Integrated Risk Management for Women Producers, Processors, and Retailers in the Local Meat Product Value Chain

Women Working in the Meat Business: The Need WHAT: NC Choices' Women Working in the Meat Business intensives are designed to help women tackle real and perceived barriers in their meat business careers by offering educational, technical, and business planning assistance while building a professional network. . Currently the program is offered once a year in a two and a half day intensive training program that includes hands-on pork and beef butchery training coupled with tools to increase proficiency, communication, and confidence in marketing meats in an intimate setting with top industry professionals. BACKGROUND: The NC Choices (NCC) program Women Working in the Meat Business program was born out of the 2012 Carolina Meat Conference, put on by NCC, following a very enthusiastic panel discussion and session for women to share information regarding their roles in the meat industry. As we all know meat depends on other businesses – specifically the processing – to bring that product to market. So women don’t just need to know their business, they need to understand, negotiate, and develop relationships with the processing sector too. We thought this would just be an interesting conference panel, but when more and more women starting speaking about the barriers they felt when having to work across the supply chain on topics such as: How to negotiate with your processor, fill out a cut sheet, understand what meat your getting back and how to market it, understand muscle cuts and costs folded into the business in order defend pricing – we found that many women faced both real and perceived barriers that kept them from stepping in front of their business. This picture shows the building a network and helping these women realize they were not alone in the challenges they faced. NEED: Over the past 5 years the number of NC livestock producers selling meat directly to consumers, butchers, restaurants, and retailers has doubled. The majority of these are beginning (< 5 yrs) and diversifying cow/calf producers and women are increasingly stepping in the space of marketers and connectors when it comes to local meat sales. According to 2013 survey, only 50% of producers raising niche meats are profitable and so these workshops are geared toward training to help them be successful from farm all the way to final sale. IMPACT: What we’ve found is that these workshops empower these individuals--the have the knowledge both to go back and work on their own business processes (things internal to their business, like figuring up their costs of production), but also in dealing with their processors (being more knowledgeable about how to talk to the processors, also being able to negotiate/defend better--sort of like how people can get info off the internet now on the costs of cars and go to negotiate with car salesman).

Women Working in the Meat Business: Participants Workshop spots were in high demand, with applications and inquiries sufficient to have doubled the class-size WHO ATTENDS?? Because we work across the supply chain, we have participants in just about every category. Workshop spots were in high demand, with applications and inquiries sufficient to have doubled the class-size. Like April, we hold an application process to make sure our women are professionals and rely on their meat business for a significant amount of their income

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Whole Carcass Pricing Profitability Tools Learn if you’re making a profit, how much of a profit, and how to refine your pricing using a step by step “whole animal” assessment tool. Let’s talk about some of the topics covered: We had Tina Prevatte for a local pastured based meat company share her carcass profitability tool on USB keys to all applicants. The tool helped women answer questions like, Is your meat business profitable? Why? What products make you money? Is it really worth selling a tenderloin at $26/lb if it only makes up 3% of the animal you have to sell?? Or does it make more sense to not focus so much on the tenderloin and shift toward a sausage game where you can move more of the animal to our markets. What products cost you in the long run? What is your overall gross margin? Why should you care?

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Whole Carcass Pricing Profitability Tools This topics helped participants clearly understand strategies to improve your profitability on a per animal basis which will also aid in negotiation transactions over pricing and answering questions about your net revenue such as “is this really activity really worth my time.” Tina will insert real data from a small scale NC farmer and participants will have a chance to enter the yield weights captured from their butchery class the day before to assess the impact of higher end cuts. All participants will leave with a copy of this powerful spreadsheet tool to apply to their own business

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Improving Knife Skills (trimming, deboning, denuding) Hands-on opportunity to fabricate different retail cuts for a diverse marketplace Everyone knows the saying the butcher stole my meat. Well, most of the time that’s not really true. What we find is this lack of understanding bw our farmers and our processors. Also processors are bound to make mistakes. How do you as a farmer know how to tell your customer what to trim off/change in their cut so that they can have the best eating experience, etc. It’s also very important for participants to know where their cuts come from. This workshop allowed the women to sig up for groups to experiment with some hands-on.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Improving Knife Skills (trimming, deboning, denuding) What we have seen from evals is that hands-on is the best way to learn. Partially for the obvious reasons but also because it facilitates conversation among participants.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Cut sheet trial and error Learn how to make processing realities match your business needs.  Identify common mishaps and strategize about how to effectively communicate expectations. Cut sheet trial and error. Learn how to make processing realities match your business needs.  Identify common mishaps and strategize about how to effectively communicate expectations. In this session we filled out a cut sheet according to speifications for a high end market. Since the processor was not as familiar with the cuts, we worked with him to help him cut it properly and then we were going to see what actually came back and analyze it. Unfortunatley or fortunately, the meat was not at all cut to specification we asked which turned into a a good learning exercise where the women were quizzed to see if they could identify good cuts versus not good cuts and what to look for so that they could better communicate what they want from the processor.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Cooking, Texture, Tenderness, Taste Discuss muscle, function, and marketability. As natural marketers, we had the women think about muscle function as it related to taste/cooking. We wanted to give them tips from top chefs on how to cook more cuts out of beef and pork so that they could communicate this to their customer. We also wanted the tips to be easy to remember, so we weren’t trying to dazzle them with things home consumers couldn’t perform. Rather, we had a top chef train our farmers on how to cook each cut using salt and pepper on a webber grill and a basic oven. They then learned to taste the different cuts and learn simple cooking techniques for a delivious final product.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Topics Covered: Best Practices for Marketing Meat: Learn about trends in meat markets, tips for getting to know your customers, and messaging that SELLS from top industry butcher shop owners and niche meat professionals. We also wanted to connect our women to other business leaders who were making change happen selling local meat across the supply chain. We put together a panel of business owners who were starting to buy and sell whole animal to discuss opportunities and challenges in the industry.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Major Take-Aways Pre/Post Evaluations: 100% of participants unanimously reported greater understanding and improved confidence in each category of topics covered in the workshop 100% increase according to our pre/post. 100% recommend this to a friend. Average increase in learning per topic was over 20% increase in skills and knowlege

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Major Take-Aways Over the past 5 years, women attendance at the Carolina Meat Conference has increased by almost 20%

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Major Take-Aways Most Popular Topics: Pricing and Business Focus Hands-on Learning Developing a Professional Network of Female Colleagues Most Popular Skills/Take-Aways: How to talk to their processors and negotiate pricing/business relations. Empowered them to apply marketing techniques and business tools to their business. Greater network of resources and an increased professional network.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Quotes “Because of this training, I was made me closely aware of how much money I was grinding into a lower dollar product. I have worked more closely with my butcher and put real effort into that conversation and am having fun creating new products to sell. My meat sales have increased over 47% this year.”

Women Working in the Meat Business: Quotes “I have a better understanding of the cuts and where they come from, how to use them, etc. but more importantly, I learned more about how much to charge….” “This conference has radically improved my ability to speak to both customers and producers.” ““I've learned WHO can help me when I need an answer. WHAT opportunities exist within the meat community to get products. The vast specialized knowledge base within the group” “I can now ask for more specific cuts of meat from my processor, and therefore increase profit.”

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Business Start-Ups! Amy Price Neff: Pendulum Fine Meats Because of women working in the meat business, Amy met another women farmer participant, who sold her beef for the restaurant. Numerous business transactions still take place.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Business Start-Ups! Meredith Leigh: The Ethical Meat Handbook

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Business Start-Ups! Eliza MacLean: Mobile Butcher Shop Eliza wanted to provide a greater variety of cooked, smoked and high end products using her pork to reach her high end customers at the farmers market. She then partnered with a butcher and developed a mobile butcher shop on wheels whereby she can custom cut and sell fully cooked and smoked products at the farmers market using her own meat. This marketing idea came out through NC Choices’

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Business Start-Ups! Ann Rose: Rose Mountain Butcher Shoppe Anne sources from over 50 farmers in rural NC and has gone on to open her own butcher shop in Lansing. She plans to open another one in Boone, NC.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Outcomes: Business Start-Ups! Kari Underly: Mucolo Meat Academy Cynthia Harriett scholarship fund named after her 2 grandmothers who were both butchers.

Women Working in the Meat Business: Spreading the Word: National Movement Media We were very strategic in getting the word out. In addition to support from SRMEC, we enlisted support from numerous sponsors including Farm Aid, Victorinox, SARE, and partner orgs). We created a social media strategy to share with sponsor orgs. We worked with national webinar about the program featured on the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network as well as included in their newsletter

Women Working in the Meat Business: Spreading the Word: National Movement

Thank You! NC Choices: www.ncchoices.com Contact: Sarah Blacklin Program Director sarah@ncchoices.com Project Manager NC Choices 919.928.4771