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| Kentucky Galloway breeders capitalize on unique product |
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By SARAH B. AUBREY
Indiana Correspondent LaGRANGE, Ky. — Who could have imagined a Father’s Day gift would turn into a successful small beef venture? Certainly not co-owner of Sherwood Acres Beef, Jon Bednarski, but that’s exactly what began in June 2003 when he and his family visited a southern Indiana Belted Galloway producer.
“We went up to look at cattle and I said, ‘Why don’t we just make this a Father’s Day gift?’ so we bought our first three head and had them delivered a week later,” Bednarski related, of his initial foray into the cow business.
Involved in showing dairy cattle as a youth in Vermont, the Easterner came to Kentucky and started the Sherwood Corp. in 2001 by purchasing some acreage near Louisville. His daughter shows horses competitively, and while Bednarski hoped his children might also like to show cattle, they just weren’t into it.
But that didn’t daunt the would-be cattleman. Instead, he found another angle to expand the farm.
“Dan I joined forces and with our marketing backgrounds, we just thought, ‘How can we sell this product?’” he said of involving business partner Dan Weintraub in a meat business.
The two had strong backgrounds in the log home business and in commercial real estate, but no knowledge of the meat industry, other than they knew people were buying natural and local beef at a premium. “We’d been in materials and construction for a lot of years,” Bednarski said.
“We sold our first steak in October 2006,” Weintraub added.
He now handles all of the sales and marketing while Bednarski raises the animals. Unlike peers who sell beef directly to consumers, the Sherwood Acres pair had no prior experience with actually being cattlemen.
“We were in marketing and sales and got into meat – we kind of went backwards,” said a laughing Bednarski, who knew enough to know that he didn’t know enough.
So, he enrolled in several courses over the years to learn to raise livestock and manage his small farm’s resources. He participated in University of Kentucky’s Master Cattleman’s Program and a Master Grazer Program, among others.
Once the duo decided to take a product to market, they searched out assistance and advice.
A local county extension agent put them in contact with the Kentucky Cattleman’s Assoc. and they were soon able to begin preparing a host of attractive marketing materials and displays.
“The Kentucky Cattleman’s Assoc. will actually match up to $5,000 to do beef marketing – we jumped all over that in the summer of 2006,” Weintraub recalled, adding they then developed two professional farmers’ market displays, and graphics used on items such as business cards, logos and even signs for in-store freezers.
Kentucky Proud also aids Sherwood Acres Beef with marketing and promotions dollars, and the owners feel using the Kentucky Proud label or logo is important for marketing.
“It’s really an endorsement, and so quickly that program became a success and using that logo was pressed into the minds of people. It’s a feel-good thing, but it’s also a credibility thing,” Weintraub said.
Today, the company continues to grow and expand, and with this success comes the new challenges of going forward and making decisions. For one thing, Sherwood Acres has become increasingly proud of its identity as Belted Galloway beef producers. It uses the breed’s uniqueness in all of its marketing.
“Belted Galloways came to the U.S. in the 1950s from Scotland,” explained Bednarski. “They were primarily a northern breed and are very hardy, medium-framed, polled, docile and have very good mothering ability,” he added, saying he was already familiar with the breed when he moved to Kentucky, due to its popularity in Eastern states.
Besides strong cow characteristics, Galloways have an interesting appearance. They are black with a large white belt around their center, giving them a decidedly “Oreo cookie” look. This cute look helps sell beef.
“Their novelty appearance is a big selling tool,” said Weintraub.
“Using the identity difference is a great way to capitalize on families with small children, because the kids really think the cows are cute or neat,” Bednarski said, but he believes raising Belted Galloways is a good choice for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to be in a strong member association. “If you raise Angus, you’re just peas in a pod; in our breed there are no secrets, and everyone wants to share information; it really is a hobby farm breed.”
Besides the product’s unique appeal, Sherwood Acres Beef is also sold as natural, not organic or grass-fed.
“We’ll never be strictly grass-fed, there’s not enough pasture with 50 acres,” Bednarski said. “The drought last year also really taught some lessons.”
The product is sold frozen and boneless and in vacuum-seal packages. The pair believes packaging is especially important and that vacuum-seal is a key for nice marketing to the end customer.
They also like to educate their customers as early as possible.
“Anytime we get a new customer, we give them a cooking recommendation sheet with our logo on it, and we warn them that if they overcook beef, they may not like it,” said Weintraub frankly, adding that he tries to be up front with customers and encourage their best beef-eating experience.
Keeping new ideas flowing while building a solid recurring customer base is the new challenge facing Sherwood Acres.
“Ninety percent of our gross sales are retail customers at farmers’ market or direct to consumer, and we’re pretty happy with that,” Bednarski said.
New ideas include starting a meat-only CSA (Community Supported Agricul-ture) for their local area and possibly a year-round indoor farmers’ market in Louisville. Being almost “in town,” as Bednarski says of metro Louisville, goals include growing larger, but in a calculated way. “We’ve got to take a look at our volume. We know we could sell more, but we need to see just how we want to do it,” Bednarski said.
For now, the outfit keeps busy expanding into new local grocery and health food stores and is gearing up for the busy summer farmer’s market season. To learn more, visit Sherwood Acres Beef online at www.sherwoodacresbeef.com or go to www.beltie.org for information on the U.S. Belted Galloway Society.
This farm news was published in the April 16, 2008 issue of the Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 4/16/2008 |
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