Country Natural Beef in Step with Customers

Country Natural Beef in Step with Customers

I’m KayDee Gilkey with today’s Open Range.

Often when a beef producer is focused on production rather than marketing, they may consider their end-product as a commodity and the price they receive for their cattle may reflect that.

Since 1986, Country Natural Beef has been a cooperative providing natural beef to customers. The cooperative has more than 75 family ranches as members located throughout the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the Western United States. It is one of the nation’s leaders in natural beef production.

Stacy Davies, Country Natural Beef’s Marketing Director, says one of the benefits of listening directly to their end-customer is actively staying in step with what their customers want in the beef they purchase.

Davies: “The beginning of our purpose statement is that marketing is consumer-driven. When marketing is consumer-driven, you’re able to set price, when marketing is production-driven you become a price-taker. That’s the differentiating quality of Country Natural Beef is that we link to the consumer directly -- ranchers and consumers. We have partnerships with all of the production chain members in between: packers, feeders, retailers. Collectively we work together to meet the consumers’ need.”