A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Beef costs a lot right now. A pound of ground beef costs an average of $6.90 in April. A sirloin steak runs more than 14 bucks per pound. Those are both up almost 20% from the year before. Some people are trying to cut down their beef bill by buying in bulk directly from the ranch. Here's Michael Marks with Harvest Public Media.
MICHAEL MARKS, BYLINE: I'm in Kasey Guentert's (ph) tidy garage in Canyon Lake in central Texas, and she's giving me a tour of her freezer.
KASEY GUENTERT: So at the top, we have - mostly we've got beef flank. We've got - any roast I have.
MARKS: It's packed, mostly with beef. She's got roasts, ribs, steaks and a whole trove of her favorite cut.
GUENTERT: This third row, this is literally nothing but beef tenderloin. Is that not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?
MARKS: This will last Guentert and her partner more than a year, and these are folks who eat beef about five nights a week. They ordered the meat in bulk from a ranch about 75 miles east called Bastrop Cattle Company. Buying meat direct from a rancher is not a new concept, but the practice boomed thanks to COVID.
(SOUNDBITE OF COWS MOOING)
MARKS: Back then, grocery stores couldn't keep their coolers stocked, and people wanted to know they'd have a stable meat supply. Now rising grocery prices have made bulk beef a better deal. Here's Max Kruemcke, one of the owners of Bastrop Cattle Company.
MAX KRUEMCKE: I remember the exact moment whenever somebody said to me, oh, we did the numbers, and actually, we think it'll save us money. And I was like, oh, OK. That's wild.
MARKS: Kruemcke says that buying a whole cow from a rancher like him used to be a more complex process.
KRUEMCKE: You'd buy the cow from the rancher live weight, then go to the butcher, and then it would turn into a hanging weight, which is with all the inedible parts removed.
MARKS: Now customers don't have to think about all that. They pick how much beef they want, decide how they want it cut, with Kruemcke's help, and then pay one fee. It's over $2,000 for a half cow and nearly $4,000 for a whole. That's a lot. But with retail beef prices still near record highs, it might end up cheaper than the grocery store. Erin Beyer is a meat extension specialist for Kansas State University.
ERIN BEYER: I think that you probably were paying a premium to be purchasing the more local products in bulk. My hypothesis is that that gap has shrunk a little bit.
MARKS: She says there are caveats - you have to have enough money to pay for the beef up front and a freezer to store it all. Beyer says some people who bought a whole cow during the pandemic got more than they bargained for.
BEYER: That was a big issue from the beginning of, oh, I bought a half of beef or a quarter of beef, and then they would get it - right? - and they have one small chest freezer. There's no way that's going to fit.
MARKS: Back in Canyon Lake, Kasey Guentert likes how buying a few hundred pounds of beef at a time shields her from fluctuations in price.
GUENTERT: Once you buy it at that price, if it goes up because something's going on, political science-wise, whatever, my pricing has stayed the same, at least for a good year, a year and a half.
MARKS: Guentert thinks ordering the bulk beef has made a difference for her budget.
GUENTERT: The upfront cost is a little painful, but it is worth it in the long run. And just think that you're not going to see beef probably for a good year to year and a half on your grocery bill.
MARKS: After purchasing three orders from Bastrop Cattle Company, she says this is how she'll buy beef from now on.
For NPR News, I'm Michael Marks.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE SOULJAZZ ORCHESTRA'S "KINGDOM COME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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