Vancouver startup crowdfunding local, ethical meat
A pair of Vancouver entrepreneurs hope that a crowdfunding model for buying steaks and chops will help deliver ethically raised, also known as “higher-welfare,” meat at a price that people can afford.
Meatme.co sells shares in antibiotic-free Berkshire pigs, grass-fed Black Angus heifers, pasture-raised lambs and free-range chickens from smallscale B.C. farms direct to consumers. As each animal receives full funding — from four share to about 40 shares for a large beast — it is slaughtered, butchered and home delivered.
“I started working on this about over a year ago at (business incubator) Launch Academy to see if it was feasible and fund our first cow,” said co-owner Victor Straatman. “Everyone I talked to was enthusiastic, but I was not convinced they would spend the money.”
But some did open their wallets. And to Straatman’s surprise and pleasure, most people who bought shares through the website were strangers rather than friends and neighbours.
Meatme has crowdfunded more than 15 animals to 350 customers.
Prices range from $99 for a small beef share including steaks, braising cuts, ground beef and bone broth to $250 for a full share of lamb including chops, roasts, shanks and stew meat.
Because the butchering is nose-totail, customers will encounter some cuts in their share that may be unfamiliar, so a certain sense of adventure is required.
“But we recently did a price comparison with stores and found our customers were saving between eight and 28 per cent,” Straatman said.
To take their business to the next level, Straatman and his partner Trevor Bird entered the Coast Capital Savings Innovation Hub at the Sauder School of Business at UBC.
“We are going through a process to determine what our business model is going to be,” he said. “After that they will mentor us and perhaps provide some interns.”
Selling a premium product like ‘ethical’ meat is no picnic, according to heritage pig farmer Julia Smith of Urban Digs Farms. Higher welfare meat can be two to even three times as expensive as meat from animals raised in crowded barns.
“In order to have everything done to the standard we want, we essentially have to do everything ourselves,” she said.
In practice, that means raising the animals on spacious pasture, diverting quality feed from the waste stream, taking the butchering of the animals in house, marketing, packaging and delivering the product themselves.
And five years in — with considerable support from the media following new agrarian and slow meat movements — Smith and her partner Ludo Ferrari at Urban Digs have yet to turn a profit.
“We are getting there, because once people try the product they really don’t go back,” she said. “But the base of people who share our values and who can afford to support it is a small one.”
“I think we will make money this year, but whatever, we are in this for the long haul,” she said.