Meat+Poultry - December 2018 - 62

S M A L L B U S I N E S S M AT T E R S

trim, but can make a vast variety of sausages,
jerky, snack sticks and other value-added
products in varied flavors for their game
hunting customers.
"For years we accepted entire carcasses for
hunting season but learned that in doing so,
we had to put many of our rancher customers
on the back-burner of scheduling," Shane
confides. "Those ranchers are the people who
support us all year-round and we owed them
more priority than that, so we went to only
accepting boneless trim from game animals.
We were worried about the reaction from that
change, but in the long run it was a successful
move for us."

EYE ON THE FUTURE

Shane and Tanya Flowers
keep busy running Ranch
House Meat Co. in Billings,
Montana, while raising
their three children - Dallas
(left), Madison and Kaleb.

MEAT+ POULTRY | 12.18 | www.meatpoultry.com

Clark Martin Photography

62

Ranch House Meat Co. offers gift baskets
and meat and cheese party trays year-round but
does a strong business with them during the
holiday seasons. Other specialties, including
rubs and seasonings are detailed further on
their website ranchhousemeatco.biz.
The firm has also ventured into catering. In
keeping with their wish to better know their
customers, they prepare, deliver and serve
for about 90 percent of their catering events.
They've done as many as 400 meals at an event
and their menu selection can range from prime
rib to pulled pork.
While they purchase their bakery breads
and rolls for retail deli sales, they use a small
bake oven to make their own for larger
catering events.
"Catering has been good for us, but we
find we have to limit how many we do a year,"
the couple notes. "We have to allow some
time for ourselves and if we don't watch what
we commit to, we can get behind and never
find the needed time for ourselves and our
three children."
Wild game season is also a busy time for
the company. They accept only clean game

Success at Ranch House Meat Co. can be
measured in many ways. One of them will be
more evident next spring when the Flowers
hope to expand their original Project Meats
plant from 6,000 sq. ft. to add another 10,000
sq. ft. They eventually want to build a larger
retail shop in Billings that will allow them to
produce many items in the store and not have
to truck them from the production plant, and
they believe customers will like seeing how
their products are made before their eyes.
The expansions may change the financial
dynamics for the business, which now
has 50 percent of its sales under retail, 25
percent under custom and 25 percent under
wholesale. Shane says the wholesale arena is
growing and that their jerky and snack stick
products now appear in nearly a dozen other
local businesses.
"Since we started in the meat business,
we've learned a lot," Shane concludes. "We
came up with many of our own product and
flavor ideas and got good feedback from our
customers. We may be a little bit behind the
8-ball in our equipment, but we hope to get
new packaging systems and keep our eye out
for some good used production machinery."
But one of the most significant changes
came recently when the Flowers felt a need to
raise wages for their 20 employees.
"We really need and rely on our production
and sales teams," he says. "Without good wages
we would have no one making our product.
That step raised their income and enabled us to
retain and attract the quality workers we need
to grow."
http://www.ranchhousemeatco.biz http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - December 2018

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