Cut the middleman out of your beef operation

What beef producer hasn’t dreamed of cutting out the middleman and selling high-quality steaks and ground beef directly to consumers? 

Andrew Donnell didn’t just dream it. He took the ultimate step in 2021 and built an on-farm butchering and processing center. Now no one is between him and his customers — no feedlot, no packer, not even a local locker plant.

“We’ve always bred our cattle for high carcass quality,” says the seventh-generation cattleman, who raises purebred Angus on Donnell Century Farm near Jackson, Tennessee. “We sold bulls and heifers based on their high quality, so it makes sense that our beef is better than store meat. That’s the point we’re trying to capitalize on.”

The journey

Donnell’s journey to owning his own processing facility actually started several years ago, when he began selling some of his beef directly to consumers at farmers markets and to restaurants that wanted a local source of high-quality beef. “They could sell one of our hamburgers for $10 or more, so we knew that we had a product with high perceived value,” he says.

Back then, Donnell was having his finished cattle butchered and processed at a local locker plant. “I was never really happy with the way they cut our beef,” he says. “I didn’t have control over it. For years, I thought about doing our own butchering so we could have full control.” 

The tipping point to actually building the on-farm plant came in the form of an unlikely event: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“All of a sudden, we couldn’t get our cattle into the local processor,” Donnell says. “They had a two-year waiting list to butcher animals. We had the animals and customers, but no place to get them processed. 

“That’s when it really hit me: We should build our own processing facility,” he says.

When Donnell sets his mind on something, he does his homework, follows a logical path, and doesn’t give up. He searched out beef producers on social media who had already been down this road. Some of them, even as far away as Canada, became his mentors.

Then he made calls and found someone who could build a butchering facility. This was in 2020, and the pandemic helped: Contractors and cement workers were looking for work. “My building contractor had two jobs fall through right about the time I called him,” Donnell says. “Our construction job went to the front of the line.” 

The last step to fall into place was when Donnell found out he qualified for Tennessee CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) funding, federal money for businesses hurt by COVID-related shutdowns. Donnell’s farm also operates an agritourism business, Donnell Century Farm Adventure, that was shut down in the pandemic. 

The cost for building his beef processing plant was more than $100,000; the CARES grant cushioned that by paying for the refrigeration unit in the new butchering facility.

That’s a key point to consider if you dream of your own on-farm beef processing center, Donnell says. “In Tennessee our two big industries are tourism and agriculture. There’s lots of government help for those two industries. Make sure you check out all the help that may be available in your state.”

In addition to the CARES funding, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture supported Donnell and arranged for him to tour farms in other states to see how they were building markets for local beef and other products. “We learned so much on those tours,” he says.

Donnell’s processing facility is small. His herd is about 100 cows, so at most he’s butchering only a few head a week. Donnell found a neighbor who has butchering experience to help part-time in the processing center. 

Another neighbor has pigs, and Donnell partnered with him to also butcher pigs as needed and add pork to the farm store. 

Donnell doesn’t custom butcher for anyone else. “That’s not a business we want to be in. We want to butcher and sell our own meat right here on the farm,” he says.

Some people may think you have to be near a big population center to make something like this work, but Donnell counters that view. “We’ve found most of our customers are our neighbors and people from our local communities who want to support local farmers,” he says. “We encourage them to try a package or two of our meat and see if they like it. A lot of them come back later and move up to buying a quarter or a half. That part of our business is growing the fastest now.

“My advice is to look to your local community for customers. Serve them with a quality product, and they’ll take care of you.”