Marin couple behind jerky company
Sometimes the best ideas begin at a neighborhood bar, although more typically during prolonged banters while saddled up to it rather than when mixing drinks behind it.
When San Rafael resident Shannon Ronan, of Two Chicks Beef Jerky, moved from Nevada City to San Francisco in 2003 to finish college and then on to Marin a few years later, her first job in the county was at Mill Valley's 2am Club.
Outside of work, Ronan had been on a homesteading kick. In addition to pickling and fermenting, she started making her own beef jerky, a perfectly portable, protein-rich snack for outdoor pursuits and other adventures in her new hometown.
Naturally, her pub patrons were more than eager to pair their libations with the salty snack strips she brought into the bar, and the positive feedback planted the seed that someday she could grow this into a viable business.
More crowdsourced taste testing was accomplished during a five-month cross-country road trip. When Ronan and her wife Breelyn MacDonald returned to Marin, they began fundraising with a Kickstarter campaign and launched their women- and LGBTowned entrepreneurial beef snack company in 2015, initially making deliveries out of their subcompact Honda Fit.
Their mission from the start has been to create an alternative to the road-stop version that's high in sodium and sugar and contains artificial preservatives. Their marinated and cured grassfed meat strips are seasoned with gluten-free tamari, lime juice, garlic powder and other spices, and a touch of honey, familiar ingredients that can be found in a home pantry.
There are two original flavors — the classic and a spiced version, Two Hot Chicks, made with habanero chili — with the return of turkey jerkies in classic and spicy teriyaki on the horizon after a pandemic pause.