EDMONTON -- An Alberta company is working with local beef producers to bring its products right to your door.
Craft Beef Company has partnered with 11 farms and ranches across the province to offer not only beef, pork and poultry cuts, but also bison, lamb and specialty products.
Customers can go online to choose which they want, or from the company's curated boxes, as well as the farm they'd like to support.
"The vast majority of the public is not in touch with food production. They're not actively engaged with the farm," Craft Beef president and Tetz Cattle Co. partner Trish Tetz commented.
"If we can connect the customers to farmers like that – who demonstrate how positive cattle can be in our world and our environment – and the steps they are doing to protect wildlife, I think those things are just so invaluable."
Although the idea behind Craft Beef predates the pandemic by about two years, it didn't open its online doors officially until June 1, 2020 – both a blessing and curse.
"In one way, it helped us because it really made the customer conscious of their buying decisions, it made them really aware of buying local, it made them aware of local agriculture and neighbouring farms," Tetz said. "The other side of that was the pandemic made it really hard to get cattle processed. We were very, very behind in the summer and fall in getting our cattle in."
Since then, business has regulated. This week, 200 orders were sent out and delivered via FedEx. And more partner farmers will be featured in the coming weeks.
"A lot of people never thought that they would buy their beef online," Tetz speculated. "Most people want to go to the store and they want to actually look at those individual steaks and choose those.
"There's a trust factor because we are doing that."
