 Good evening, everyone. My name is Isaac Barranco and you're joining us for our third webinar in the series this spring over local meats marketing. And our topic tonight is finding a niche market and navigating farmers markets. We have a good group of panelists tonight with Simone Y from the Red River Farmers Market, Ashley Brunner from Dakota Angus, Kelsey Crap from the Bison Ranch and or Crop from the Bison Ranch. And then also Ron and Beth Wolfe will be joining us again from last week from Wolfe Suffix. I mean, it's always a good time to differentiate yourself from other producers and we'll start off tonight with a some remarks from Simone Y as she talks about her experience with the Red River Market and working with producers. Go ahead and turn it over to you Simone. Hi, everyone. My name is Simone Y, like Isaac said, and I am part of the Red River Market in Fargo, North Dakota. We founded the market in 2015. So this summer, this summer and fall, we'll start our eighth season at the market. And I run our team of eight staff and interns during the summer and fall, and I'm the director of marketing and programming. So I'm the one that helps get over 100,000 visitors to the market every summer with all the press that we do, all the advertising that we do. We have an awesome following on social media that we take advantage of and it's really, really grown over the years, which we are extremely proud of. So along with the about 80 vendors that usually are there every weekend, we'll span that will span over free blocks of downtown Fargo. We have four daily performances, which includes live music, cultural performances, dance, theater, all kinds of different things. We also have a cooking demo every Saturday that features fresh produce from our produce vendors and meat vendors. And then we have tons of children's programming. We do special events for kids and families at the market and really contributes to the community vibe that we have going at the market. Like I said, over 17 weekends, we'll see over 100,000 people across those events. We've actually already had 115 vendors apply for the market. So we're seeing great growth and I'm very excited to say that we are seeing growth in produce and meat vendors at the market. I know there's always a fear that people aren't starting new farms or businesses of that type, but they are coming out of the woodwork and people are actually not only are they coming to our market, but they are starting those businesses from scratch, which we're very excited about. When we started the market, we really started small with a goal of being one of the best markets in the country after 10 years. We still have three more seasons or two more seasons before we reach our 10th season. And I think we're doing really well. We've been featured. We had our picture in the New York Times. I've spoken at a conference with the National Farmers Market Association. So I don't know what necessarily has to happen before we know we're in one of the top, but I feel like we're well on our way there, which is really exciting. We like to say that we're more than just a market. We know people spend more money when they stay at the market longer. So we really focus on elements that get people hanging out for half an hour, an hour or two hours more than they'd ever stay at a grocery store. So we focus on elements like hot food, coffee, live music, drinks, and seating all in a really welcoming space and that get people to do that so that they spend more money with our amazing vendors. We actually just last season made a huge milestone. We topped $1 million in revenue for our vendors across the single season, which is pretty incredible, in my opinion. And I just want to give a few bullet points on what I've seen makes a successful vendor at the market. And I think successful vendors really have a clear and civil message to market visitors about what they provide. And it's really helpful to be known for something at the market. Vendors that have a single item that they really advertise and becomes popular helps that vendor be the handpile vendor or whatever it is. Over our winter markets, Brown's Ranch actually just made a new meat stick display where you could actually see the product see all the flavors that they had. And I feel like just in expanding that space in their booth made them the meat stick vendor. So people go back to get that one single item. Especially with meat vendors, it can be hard to display products. And so you'll have to rely on signage to have a clear and consistent message of what you sell. I think the best performing vendors at the market have samples and they are constantly finding different ways to interact with their customers and educate them. I was just talking to a couple of the vendors at our market this last weekend. We had our last spring event. And they were saying being part of a market is more than just about making one single sale with a customer. It's about building a long term relationship with that customer. So you really have to invest in that relationship so that they're able to invest in you. Well, that's great. Thank you for that insight. It's good to have you, especially since you do a lot of managing of the farmers market. And it's good to get that insight from someone from that oversight. All right, we'll move on to Ashley Bruner from the Dakota Angus company or ranch. And I'll turn it over to you and you'll get your slides up. Okay, super. All right. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you, Isaac, for coordinating all of this. I think the first two weeks that I've watched have been great. A lot of really valuable information. As mentioned, I'm Ashley Bruner and I'm with Dakota Angus LLC. Dakota Angus is a partnership between Bruner Angus Ranch of Drake, North Dakota, which is North Central, North Dakota, and Wendell Livestock near LeMore, which is southeastern part of the state. I guess the idea of what is now Dakota Angus started a few years ago already. It seems like it was just yesterday, but it's been a few years now. Really, it came down to the volatility in the market and wanting to have more control over what we're getting for our Fed cattle. Bruner Angus Ranch and Wendell Livestock are both registered seed stock Black Angus producers. And so we both have annual production sales where we sell Black Angus bulls and replacement females to our customers. And so that's our primary operations on both ends. But it really came down to what can we do? We work hard every day for our production side of things, but what can we do to take more control over what we're getting paid for our hard work? And so the idea of selling beef retail transpired from that. On both sides, we had already been doing some quarters, thousand holes for family and friends, things like that. But we really just decided that let's try and do this on a bigger scale. And of course, initially, the idea was let's build a processing plant and let's do everything from start to finish. And then we realized that that's a big investment and a big deal. So let's pump the brakes a little bit and let's take a step back and see how can we really get started in the retail beef locally sourced market here in North Dakota? And we found a great partner at a federally inspected facility. Of course, that allows us to do what we're doing, selling beef retail by the by the cut. I think initially we thought that we were going to just continue to sell quarters, halves and holes like we had been. But that's not really what's happened. I think all of the partners involved have been kind of shocked that we're definitely doing more retail by the cut, because our customers are really liking the opportunity to just come to us and say, you know, I want a couple of sirloins and strips and rib-eyes and I want a couple of roasts and I want 20 pounds of hamburger and then they're out the door. And so we've learned a lot over the last couple years. We actually started retailing as Dakota Angus in April of 2022. So just over a year now, we've been Dakota Angus and our customers shopping options include online. We have a website. They can book quarter times and holes online and they can fill out a retail order form. When they fill out a retail order form, they can choose their option of either picking it up from our in-store location here near Drake. They can have it delivered to one of our delivery options. We kind of have a few different places that we go to for deliveries, but they can also have it shipped. We do ship to 48 states. And so they do have a few options there. As mentioned, we do have a location here at our place just north of Drake. We have a 12 by 16 walk-in freezer and all of our shelves are lined and labeled by cut and by quality grade because we do quality grade our carcasses. So we have the in-store option, but then farmers markets. So initially, I don't think that farmers markets were really on our radar. But towards the end of last summer, we actually landed this really, I'll call it cute, a little freezer truck and it's just a little Chevy truck with a freezer box on the back and I can drive it. And so we just thought, what the heck, there's farmers markets kicking off right now and let's go do them and see how they go. And it actually became a pretty fun little endeavor for me and my oldest daughter. She ventured out to several of them with me. She's nine and kids in technology, she was able to run the invoice device just fine. She's learned her cuts of meat faster than I have as an adult. And so I mean, she knows where the cuts are in the truck and she's running around grabbing burger patties or pounds of burger and steaks out of the truck and filling orders for customers. And so it really became something fun and kind of a little family adventure for us. But farmers markets were more than that. And like Simone was saying, you build relationships. I'm huge on customer education, consumer education, right? Especially with what we're doing with farm to table and locally sourced and things like that. It's like a whole new world sometime, even though we're in rural North Dakota, there really is a lot of consumer educating to do when it comes to locally sourcing any product. And so I've really enjoyed the time spent at the farmers markets that we've done, just meeting with customers, letting them know who we are, who our family is, what we're doing, where the beef comes from. And it's been comments like people would walk up to my table and to the back of the truck and say, can I really buy a steak from you right here right now? Like it's just a whole new world for some people to see that. And it's just been really fun. And I really appreciate that we have farmers markets as the option, because I think when it comes to locally sourced, like that's where it started, right? As farmers markets. And so a great option. But when you're deciding what option is best for you, if you're just getting started in locally sourcing your products or wherever you're at with it, I think that this graphic here, the four Ps, can be very helpful. And so first of all, what's your product? Like Simone mentioned, if you're at a farmers market, you kind of want to really hone in on what your product is. You don't want to have 500 different products, because then people get overwhelmed. There's a lot of vendors already to begin with. And so if you can be more specific in what your product is, for us, we are very specifically quality Angus beef. As Black Angus Seedstock producers, it's important that the product that we carry is an Angus beef product. And now we have multiple cuts available, but we are strictly Angus beef in our operation. And in addition to kind of define the niche that we are providing, I think I briefly touched on it, we quality grade our carcasses. And so when our carcasses are hanging at the processor, a USDA grader comes in and grades each carcass. And so we're able to tell our customers if it's select, choice, certified Angus beef or prime. And that's something that is really unique, especially here right now, because I'm not sure that there's anybody else in the state that is having their beef carcasses quality graded. And so people really are able to choose the quality from us. In addition to the grading, we are a licensed retailer with the Certified Angus Beef Organization, and that really sets us apart. Right now, we're one of only three ranch to table operations that can say that they just started a pilot program in the last year. And we were fortunate enough to be chosen as one of their pilot projects. And so we do carry Certified Angus Beef branded products. So we are definitely very specific in our product. So then the people, you know, define, think about and define who it is that you want to market to what what is your ideal customer? Who is it that you you want to want your product? Right. And so there's definitely, when it comes to beef, a range of people that you can can sell to if it's, you know, the mom of the house who's doing all the grocery shopping or what's unique for us is that we found in a lot of households, it's the man of the house is doing the beef shopping because he's the one putting it on the smoker or whatever the case may be or doing the meat cooking. And so tying in with with people, I'm going to move forward to price as well. So be conscious of price. I guess I'm conscious of price. We've got the local grocery store, we've got the bigger supermarkets, you've got the Walmart's and the Costco's and any time I'm shopping, I'm looking at the meat counter to see where their pricing is compared to our pricing because I certainly don't want to be outpricing our product to where even though a customer might want a high quality angus steak, there's still a balance of how much a customer is willing to pay for that, even though it's locally sourced and they know the quality they're going to get versus, you know, what they might still be able to pay at the grocery store. So be conscious of your price, but definitely define that. I think in the beginning, I had the piece of advice from somebody that said, don't let a customer mess with your pricing. And it wasn't said like that, but those are the words that coming to my mind right now, but basically saying, you know, you work hard to produce the product that you have, so don't undercut yourself, but also just be conscious and not overpriced yourself as well. And then place, you know, I shared the three different options of where we are available. It can get to be a lot, you know, there was definitely towards the end of farmers market season last fall where I was getting to be burnt out a little bit because it can be a lot depending on how many you do. And I know, Ron and Beth, I think you guys said last week you only do the one market. Super smart. I was running around last fall doing like three, four, five in a week. But we were also in the mode of just getting our name and our brand out there. And it really was fun, but definitely define your place and where you want to see your product and what you want to put into the place and where you're sharing your product. So again, we're online. We're active on social Facebook and Instagram. I've taken many orders via text message. In fact, I just got an order fulfilled before we jumped on here, text message from a customer saying, Hey, I see you're coming to this town next week. Can you get me this, this and this? And that works pretty slick for me and my customers. So hopefully these are just a few pieces of information that would help when kind of defining some of those things for you. Awesome. Thank you. That's a, I mean, everybody can always appreciate quality beef. I grew up on a cattle ranch. So it's good to see that there's people out there still doing it. Now moving on, we'll go back to Ron and Beth Wolf from last week. And they talked a little bit about their farmers market experience last webinar. Yeah, thanks, Isaac, for allowing us and inviting us to be at this one. And you know, as we went through the introduction, I'm not going to go through the whole thing again, because apparently we do have, you know, repeat people. But, you know, when we got into this, and I'll just say it, you know, like Ashley, they're in the seed stock business and so are we. But they are, they don't all make that they don't, they're not all breeding stock. And so this was our option. And actually it was Beth's idea to try something like that back then. And from a marketing standpoint, when we talked about the numbers we had available and, and, you know, we are a seasonal, we are seasonal sellers, basically, just because we're winter lambers. And the way we're set up and the way my job is and stuff like that, we lamb in the winter time. And we set ourselves up basically for having fat lambs through early summer in the fall. And when we first did this, and I'm going to transition this over to Beth because it was kind of her brainchild. And she does visit a lot with Simone. And, and as we said last week, this is our first, this was our first choice when we looked into this. And I think at that time, the Red River Market was a couple of years old. We've done this, what this can be, or six or seven. So the success lies, you know, with making a relationship with them and being, you know, successful enough that every year when we apply, we do get invited back. So apparently we're doing some right things with them. And, and as Simone alluded to, one of the reasons why we do go there is the amount of people that come through. And it's an event. You know, and we only go twice a month mainly because we have a life. We try to have a life, you know, other than it's a full day. And, and like you said, Ashley, you can get them burning you out if you, and how those people do it week after week. And I know they probably rely on that more as their income or whatever. And this is an important thing for us. Don't get me wrong. But the exposure that we get there and the growth, this is, I think probably where it's at now is the most successful they've moved. This is the third move, but with the, with the Broadway Square and stuff like that and the stage and everything like this. You know, there's no doubt. And I tell people that we probably get exposed to seven to 9,000 people on a nice day. It's amazing. And the setup is great. I'm going to let Beth talk a little. And I'm sure I have an opinion, but I'll let her, you know, talk about what we do and why we do it. Okay. Well, as Ron said, you know, we are at the Red River market. And when I approached our family about doing this, it was important to me to find a really good market that was going to like have a following. And I really feel that that's what we found at the Red River market. We're pleased with how it's run and granted, I don't have much to compare it to except the ones that I go to as a customer. From a vendor point of view, it's top notch. You can't tell their interns from their everyday staff. That's, I mean, that's just how well that they run the farmer's market there. And kudos to you, Simone, because I know you've been there since the beginning and you've done a great job with it. Probably, I would say 80% of our customers are repeat customers. So that's huge as far as the relationships, you know, they come up to us and I'm not good with names, but I know faces. And I can see them coming and be lining and it's like, okay, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna want chops or they're gonna want lamb sticks or I just know what they're going to want. And sometimes they have to tell us all about what has happened from the last Saturday in October, until the first Saturday in July. And that's part of the job is to listen to their stories, because they're willing to listen to us tell our stories about our meet. And we do, as Travis alluded to before we started, we do wear bright red. We have a red canopy and that is all on purpose. That is part of the marketing that we use so that people know that we're wolf suffocates. And that goes with consistency then, you know, where people look for that and whether, you know, it might be a daughter in there or something like that, but we do it on purpose, yes. Let me think, I just lost my train of thought. We bring our meat in coolers. And so we should be expecting a visit from our health guy. Any week now, I'm assuming he's pretty good about, I don't know, you know, it's an unannounced visit, but he'll be showing up and he will inspect our freezers. And then he'll also look at our coolers. And you know, we might throw a few packages of meat in there in a bag and an ice and a thermometer and we'll visit and visit and visit. And then at the end of our visit, he'll go back and check that to make sure that it, you know, it held the temperature that he wants it at. And so that's important to make sure that if you're selling out of a cooler, which is what we do, is that you have thermometers in your coolers and that you have a way to keep your product frozen, because some of those Saturday mornings or Saturday afternoons are going to get hot. So you're going to want to make sure that you've got ice and everything else you need to keep your product frozen. I've tried to convince Ron to get a little trailer to pull behind my car. He has not jumped on board yet, but I've also been able to convince him meat sticks and brats. So, you know, maybe sometime down the line, I'll be able to do the little trailer. What do you have anything? Well, I do. I'll jump in here a little bit and see how we are seasonal with our product. And we do sell halves and holes. But when we get to the end of the farmers market, we typically plan everything we do around the red market schedule. When they are done for us and we don't attend their winter events, and I apologize, but it just doesn't work out for us because we don't know where we're at with product. But our goal is always at the end of October, be pretty low on inventory. And I know that some of our retail, our couple restaurants aren't real pleased about that, but inventory is expensive and it's not always consistent. But one thing we notice when we go to farmers market and over the years is that seasonally we change our products a little. It's the same land product, but for us, we figure that sometimes grilling season. And so, we take our legs of lamb and our shoulder roast and a lot of those and make them into steaks because people spend most of their time cooking that out on the grill. And so, that's more marketable for us. And the roasts and that stuff like that, we start transitioning into that after Labor Day. And I call that comfort food because then people are more on a Sunday afternoon or wherever doing crock pots and stuff like that. And what we found in not only that, but it's amazing when they come up to us and we've started offering, I don't know why, but there's people that look specifically for liver and kidneys and hearts and we sell dog bones. And so, we use every part of that, but if they ask for it, there must be a want and need. And so, we begin to bring all of that. And it's amazing how some weeks for us, everybody wants a shank. And then the next week, we couldn't give a shank away, but we have that. And we try to listen to our customers and us being not there every week. One thing we find important is we have a schedule and that's what they kind of like us ahead of time to schedule the days we're there because if we're not going to be there, somebody will. Simone alluded to that. They only have so many spots. And we let our customers know so they can plan accordingly. And so, the flexibility, we try to be flexible with our customers to be more successful, I guess. So, what we try and do is we try and make sure that we schedule ahead of time and then in one of our displays, we have a printout of the dates that will be there. And then we give that to our customers so that they know, okay, they're going to be back on such and such a date. We also get a lot of promotional material from the American Lamb Board. And so, it's recipe booklets and sometimes we've gotten seasonings and I have to pay $2, a little tin container. And I charge $2 for that little tin container. I'm not there to make a profit on the American Lamb Board, but I want to, some people are like, I don't know how to cook it. It's super easy. Here's some spices that are already premixed. You know, it's only going to cost you $2 because that's what it cost me. All of the booklets I give for free, I try and make sure that I have things for kids because if you can draw the kids in, you're going to be able to start the conversation with mom and dad. On our priceless board, we have pictures of our family. We have pictures of a showing sheep. We have pictures of our winning sheep with pictures of lambs. They're so cute. People want to see that. You know, some people have a hard time equating that cute little lamb with that lamb chop. They're just buying, but that's where our meat comes from. And I think that it's okay for the consumers to see that. We do have one little guy a couple years ago. He brought his own money and he said, I just want to try these lamb sticks. He comes back at least three times a season and he's got a $20 bill and he's going to buy four packages and he's not going to share them. Those are the kinds of moments that we look forward to. And I'm proud to say for Ron, you know, we talked about it a little bit last week, that we have been able to cut out the middleman as far as taking lambs to the livestock markets. You know, we can set the price on everything that leaves our place, whether it's a seed stock or whether it's a meat cut, we are able to set the price for everything that leaves our place. And I'm very proud of that. And Amy and I'll allude to that. We find out also, we try to make our product affordable because yes, lamb is a higher price and we don't have the volume of meat, you know, that a beef carcass does. So we need to have a price that alludes or gets to that point. But I do and not that lamb is available all the time at a lot of different stores. But I compare and, you know, we don't want to gouge people because I think people only have so much money to spend. But if they're coming to look for lamb, we want it to be affordable. And so they'll take some home rather than the price turning them off of the experience before they even get a chance to try it. And with that, I think, you know, getting back, if you find a farmer's market that's successful, I'll be honest with you, we have not looked for another one. We have no plans to. We have no plans to. I know there's ones closer. But like I said, when you get the exposure that we, of people, and they're not all shop, I mean, they aren't all buyers of our product, there's no doubt about it. But if we get a percentage, and of course, Mother Nature, when you go in that late in the season, there's been a couple of them that I'll just say that even a but warm rate going to do it for you, but there's already souls, if they know you're coming, they might not be there for the all day event, but they might specifically bring their cart to you. And, but, you know, we live and die by the Mother Nature, when it's nice and sunny out, those people are coming. And even when it's rainy or something, I will say there's enough going on, Simone, people are out and about. They might change their attire and it's interesting to watch. If nothing else, if things aren't going well, there's a wide variety of things to see. And I'll say that. So I enjoy that. But yeah, find yourself a farmer's market and a relationship and that is well run by good people. And it makes a difference in what you do. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, no, that's great to hear. And I mean, I visited you guys at Booth personally myself last summer. We'll move on to our final panelists for the evening, Kelsey Cropp with the Bison Ranch. So diverging a little bit from to a different species even here. Yeah, thank you. Just a second while I get this slideshow set up, if I can figure out how to do it. All right. As you mentioned, my name is Kelsey Cropp. And I'm the owner along with my wife Emily of the Bison Ranch LLP, which as you might guess, is in fact a Bison Ranch and a custom exempt butcher shop. And we are located near Pingree, North Dakota, which is about 25 miles northwest of Jamestown. And I can't speak to farmers markets. We're talking, I guess I was probably invited to talk about finding your niche market, which for us wasn't necessarily finding one so much as evolving into one a little bit about our background. We're a third generation family ranch. My grandfather started farming and ranching on this piece of property way back in 1924. My father farmed and rashed with him into the, well, grandpa hung it up in the late 80s. My dad was a cattleman his whole life and small grains cattle, just like most of North Dakota. And in 1989, he purchased his first group of Bison in his words because he thought they were really cool. And no other reason why. And for about two or three years, he concurrently ran Bison and the cattle separately, not within the same enclosure or anything. But it only took him a couple of years to realize that these things are pretty much take care of themselves. They were a lot easier to manage than the cattle. Once you have your facilities in place, we're blessed with a really nice chunk of native prairie where we can let them roam and they largely take care of themselves. So in 1992, he sold all the cattle and went all in on the Bison, which was good timing because the market kind of blew up in the 90s and it was really, really good for a while. In 1997, he started a hunting outfit or business primarily focusing on waterfall, upland game, whitetail deer. At that time, we didn't really offer any Bison because we were ranching them in the more traditional sense of cow calf operation. We'd finished some bulls out and delivered them to the slaughter plant in New Rockford. So we have seen both sides of this industry. And then in the early 2000, some of you might know the Bison industry famously went away. They were worth nothing. People were giving them away. We were in a very fortunate position with the hunting outfit or business that we already had established and a nice chunk of land, a good setting to do it. We started offering Bison hunts in the early 2000s. And our typical clientele at that time were people just looking to shoot a Bison. It really wasn't about the meat in the beginning, but just like a lot of Bison producers in the ugly days, you did what you needed to do to survive. But being in the hunting industry previously and like I said, having the setting and sort of getting our feet underneath us in those early days, as the industry started to rebound, we realized why go back to the traditional style of ranching when we've got a good thing going here. And we really started to focus more on sending our clients home with good quality eating animals. It wasn't necessarily about the horns or the head on the wall and more about offering good quality meat. So we focus on 18 to 26 month old animals, usually on the younger end of that in the 20 month range. In 2009, we built our own custom exempt butcher shop within an old existing farm shop right here on the property. It's cozy, but it gets the job done. If I had a crystal ball, we'd make it about twice the size of what it is. In 2015, my wife and I moved home and purchased the entire operation. And since then, our focus has really been to sort of build on what my folks had done and focus intensively on meat quality and how can we get the best possible product in our clients freezer. And the byproduct of that has been tremendous customer retention of the, I think I did about 65 animals last fall. And I want to say 60 to 70% of those were repeat customers. One of my customers has harvested 24 buys in with us. I have a number of guys since I've taken over who have been here every single year, one of whom is about my age and he claims he's coming until one of us drops dead. So it's nice to have those reliable repeat customers. And so where are these people coming from? A little different than what we've been talking about with the previous presenters. My clients are coming from all over the country. A lot of them are not necessarily even hunters. They are very simply people from all walks of life, really, from your blue collar contractors, equipment operators to high profile attorneys, doctors, surgeons, you can name it. But they all have one thing in common. They want all natural grass fed lean protein for the health benefit. But perhaps more important to what I'm offering on a product level is the opportunity to have the pride of ownership of that animal. They're purchasing an animal from me. They're selecting that animal. They're harvesting that animal, doing it humanely, which is very important not only for the meat quality, particularly with bison, but for a lot of these folks, they want to know that everything was done right. And that's where the bison, which is an incredibly tough animal, it's a bullet right here, right behind the ear canal, and it's lights out. It's all about the abilities of the shooter and not necessarily the kick of a gun. My clients want to be involved in the process where they can, but above all else, they want to know where their meat came from. And people are willing to pay a premium for that. And I firmly believe that even if they're not here to see it, they want to at least have the opportunity to see how that animal was raised, what it was eating, how it was harvested, how it was handled after the kill, how it was cut, how it was packaged. So a question we often get that the bison industry has rebounded the last 10 years have been pretty good to pretty much everyone in the industry. So why not go back to doing what it was, what we were doing before, because this is a lot of work. From mid-September to mid-December, I'm either slaughtering or butchering pretty much every single day, six or seven days a week. So it gets to be a bit of a sprint in the fall, but we really believe in the process, the product when it's done this way is better than virtually anything you're going to find in a store, because the nature of the beast, as I have written here, bison are a very excitable animal. They don't like being corral, they don't like going on trailers, and they're lean. So when you combine all of those things, you get a stress hormone and an already lean product, you're going to get a dried out tougher cut. I mean, there's no two ways about it, which a lot of the bison industry for those reasons wants to grain finish everything, and there's good reason for that. So it's sort of, in my opinion, nullifies the benefit of bison by adding a bunch of grain fat on there. At that point, why not just go to beef, right? So doing the field slaughter method, it's yielding a wave calmer animal one second. It's out there eating on the native prairie, and the next second, it's lights out. They don't even know it hit them. So there's no stress hormone, no adrenaline, no lactic acid in the meat whatsoever. They're humanely killed, but that shot placement allows us to get a really nice bleed on them. I run up and slit the throat right away. Sometimes a little dangerous, even though it's lights out, they can kick and throw their head quite a bit, even though there's no brain function. So it does get dangerous, and a lot of times it gets to be a lot more exciting than either my clients or I bargain for, but that bleed is crucial for getting all that blood out of the carcass. You get such a nice clean carcass, nice clean cutting table. We actually timed a young bull last year from the throat slit to no pulse was 12 minutes. So that heart kept going for 12 minutes and got every ounce of blood out of that animal. And all of this allows us to, we're all natural, all grass fed, grass finished. We don't add any grain fat to them. And when everything's done right and everyone does their job, the client puts a good shot on them. We get a good bleed. It's every bit as moist as the best burger you're going to find pretty much anywhere. Bison is a lean meat. So on the primals, if everything's done perfectly and you throw it on a grill hot and fast, it's going to get tough, but we can't take it home and cook it for them. So we try to educate all of our customers on the proper ways to to prepare each cut, which is within our processing, they can stand in the butcher shop and watch us go to work. We hang pretty much overnight. We're really looking for that carcass just to get in the green zone there in the 33 to 40 degree internal temp. It comes out of rigor mortis in that amount of time. In the beef packing industry burger, that's kind of what they're targeting as well with the primals. They want to age. I've experimented with aging these and ideally I'd like to go three, four or five days, but taking them two, three weeks on a on a animal that doesn't have a lot of intermuscular tissue. It's not doing a whole lot and you're drying, you're drying out your burger to the benefit of your of your primals. And the burger is really what keeps people coming back even though the pellet grill has revolutionized the bison cooking because you can maintain that low and slow so easily. So we are sending a lot of primal cuts home with our clients as well now. We paper wrap all boneless cuts, ground product in poly bags, and we flash freeze at minus 20. And so that product is frozen rock solid by the next morning when we load up our our clients and send them on their way. So the whole process from the client pulling into the driveway that I'm sitting in right now, to loading up their meat and out the door is they're here for three nights. So it's less than three days. They come in an afternoon. We kill the next day. We butcher the day after that and we have them on their way and rinse and repeat on to the next one. We try to cut everything within reason to the customer's preference. Sometimes you get people asking you to grind up cuts that would make me cry. But you know, they're the customer. But like I said, we walk them through each cut and provide some recommendations and over the years we're starting to make better chefs out of a lot of them. But it's been going well. We're sold out for the next two years. So the feedback has been good. The customer attention has been good. And like I said, we've we've sort of evolved into this niche market so much as going out and finding it somewhat out of a necessity. But secondary, you're providing somewhat of an experience. But if the product wasn't good, they wouldn't be coming back for 24 animals like my guy in Michigan. So that's sort of the overview. If anyone has any direct questions, you can email me or give me a shout anytime. Awesome. Thank you. With that, we'll open it up to some questions. I got some questions in the chat that I'll ask out loud. Starting with Simone, specifically with Red River Market, what meat species types are sold at the location? Where may there be the open future opportunity? Tunities. Sorry, I worded that kind of weird. That's okay. I got you. Yeah, we have a couple of different beef vendors, lamb vendors, pork and chicken are all recently covered. But we are always looking for new vendors. And, you know, even if you're selling in one of those categories, feel free to submit an application and we'll let you know if we have room for you. We are filling up very quickly. So you can go to our website www.redriver.market. And there's our application and our vendor guidelines on there that'll tell you everything you need to know to be a vendor. And even if we don't have room to accept you this year, we'll have your information and we can let you know when applications come out for the next year. Awesome. Thank you. Our next question is for Ashley. We know that you and Wendell Livestock had the idea to grow your market. What question did you ask to your quarter beef purchasers and customers that help you make the jump to bigger audiences? Yeah, I'm not sure we asked specific questions by any means. It was more just through conversation with friends, family, people in the community, just people who weren't getting a quarter half a hole. Why not? And well, it was a variety of reasons. They didn't have room for it. They didn't have budget for it, different things like that. And then what happened was while we were trying to figure out what Dakota Angus was, Bruner Angus had a couple extra beef. And so we had them processed and retail cut just to test the local market. And we sold out right away. It shocked all of us how fast it happened and what the local response was. And so that was kind of just like the, yep, let's go. People want it. They like this option and the conversation. It just went. And so I don't know that we really asked many questions. It was more so just through conversation. And then we just tested it and kind of proved that, yep, this is what we need to do. Awesome. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? Feel free to join through video, audio, or you can submit it through the chat function. We're pretty flexible here. Well, one question I guess I had for Kelsey was, have you had any challenges specifically with having to process bison? And if somebody's wanting to go down that route, what advice would you give them? I think our biggest challenge has been finding reliable help. We are a seasonal business, like I said, I'm busy from mid-September to mid-December. And there aren't slaughterers and meat cutters growing on trees in Pingree, North Dakota, or even Jamestown for that matter. So finding good help is difficult. Before I moved home, my dad was pretty much enlisting whatever friends he could by offering cases of beer to come over and help when they could. I looked for somebody to sort of run the show in the butcher shop in my early days of coming over and taking over the operation. And we couldn't really find much of anything. So school hard knocks, I learned to butcher myself. A lot of YouTube videos, a lot of trial and error. And I think I'm finally up to where I should be. But labor is absolutely the biggest challenge. I think if someone were looking to develop a business model that's similar to ours, I think probably the biggest challenge right now would be paying for a custom exempt butcher shop. I know I'm we're very fortunate that we did this 15 years ago than then right now with the cost of building anything. And a lot of that was elbow grease we did it ourselves. But, but yeah, just licensing and equipment and you name it is, yeah, it's a whole another ball of wax would be the biggest challenge for us. Finding the clients hasn't been that much of a challenge because in the early days, there were a lot of people offering buys and hunts when they were simply looking to get rid of them. That's sort of gone away with the industry rebounding. So there's not a lot of competition for doing exactly what we do. But not many people have butcher shops right on site. So it's a pretty unique set up. But by all means, by all means, if anyone can get into it, you will get clients because people are looking for this product and they're looking for it in this very particular condition or setting. You got another question for you too. What is the biggest reason that people want to prefer your buys and product for their purchase? Our product versus whatever you're going to find in the store and keep in mind, my clients are coming from all over the country. I get people in North Dakota, I get people from South Dakota, Montana, you know, neighboring states that have a lot of buys in where it's readily available. But a lot of my clients are coming from Florida, Texas, California, New York, a lot of the Midwest. And some of the, you know, boutique cuts of meat on a bison are simply not available wherever they're at. And or even something as common as the bison ribeye might not be available wherever they're at. It's a harder product to get to on each of the coast. But again, I think the biggest differentiation is that the client knows exactly where it came from, that it's 100% all natural. We don't run these things through a shoot. We don't vaccinate. We don't even wean them. They take care of themselves entirely. So we've differentiated ourselves in that, in that way, which in and honestly, we can fetch a premium for our product because of it. And that's that's why the customers keep coming back. Awesome. Thank you. I had a question for Ron and Beth. So I visited your guys's booth before. And if I remember correctly, you gave out sample snack sticks, correct? Yeah, we did mainly because, you know, they don't need any cooking or, you know, they're ready, ready to eat. And and that's, you know, without having electricity or anything like that, or, you know, within the, I think the rules and regulations, we aren't set up to offer a cooked product. But yes, we and that's kind of, you know, as Simone alluded to before, kind of a door opener to get people in and, you know, I've never had land before and starts a conversation. And and usually, you know, as I read yours, you know, we did, we do give them out and and that's a good, a good place to start with people. And then, you know, if we can get them engaged in some conversation and get them to come back and and, you know, everybody has, you know, their niche, whether it's grass fed or grain fed and and we are grain fed because even though I love my sheep a lot, I don't want them to be here a long time. And so I have a very good working relationship with the Wendell family, by the way, Ashley, they have a feed processing plant. And so Mr. Wendell shows up here on a regular basis with suckers for the daycare kids. So we are, we are a grass fed and our grain fed, excuse me, there are grass fed and we have customers, you know, that that's what they want. And we have customers that ask if we are grass or grain, and we don't fit everybody's wants. But we try to have a consistent product. And a lot of times we'll always ask, especially if they're first timers, come back and let us know what you think. Tell us what you think of our product. And I, you know, and whether they're afraid if they don't like it, they don't come back. But I guess most of the people come back and they're pretty positive and want to try something else. And so we try to have a consistent product. And by that, we stay consistent with our feed program because I think feed is an influence or grain is to the flavor of the meat. And by offering a young product in our case, I think it's more of a mild flavor because yeah, an older, I'll just say an older sheep, they get a little stronger taste. And so we try to market a young, young animal that, you know, at market weight at 150, 60 pounds that has a mild flavor, but it's still different. And so yeah, I think that's what it is. It's consistency, I think. And I would agree with that. But I do think that Ron sells himself short because I truly believe a lot of the relationship building that we have done over the years is because of the way this man can talk. He can carry on a conversation with people and he educates them about our product and about how we do things. And I think that has a lot to do with it also. I think that if you're going to be in a farmer's market type situation, you have to be able to sell it. You have to be able to, you know, smile and talk to the crowd, ask them how their day's going, things like that. You know, if you just kind of stand there and wait for people to come up, you're going to be standing a long time. Or if you catch somebody's eye and you say, hi, how are you doing? You know, or, you know, beautiful dog. People love to talk about their dogs. People love to talk about their kids. And then we just start talking about our product from there. And I think that that has a lot to do with it as well. No, that makes perfect sense. I mean, building that communication, that's one of the benefits of doing this local marketing is you put a name to the face of animal agriculture. We have a question for Ashley. You said that since you are USDA inspected, it can be sold and delivered across 48 states. What have you learned on the expanded audience in online sales? Well, I'll say I'm still learning. And what I mean by that is how to get it there, right? Our products are all frozen. And so the challenge being how do I get that beef order to Washington State or Arizona or wherever it's going? I've just learned to experiment with different packaging. And we primarily just use ice packs and packaging for right now. There's a few that I'm still working with trying to fine tune how to best do that. Luckily, we started shipping during the winter months. So the pressure wasn't on too tight. The summer will pose another challenge. I think that shipping initially was scary. It took me a while to pull the trigger on that. But I found a couple partners that have just worked great. We use speedy delivery service for the region. And I tell you what, if you're considering shipping hands down, I'd recommend them. They have been great to work with. They stop here every Monday for pickup. They only service, I think it's like eight, nine states, eight or nine states. But they've been wonderful to work with. And one day, two day, three day maximum shipping it's been. I also picked up using FedEx. And once the biggest challenge there was how to do it economically, right? Because I don't want to make our customers pay $150 to ship them for steaks. And I'm also not going to increase the cost of my or the price of my steaks to make up for the price of shipping. I feel like some of those bigger name brand beef companies that are meat companies that do that, you're paying $200 for four steaks. Well, that's because of the cost of shipping. They say it's free shipping, but that's built into the cost of their product. And so I'm not going to have two different prices for my beef products, one for those that get shipped and then offer free shipping. So there's kind of a balance. But once I became a partner with the two shipping companies, I was actually had access to better shipping rates. And so if you haven't looked into it, but you're interested, definitely do because it's worth it. And yeah, I mean, it's been really good. I can't say we've done a ton of shipping, but it's been enough and our customers have appreciated it. And it's been fun, fun learning. And so it's just an added bonus for us. We've been asked a lot, can you ship? And I know there's a lot that just say no, but we thought it was valuable enough to be able to reach our customers across the country. And so we're able to do that. So far, it's been a good experience. Awesome. Thank you. Is there any final questions from the audience? Well, seeing none, I guess we'll wrap it up for the evening. It's been a joy having all four of our panelists tonight. I'll let you guys go through and say some final comments and thoughts that you might have. We'll start with Simone. Yeah, if you ever have any questions or, you know, want to reach out about what it's like to be a vendor at the market, feel free to shoot us a message on our website. All right, we'll move on to Ron and Beth. Well, one thing, you know, I'll say in niche market or whatever, it's opened a couple of doors that we didn't expect. Just because of the traffic flowing, the proximity of where we're at, I think we mentioned either this time or the last time that we do sell product to a couple of restaurants in Fargo. It was mainly because of the contact of the owners walking through and seeing our product and wanting to try locally and has built some relationships, you know, that is very handy to us and, you know, open doors and conversations and one led to another. And we do have restaurants that, you know, because of the location of it, that come by and we've offered and sold some product to them. Our biggest challenge is which our other guests probably offer is they have product here around and we can't provide that on a large scale and really don't want to because, like Beth said, we have other things going on in our lives called full-time jobs and whatnot, but this does give us an opportunity to get our product out to a lot of people. And so, explore that. Don't be afraid to try different things. The shipping scares the H out of me. People always ask and the challenge is, yeah, economically and whatnot, how do you do it? And you might get a phone call from us one day because it sounds like you've got to figure it out. Awesome. Move on to Kelsey. Yeah, just, it's been mentioned a couple of times in here. If you're starting a new venture, be very consistent with your message and your image. Having a good logo color scheme and just a steady message. I try not doing too much. I try to stay in my lane. I try to do one thing and my hope is to do it better than anyone else. And if you kind of stick to that mantra, as I always tell my wife, I try not to half-ass a whole bunch of things. I try to whole-ass one thing and I think that's a good mantra to live by. Awesome. That sounds like great advice to me. And finally, get some final comments from Ashley. Yeah, I like everything that everybody shared so far. I guess I would just say don't be afraid to try something. I mean, we've hit a lot of bumps and hiccups and have learned a ton in the time that we've been doing what we're doing, but we're also a group of people that aren't afraid to try new things and have big ideas. Don't be afraid of pursuing the big idea. It might work, it might not, but it might, and if it does, then awesome. Set goals and shoot for them and you just never know what you're going to find along the way. Awesome. Thank you. That concludes our webinar for the evening. We will join us next week for the webinar over retail inventory management. We have a good group of guests again next week and we look forward to everybody joining us.