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Lorentz Meats Summary
Cannon Falls, Minnesota, US: Lorentz Meats www.lorentzmeats.com
Mike Lorentz, champion of the small farmer, founded Lorentz Meats to pool resources among regional producers, with an eye toward greater production, processing, and distribution capacities, serving a wider area without loosing connections to local communities, economies, and ecosystems. This model makes financial sense for farmers, particularly livestock farmers whose overhead costs are greater. Of selling meat in a farmers market he says: “You won’t make enough money to justify being there. It’s great for a hobby, you might even break even. But you won’t turn a profit.” He says small- and mid-scale meat processors can reach a happy medium by pooling resources. “If isn’t profitable, it isn’t sustainable,” says Lorentz. Lorentz Meats achieves profitability in large part thanks to its hand built, 10,000 square foot processing plant that is USDA certified to process cattle (and other species like bison, pigs, and elk) by hand. It handles volume that can compete with factory farms (clients include Organic Valley and Thousand Hills Cattle) but supports the quality of "boutique farmhouse operations."
Mike focuses on direct delivery through relationship-based sales, word of mouth, farm-gate sales, and the Internet. Retailers normally impose a 35-50% markup on specialty meats and outside distributors take 15%; this system doesn’t leave much for the farmer. Lorentz Meats effectively helps its clients make an end run to the consumers. Most of the price that would have gone into the pockets of retailers and distributors can instead go into the pocket of the farmer. Mike believes helping farmers with direct marketing “exponentially expands our own business opportunities.” By putting everything under one roof, he can minimize the distance from one operation to the next and improve quality control. “What we lack in scale we make up for in logistics. What you would have paid truckers and separate processors to do under the traditional processing scheme, we can cover in-house.”
