eliminate some of those problems. By shipping twoday air in recyclable coolers and maximizing the dry ice we can put in, we operate, for the most part, with a lot of efficiency, getting frozen beef all the way to people’s front door no matter where they live in the country.” GOING THE FINAL MILE Since its inception, Lone Creek’s cattle have been raised on a 50/50 grass/grain diet. But Robertson reveals that that is soon going to change -- the company is in the middle of sunsetting its grain-fed program and switching to a 100% grass-fed, grassfinished protocol. “I think that’s the most exciting thing happening on the cattle side,” he states. For the uninitiated, there is a major difference between beef that is grass-fed and those that are grass-finished. Simply put, grass-finished beef comes from cattle that ate nothing but grass and forage for their entire lives. Grass-fed, on the other hand, may be used to label meat from cattle that were started on a grass diet but have either received supplemental grain feed, or are finished on a fully grain-based diet.” “In fact, many grass-fed cattle spend the last few months of their lives eating grain in feedlots to help them quickly gain weight. Grass-finished beef is 20% lower in calories than grain-finished beef and has higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids, Conjugated Linoleic Acid -- an essential fatty acid that fights cancer and inhibits body fat -- and Vitamins A and E.” “The amount of effort it has taken over the last eight years to get to that point is really exciting,” Robertson adds.“You never really know how the market is going to react when you’re doing something as big as what we’re doing right now. Pulling the ranchers along with us, is really a testament to how forward-looking they are, because ranchers are generally rooted in tradition and it is hard, at times, to get them to change because they’ve done things the same way for generations. So, it’s really exciting to see all of our suppliers come with us on this journey.” From the sales and marketing side, Mohl agrees. “Our focus is on growing our grass-fed, grassfinished sales,” he reports.“For us, being an American years. The vertical integration of the supply chain really helped us maintain growth in a very volatile and competitive market.And the demand continues to grow. The only real struggles we had, at times, were not having enough cooler boxes or dry ice. Now, we just installed our own dry ice machine to 104 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 10
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