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The Continued Success of a Fifth Generation Ranch
693 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we talk with Logan Mannix of Mannix Family Beef in Montana. We discuss the origins of the 5th generation ranch, their continued focus on conservation and partnerships, and the establishment of their successful and growing direct to consumer business.
Mannix Family Beef raises grass finishes beef, offering cuts, bulk beef, and wholesale options. Despite their remote location, Logan has found great success offering local pickups and bundles of their products.
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Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business. Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers and save time and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:27
Speaker
All right, welcome to the Direct Farm podcast. I'm Richard, your host for today's episode.
Meet Logan Mannix from Mannix Family Beef
00:00:32
Speaker
And we have a great conversation with you today with one of our newest farm advisors, Logan Mannix from Mannix Family Beef, located in Montana. Welcome, Logan. We're happy to have you. Thanks for having me here. Absolutely. Well, we've got a lot to get through today. How about you just get us started by telling us a little bit more about Mannix Family Beef and what you all produce today?
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, our ranch is a generational ranch. It was homesteaded in 1882. So I'm fifth generation on the ranch. It's primarily managed now by my dad and his two brothers. So David, Randy and Brent Maddox. Um, there are three spouses also help at times on the ranch. And then quite a few of my generation back as well. So Brent and Stacy's son, Brian is back full time and his wife, Kate.
00:01:23
Speaker
This last fall, their daughter, Ashley and her husband Taylor came back to the ranch. Ashley's helping a little bit with the beat business when Taylor's working full-time on the ranch. Um, my cousin, Neil is on the ranch. My brother, Jordan and sister Erica are on the range full-time. So a slew of us out here, which is great. And then we also have, uh, Brad, Marty and Kelsey is an apprentice for us this year. So, um, that's kind of the crew.
Ranch Operations and History
00:01:49
Speaker
We're raising about 1250 cow-calf pairs. We background all of our calves currently. Um, so that's, you know, give or take 1100 calves in a given year. Some of those will be replacement heifers. Um, some of those we sell as stock or steers and almost all the heifers and some of the steers, then we.
00:02:08
Speaker
keep over for a second year and finish Nez Grass-fed beef and that's our direct marketing enterprise primarily. We sell both those finished beef that are between 24 and 36 months old and then we also sell
00:02:23
Speaker
A significant number of coal cows now that we mostly use for burger. And we've found more and more ways to start keeping some of the other cuts off those as well. This year we kept 300 heifers and steers to finish and sell. And there'll be about 200 burger cows, you know, older than three years that will be moving through the program this year. So yeah, that's the heart of the ranch, I suppose. Right on. Sounds like you guys are staying busy then. Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
Well, that's great to see the, the families out there as well. And, um, how long have you had interns on the ranch? That's something I don't hear often with many of the farms I work with. So, um, a few years back, we started participating in the new agrarian apprenticeship program from Rivera.
00:03:09
Speaker
So we've been involved for about five years, but this is a second time taken on an apprentice. We've had people out before officially having apprenticeships and it always enjoyed it. So part of it is that I think it's a great program for getting people who maybe are having a hard time finding their way into agriculture. Um, we just value the program for that, but it's also been good for us. So it's kind of a cheaper way for us to get an extra hand on the ranch and then return. We try to balance that with.
00:03:38
Speaker
rather than treating them like just in a ranch hand. We're trying to give them as much education as possible, but it's been, it's been great. That's awesome. That's awesome. Now you mentioned the ranch started, was it 1887? Is that what you said? 1882. 1882, right on. Um, so tell me briefly a little bit about the history. How did the Mannix family beef come to be and you know, how has it really changed over time?
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah. So Timothy Benjamin Mannix homestead, the ranch out here, we fought in Civil War and then came this direction. My grandma's side of the family actually has maybe even older roots in the Valley by 10 or 15 years too. There's a fifth generation Gary ranch in the Valley and they.
00:04:21
Speaker
share routes if you go all the way back with our family back there. So I think it started out as a sheep ranch. And I don't remember exactly when maybe early 1900s is when it moved from a sheep ranch to a cattle ranch.
00:04:38
Speaker
And so they've been running cattle since the early 1900s coming out of the depression. It was not in great financial shape. Grandpa did a great job kind of getting it back on his feet economically. I think he was a really good manager.
00:04:54
Speaker
And then one thing I think he did really well was stepping aside earlier than maybe he was ready for his sons to kind of step in. So in the eighties and nineties, my dad and his two brothers started coming back and they first started out on their own on another ranch that was their uncles, but then grandpa stepped aside and they sort of started running those two ranches as a unit.
00:05:18
Speaker
And then since then they use some conservation easements to expand
Ranching for Profit and Conservation Efforts
00:05:22
Speaker
the ranch. We're able to buy some additional chunks of land and that's part of why we have more people back now. And then as far as how did we get into direct marketing from there?
00:05:36
Speaker
In the nineties, ranching for profit was pretty influential. We've all gone through the program now. I think dad was the first to go, but went through this ranching for profit program. It's been really influential on how we do our economics. And one of the things that started us down is we were kind of following the rest of the industry with our, our cow size was getting larger. We were kind of pushing for more production for animal and kind of through this ranching for profit, we realized.
00:06:05
Speaker
We didn't quite think that was the right direction. We started downsizing the hurry a little bit, not numbers of cattle, but in terms of frame size, smaller cattle, deeper bellied, trying to find hardier cattle that would require less inputs, be able to say graze a little longer in the winter.
00:06:22
Speaker
started moving further into the rotational grazing practices. We realized that the same animals that were sort of heartier and required less inputs were the same animals that might do well on grass, right? Be able to finish on grass. My generation can't take any credit for that. I was
00:06:40
Speaker
You know, graduating from high school and early college when they were first doing that, I would say 2003, 2004 were probably the beginnings of starting to finish beef on grass. So they started selling primarily through farmer's markets and then finding wholesale customers. They found a few grocery store partners around that would sell whole animals.
00:07:01
Speaker
Found some guest ranches and stuff that would sell holy animals. And that was all offline. They didn't have the ability to ordering online or anything like that. It was mostly done over the phone and kind of door to door. So that's how it got started. Right on. Hey, I love it.
00:07:16
Speaker
Well, I've had the privilege of being able to work as your account manager for some time. And I know land stewardship seems to be at the core of Mannix Family Beef. And you mentioned kind of changing the animals to better graze off grasses, right, for longer periods of time. So can you tell us a little bit about the practices you currently have in place?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. And again, so much of this credit goes to, uh, generation four dad and his brothers and grandpa as well. They've always had a land ethic about, you know, leaving it better. We're really focused on forming partnerships. I think one of the best things they've done is they were always willing to open the doors and work with fish and game and forest service and conservation groups like the Blackfoot challenge, which is an influential, uh, grassroots group out here.
00:08:02
Speaker
Conservation groups that are working with land trusts and conservation easements and trout unlimited and I feel like we've always come out of those partnerships. I'm better off than we were before you know there's definitely been some compromises but I would say more often than not it's less compromise and more win-win that they've been able to find.
00:08:23
Speaker
And so going back to the ranching for profit, we've been working really hard on our grazing practices and soil health. And really in the last six or so years, kind of increasing our focus on that soil health piece. So we're trying to practice rotational grazing. Our stalkers and our beef are primarily on daily moves on our irrigated ground this time of year. So we've set up, we have a couple of pivots and we've set those up
00:08:52
Speaker
to have a movable water source and both permanent and temporary electric fence to be able to move those daily. A lot of the mother Calvert this time of the year that's in the meadows has more two to four day moves, developed a lot of water infrastructure to make that possible. We're starting to expand now to trying to develop the infrastructure to do more of that on some of our dry land acres, because those are, have been a little bit more difficult there.
00:09:18
Speaker
large pastures, sagebrush, not super productive, not a lot of water. And we probably got down to one or two wheat grazes on most of that, but we just got a TIFF grant to put in some additional water tanks. Basically, we're building a big collection tank to hold the water from a whole bunch of springs. It could then feed larger herds down below it, and hopefully that gets put in in the next few years.
00:09:42
Speaker
But then aside from the grazing, I think good grazing practices is probably the heart of what we do, but we've also some conservation easements on the vast majority of the land that we own use that to purchase some additional land.
00:09:54
Speaker
We've worked with Trout Unlimited to do some restoration projects on streams, to put in fish screens, to do a water lease on some irrigation water to leave more water in the stream at certain times of the year. They put in a fish ladder on a pond that my great-grandpa put in. Wow. Which is funny, those ponds, he won conservation awards for putting them in back in the day, but of course now we know that there's impacts from that.
00:10:21
Speaker
Rather than tear them out, they realized it was a source of purebred cutthroat shown. Um, because it's a little bit, the fish can't quite get into the stream. And rather than fixing that, they've put in the fish slider. So they're spawning upstream and then occasionally trap fish out of there to transplant to the river. No kidding. Um, we worked a lot with the blackboard challenge on.
00:10:42
Speaker
trying to live with predators on the ranch. So we've got grizzlies and wolves, and they've helped institute a carcass pickup program where when animals die, we try to quickly haul them into the ranch, put them somewhere like on a bale or something like that for a day or two. And within a day or two, there's a truck that'll come by, pick them up and haul them to a compost site. And a lot of these ranches used to have sort of a
00:11:06
Speaker
dumping ground, if you will, for those carcasses. And that can be a big attractant for bears and wolves. And I think that getting that out has been a big way, a big part of reducing conflict on the ridge. We also stayed in a range writing program. My brother's done that quite a bit for maybe five years or more. He was the range writer that would travel around, set up game cameras, kind of track activity, and just be a presence on the landscape.
00:11:32
Speaker
In general, I would just say that the family's willingness to work with fish and game and trout and horn and Blackfoot challenge has just been a great, great partnerships for us. And we'd usually come out the other side. Then we started win-win. That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, do you think it's a, it's a really important deal for your retail customers to know these practices and to have these practices in place?
Online Sales and Market Shifts
00:11:55
Speaker
I sure think so. Um, especially the heart of our customer base. Um.
00:12:00
Speaker
You know where we were attending farmers markets in Missoula and see Lee these are towns that are in our watershed. And I think that through our partnerships helped get our name out there people maybe recognized us a little bit that and they wouldn't have it. There weren't.
00:12:16
Speaker
you know some of these partnerships they hear about us and we've hosted some tours out on the ranch related to those conservation efforts and I think it's both helped get our name out there and then I think that as our customers learn about that I think it's a big part of the reason why they'll stick with us even if you know let's say we haven't
00:12:36
Speaker
Don't as good a job making our box pretty as we should or, or something like that. I do think it's a big piece of loyalty for our customers. As we are trying to expand our customer base, I think it's going to be important for us to try and tell that story to customers who might not have learned it. Otherwise our single biggest grocery store, the good food store in Missoula. I think our practices were really important for them in being loyal to us. And for a long time, that was a huge portion of our.
00:13:06
Speaker
business before we've gone to direct to consumer. And so yes, I definitely think those conservation practices have been important. Good, good. Now, speaking of your direct to consumer buyer base, you mentioned in your history, the ranch sold quite a bit to restaurants and the retailers and tell me a little bit about making the change to selling direct to the consumer. And then, you know, what was the early stages of that? What did that look like for you guys?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah. So, like I said, initially, we did sell direct to consumer at farmer's markets early on. We were attending a couple of them. And consumers could buy Locker beef households in quarters, but we had no free to storage on the ranch. That was sort of a pickup from the butcher thing. And then we had just enough storage for our farmer's market trailer.
00:13:52
Speaker
At the time we'd spent really no money on advertising other than farmers markets. And so a fellow that worked for us for about 15 years was instrumental in getting all that going. So that's when I kind of stepped in to managing the beef business was after he left.
00:14:08
Speaker
And I think one of my goals was maybe I'm a little bit younger generation, a little bit more techie and was thinking, Hey, we should really start actually allowing people to purchase online. Um, and I thought that there was unmet demand out there, um, outside of the farmer's markets. And, uh, so I was had started doing that. I redid our website, um, had very few pickup locations. Basically when we were going back and forth to the butcher, I created some drop locations in town on our way through.
00:14:38
Speaker
Sure. And I was just kind of starting to get it off the ground. The pandemic hit in 2020. And so I've been thinking about expanding the route for some time. And it just kind of seemed like, man, if we're ever going to do this, this is the time. And so we immediately launched a
00:14:56
Speaker
weekly delivery route with pickup locations. I started trying to build an email newsletter and a following. We purchased a refrigerated van to be able to better do that delivery route and sales really took off. One thing I should say too, in the history of our program, we are actually losing ground with the number of beef we were able to sell wholesale.
00:15:19
Speaker
Part of that was just, I think we're getting a lot more competition. There's more and more and more ranches trying to do this. And we lost some of our business with different guest ranches and stuff. And I think a lot of that was just more and more competition, more producers coming in. Some of that, I think is just the convenience factor for some of those places, not wanting to sell whole animals. They started wanting to sell primals and we were selling more and more out of state on the oomph to
00:15:49
Speaker
more national brands. We sold to US Wellness Meats and we sold the Thousand Hills. We'd always wanted to have some of those selling to those programs because we felt like it was our overflow valve that if you raise more than you could sell locally.
00:16:06
Speaker
We'd sell them that direction, but the number we were selling that direction was growing. And frankly, we were losing money on those. At least if you look at the opportunity cost of what we could have sold those animals for, it just wasn't paying to sell to those programs. And so I think before the pandemic hit, but going into that, I think part of where my head was that is we need to stop selling these to those programs. You know, we had sold.
00:16:30
Speaker
two truckloads and a 70 to 80 head out of state the previous year. And that was just not worthwhile. And so I wanted to see if we could sell those locally. Yeah, so that was also kind of leading into this decision to start selling direct to consumer is that there is not very many good foods and real food stores out there that are willing to sell whole animals. Yeah, and that are willing to pay more for local beef.
00:16:54
Speaker
And not only is there not a lot more of them out there, but the ones that are there have more and more producers calling them. And so we wanted to build their own following. So yeah, we launched that delivery route and our direct to consumer wholesale beef has gone from maybe 20 to 30 a year to 160 to I hope this year, 200 finished beef. We're going from selling maybe 30 of those cold cows and burger cows locally.
00:17:21
Speaker
to I'm hoping 160 to 200. We don't have enough cool cows on our own ranch anymore to fill those accounts. So we started partnering with another ranch to bring in some more cool cows. So yeah, that's awesome. Wow. Well, great scaling. No kidding. So that's good to see.
00:17:41
Speaker
Now, so you mentioned the pandemic, you're expanding your customer base. I'm really always excited to hear when ranchers are collecting and sending out emails. So great head on your shoulders there for that one. But when it came to joining Barnadore, why did you sign up with Barnadore in the first place? Where do we come into this equation here?
Tools for Managing Sales
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. So I think I've seen some people build successful businesses off of, you know, Shopify and those things. And.
00:18:05
Speaker
And there's definitely some strength to those platforms, but the ability to find a platform that is built for selling by the pound was important and that's hard to find. Also, our main way of selling has not been home delivery, it has been pickup locations.
00:18:23
Speaker
And then we really needed a tool that would force customers to choose, you know, um, you can only order from us every other Saturday and you got to choose that I'm going to meet you at this school parking lot at 10 a.m. Um, that's really hard to arrange with other platforms. And I think when I looked at Barnadore, I was wanting to improve our website and the website designs that Barnadore offered were professional and beautiful looking. I was one.
00:18:52
Speaker
thing that attracted us to the program. Another was just kind of the ability to meet with an account manager. I think that's been valuable for us and was one of the, the idea of being able to meet with somebody, you know, each month and check in and ask questions was another part of it. But honestly, the initial piece that website design was a big part of it. At any rate, those were two of the big ones that drew us to the platform and
00:19:22
Speaker
And we've been here since. I couldn't imagine doing this without a tool like that to allow us to sell to pickup locations and have customers be forced to choose a time and a location to meet us has been hugely helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Well, running the schedule and the business that you guys are over there.
00:19:41
Speaker
I have a lot of time to bend over backwards for orders and things like that. So, well, good. Now you mentioned something a little earlier, you know, just in terms of your location and other, you know, locations where your customers are. You know, given the rural location of the farm, how have you met the expectations that customers have when it comes to ordering online nowadays?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I might be wrong about this, but we kind of think we're a little too remote to say go with a on-farm store pickup very often. There are people who will, but we're an hour to an hour and 15 minutes from most population centers. Most of our customers are at least that far away in bigger towns, humbles.
00:20:26
Speaker
you know, got a population in the valley of under 200 and they're mostly ranchers who aren't our customers. You know, farmers markets have been, I think, a great way to get our name out, but they've never been a huge point of sales for us. In fact, probably for the first 15 years, we were losing money on it and we knew it, but we at least losing money if you considered time and expensive traveling there and paying somebody and and all of that, but but it was our only marketing and
00:20:54
Speaker
I think it was worth it for us to go, but if that was our only sales, it would never have been worth it. Now we are making a little bit of money at the one farmers market. We're still attending, but it's still more, I think, of a get your name out there and marketing event than it is our main point of sales. And so I think, you know, we realized we just needed to find a way to make it more convenient for more people to buy from us.
00:21:17
Speaker
First, the main way that we've met that is through our pickup locations. We basically looked at all the major populations within a few hours drive of us and tried to set up a loop with pickup locations in each major place. We drive that route every week. One week we will go north and hit.
00:21:35
Speaker
on towns like Missoula and Lolo and Kalispell and Polson and Seeley and Big Fork. The next week we will go south and hit the big towns are Helena Bozeman Butte, but we'll pick up some little towns in between like Anaconda and Belgrade. And so each week we're either gone north or on that loop or south. And we've adjusted that a little bit. And now we only do the full loop once every four weeks.
00:22:03
Speaker
And in those off weeks, we offer some home delivery. So we hit either Missoula or Helena pickup locations and then do home deliveries and those towns after that. So those home deliveries are kind of a newer experiment, but just seeing if we can even at another level of convenience, maybe for customers, but still the pickup locations are driving our sales and not the home delivery at this point.
Logistics and Customer Service Solutions
00:22:26
Speaker
But being, I think another way we meet that is one of our advantages of being a big ranch is that
00:22:32
Speaker
we're slaughtering enough that we slaughter every two weeks all year long plus some additional butcher slugs elsewhere. And that's been an advantage in working with our butcher because they can rely on us to bring right now it's 12 animals every two weeks into the butcher.
00:22:51
Speaker
And that's helped us find butcher slots that I think other people have a harder time scheduling. It's been an advantage for our customers because we have beef year-round. If we do sell out of something, we'll have more soon. And so people can order from us in December, in March, in September.
00:23:07
Speaker
So they can order have some holes year round. And I think that's been a big advantage for us. The fact that we're not seasonal that way. It's a bit of a challenge on the management side, but I think it's been worth it to be consistent. Our biggest wholesale customer wants fresh beef. And so we kind of have to be butchering every two weeks for them to sell fresh beef. And so both being available year round.
00:23:30
Speaker
them being able to order online and for us to have pickup locations within 10 minutes of where they live. I think that's really helped us to expand that customer base. Nice. And just to dig into that a little bit, I'm curious on how you determine where to set up your pickup locations so they are convenient. Because I know just from what we've seen, most customers don't want to drive more than about 15 minutes for any pickup location.
00:23:58
Speaker
Right. Cause they're busy. They got crazy things going on in their lives. And so when it came to you guys determining where to set up your pickup locations or, um, you know, importantly, your delivery zones and, you know, whether or not you're charging delivery fees, tell me a little bit about how you made that convenient for you guys as, as well as for the customer. Right. So I think I was just looking for.
00:24:20
Speaker
parking lots with space that so that it's not stressful for customers. Perfect. And then just trying to spread them out a little bit. So Missoula, I knew is where we've been at farmers market for years. So I knew a lot of our customers were there. So we had to pick up locations there, one on either side of town.
00:24:38
Speaker
so that it was convenient for people that didn't have to go clear across town, which can be a pain there. In the other towns, we didn't really have time. I would like to set up more pickup locations, but we didn't have the time or the customer base to justify that yet. So I just tried to find one good location that was fairly central. For example, right now, one of our pickup locations
00:25:03
Speaker
is at a gas station in the middle of nowhere but it's about 10 or 15 minutes from Whitefish which is on the north side and Kalispell on the south side so we picked that location hoping that it would be close to both of those markets and then a lot of them are small enough towns that there are five-minute drive from anywhere if you're near that town like Sealy and we've been at a farmer's market in Sealy for a lot of years so
00:25:28
Speaker
We knew we had a customer base there, so we made sure to put a drop location there. So some of it was where do we already have customers? Some of it was just how can we access the most people? And we've started hitting the max weight limit with our van on some of these routes. So I think that soon if we keep going, we'll have to consider adding routes or
00:25:54
Speaker
or pickup location, which is a good problem to have. So in some of those places like Bozeman, we did not have a presence at a farmer's market. So we were really breaking into a new market. So it's a big enough town to easily have more than one pickup location, but we just started with one and then figured if the customer base grows enough, maybe we'll add a second one. And I think we're.
00:26:13
Speaker
getting close to considering that now. Nice. Right on. Awesome. One thing that we're pretty passionate about here at Barn to Doors is helping ranchers save time because we kind of made a nod to it earlier. There's really not a lot of spare time running an operation your size, let alone a ranch in general, right? So in what regards has Barn to Door helped you save time and help managing your farm a little easier?
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, the single biggest reason that it helps to save time I think is obviously collecting online orders without having to be on phone or your email and just reducing that communication that's necessary. We still have a few people that aren't
00:26:52
Speaker
very comfortable ordering online and I end up helping them over the phone. I've been able to transition most of our old customers that were always ordering by the phone to online ordering. I still will let them call me or email me if they're having issues. But I can't imagine taking that many phone calls or emails
00:27:11
Speaker
without an online shopping cart. Just all the details of not just what are they gonna order? What do you have available? When are they gonna pick up? There's no way we could manage that without them being able to order online and choose their pickup location and time on their own. And so that's been the single biggest way that it's helped us save time.
00:27:37
Speaker
Awesome, I love that. We had chatted also that he did a lot of bulk, he got some cold animals for burgers and things. You also offer a variety of bundle boxes, correct? Yeah. Awesome. Tell me a little bit about that bundle box setup.
Future Aspirations and Network Contributions
00:27:54
Speaker
You know, has that helped you save time and have buyers responded well to seeing a bundle box? They definitely have. As soon as we started offering them, they became one of our
00:28:05
Speaker
our larger sales. So oddly enough, selling halves and wholes was decreasing, actually starting to come back after the pandemic. It seems like that drove some more interest in selling halves and wholes. But this is not an original idea. It's something I've learned from other producers, but there's plenty of people out there that would love to buy in bulk and save a little money.
00:28:25
Speaker
but who don't really know how to, or it's intimidating for them to give cutting instructions, right? If you're thinking about convenience for the customer and what it takes to get a half a beef, you know, first they gotta, they gotta order it. They gotta schedule a time for it to go to the butcher, which at times can be a couple months away. One of our advantages is it usually can go in the next two weeks, but you know, there've been times where we've got backed up and we were several months out on ordering those.
00:28:54
Speaker
Then they got to give cutting instructions which many of them don't understand. And I can't blame them because I didn't understand it when we started doing this, right? I learned it because I had to as I took on direct marketing. And then, you know, then you have to wait till it gets cut and then you have to arrange pickup. And that's a lot to ask a lot of customers to do. And then yeah, it's expensive to buy it one stake at a time. And so I think the bundle boxes have been a great in between where people can get
00:29:24
Speaker
A variety of cuts we offer, smaller 25 pound bundles, which are maybe our most popular that are, there's a grilling bundle, a slow cooker bundle, a classic bundle, and a butcher's cuts bundle, which is all kind of the cuts that people may have never tried before. Like Merlot's and Denver's and Terry's majors and stuff like that. Um, but we also have an eight to beat bundle, a quarter beat bundle, and now I have a beat bundle, which I hadn't had.
00:29:52
Speaker
half a beef bundle until a few months ago. And I was really surprised at how many customers immediately started going for the half a beef bundle instead of the half a beef just because you could get it in two weeks and didn't have to determine cutting instructions. I think there's a fair amount of our customers that will call on their cutting instructions and get stuff back and then be a little bit disappointed at what they got back.
00:30:17
Speaker
And it wasn't because the butcher did anything wrong. It was because they are used to seeing what we request in our cutting instructions and thought they communicated that, but didn't. Cause they just didn't understand the nuances of putting together that cut sheet. And so we still like offering have some holes as an option, but I think it's been great to have the bundles as an option for a lot of customers who don't necessarily want to go through that headache.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it. Now, if you could expand a little bit on like the half beef bundle, is that just like the Mannix cut sheet and they get a box that's equivalent to a half? What does that look like? So with all of our bundle boxes, we've made them a set price and sort of said at least this many pounds. So with the half of beef bundle, it is I think at least 220 pounds of beef. And so we try to
00:31:10
Speaker
get that plus just a little bit. Our quarter beef funnel is at least 110 pounds of beef. And it is designed to be close to our average half of beef, but certainly some animals are smaller than that and some are bigger than that. So we just say, you know, that's going to be five to six tenderloin fillets. It's going to be five to six ribeyes, six New York's, and all the way through the list. And then we've set it up to try and move all the cuts that we
00:31:38
Speaker
want to move and then the reason we're giving them the discount then is because you're signing up to use all the cuts you're signing up to eat the shank and the top round not just the ribeyes but yeah so for the half a beef bundle it's just pre-cut and it's not necessarily from one beef it's right put together from cuts in our freezer
00:31:59
Speaker
That's awesome. Nice and convenient for you guys as well. Measure it out, you're good to go. I would say one thing that's probably worth mentioning there that's been usually helpful for us is that because we have slots every two weeks,
00:32:14
Speaker
You know, sometimes we're booked out, but sometimes there's like two or three slots unspoken for. So it's really nice to have those bundles that so when I don't have to like not send a beak to the butcher, cause I don't have a buyer for it. I can just have it cut to our specifications and then it comes in our freezer and then I can move that through. So it's helped me to keep all of our butcher slots. Whereas before I think, Oh, maybe we'll send five this week and then we'll see if we can get seven in the next week. Cause we have more orders.
00:32:44
Speaker
Um, it's been a lot easier to hold those butcher slots consistently because of selling metals. Yeah, absolutely. That's sounds like it's a streamlines a lot of the backend and the inventory management as well, which is huge time saver. Um, well, as one of our newest members of the farm advisor network, um, I would say, what are you most excited for when it comes to joining the team here? I'm most excited for getting to know some of the other advisors and learning from them. Um,
00:33:12
Speaker
I would say that, you know, I think we've done a decent job with our, um, email newsletter. And I think that, like you talked about our, kind of our production practices, um, and some of the relationships that the family had built before direct marketing have helped us. But I would say we're actually pretty new to the. You know, social media marketing, Facebook and Instagram, we're trying to improve our game and those areas. Um,
00:33:39
Speaker
trying to improve some of the automations in our newsletter. We just got some of our automated journeys and MailChimp working. And so I think we actually have a lot to improve on in terms of our marketing, actually. And so I'm, I'm hoping to learn.
00:33:56
Speaker
Right. I'll tell you from other members, the, the other fans, I'm sure feel very similar about you joining the team as well. So we're happy to have you. And so, uh, last question for you, what's, what's next? You know, what are some of your goals for the Mannix family beef, uh, this coming year?
Business Evolution with Old Salt Co-op
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, one big thing kind of looming over all of this is that my brother.
00:34:17
Speaker
started a co-op called Old Salt Co-op and they are partnering with several ranchers and they've opened a restaurant and are looking to open another one and they have a food truck and they're trying to put a music and food festival on at the ranch, Old Salt Festival here on the ranch and
00:34:37
Speaker
If old salt, uh, really takes off our family will have a decision to make whether to continue marketing as max family grass finished beef on our own. Cause right now we are separate, but we sell some beef to old salt and they sell it to customers and medics family beef sells beef on her own. Um.
00:34:55
Speaker
Depending on how that goes, I could see us either continuing to market on our own or keeping our wholesale customers, but not driving their roots anymore. Or I could see us combining our program with theirs and, uh, trying to market all of ours through that co-op. So, so one of that's one of the big things on the horizon for us is, uh, seeing how that works out. They're hoping to own that they own a small processing plant, but doesn't have slaughter yet. We're hoping that by fall this year or early winter, we might.
00:35:25
Speaker
through the co-op, not Germanic strength, but through the co-op, control our own processing, which would be a neat step. And then, you know, depending on how that goes, if we are
00:35:39
Speaker
if we are continuing Mannix family beef as it exists, just continuing to grow the program, you know, we do have a large ranch. So despite selling a few hundred grass-finished beef each year, we could sell a few hundred more if we had the market and the processing and the storage lined up. So I think we're trying to grow our customer base, just kind of consistently
00:36:01
Speaker
I'm over the year and sell more and more of our beef locally. Awesome. I love it. Well, I want to extend my thanks to Logan for joining us on this week's podcast episode here at barn to door. We are humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including Mannix family beef.
00:36:17
Speaker
If you want to connect with Logan and other farm advisors, attend Barn2Door Connect. Register for weekly sessions at barn2door.com slash connect. And for more information on the Mannix family beef, you can follow them on Instagram at Mannix beef. That's M-A-N-N-I-X-E-E-F. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
00:36:42
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms used to grow and manage their business, visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the Direct Farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.