure our cattle there, but besides our value-added products, including what nosotros telephone call our grind program."

Agribeef

Snake River Farms runs what is called a "premium meat processing program," he explains. "Annihilation that's non article programme or product could be considered premium. It could be brood specific, information technology could be several breeds. It could be grass-fed. In our case, information technology's the attributes and the quality of the animals. We practice chubs. We do vii types of patties. We practise 1-lb. bricks, packs for retail, also two viii-oz. hamburger patties in a 1-pack product. Snake River Farms American Wagyu beef exceeds what is normally considered Prime in its marbling," Theiler says. In fact, merely iii pct of American beef is considered Prime to begin with.

The additional year of cattle feeding, the direction of the livestock, the production system adds cost to the production. Not merely the meat is premium, but and then is the packaging. "We put a lot of endeavor into the design of our packaging, and what's communicated on the packaging. For example, our consumer attributes are highlighted," Theiler says.

So at that place is Double R Ranch, a second Agri Beef brand, named after Robert Rebholz Sr., who founded Agri-Beefiness in 1968 and is the belatedly father of Agri Beef's owner, Robert Rebholtz. This brand focuses on exceptional quality premium beef from the Northwest part of the Usa, including USDA Prime. The beef sold as part of Double R Ranch brand is non breed-specific. It also includes USDA Choice, and an Upper 1/iii Choice Programme, based on a marketing level.

The Double R Northwest Beef includes filet mignon, steaks, roasts, brisket, ribs, burgers and hot dogs, and specialty items. ribeyes, skirt steaks, flat iron steaks, Porterhouse and T-bones are also offered by Double R. A 3rd Agri Beef brand is St. Helen's Beef, which consists of all commodity grades. The company's fourth brand is Rancho El Oro Select, which is aimed at the Hispanic market.

There is a nationwide market for Snake River Farms American Wagyu ground beef. "We sell information technology to foodservice – very fine restaurants – and in select retailers effectually the US and internationally. In fact, half of all industry beefiness sales in retail is ground beefiness," Theiler says. "Ground beef is a adept beginning for people to motion into eating more beef. If a retailer wanted to provide a good point of admission for customers, footing beef is a practiced starting bespeak – then they can move onto steaks."

"I too retrieve the dissimilar means beef is raised, processed, and marketed to many different types of consumers is good for the industry." It is certainly good for Agri Beef, who follows this formula as its game plan for how it operates.

"You lot're seeing the growth of premium beefiness, because we're telling our story to consumers. In production, how we raise our animals is very important to consumers today. So, we have multiple segments of consumers we're trying to reach. That's why we have different brands of beef, for different customers and for dissimilar eating occasions. This may not be unique to united states, but it'due south certainly an important part of how our company operates," Theiler says.