ALTA VISTA — Running any business takes relentless effort and determination to pursue a vision for making things work out. Amie Brunkow invested countless hours into a business plan for a meat processing plant before signing a purchase agreement to buy Alta Vista Meat Co. in February 2020. By the time the deal closed later that summer, Brunkow’s business plan, like the rest of the world, was upside down. However, her effort and determination remained and in the four years since buying the business, it’s thriving and expanding.

“The business plan I spent so much time on went out the window,” Brunkow says of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the business. “It went from one goal to a completely different ballgame.”

Brunkow had structured her plan on making the beef and other protein Alta Vista Meat Co. produces more convenient for customers with a monthly subscription called butcher bags tailored to their individual tastes. 

“A big hindrance for buying local beef is the one-time large purchase,” Brunkow says. “These butcher bags break that one-time purchase up over a year so you don’t have to make that payment or find the space to store it.”

The pandemic upended the plan, but Brunkow knew she could still build her business on delivering a superior product with convenience and unparalleled customer service.

Farm to locker

Before she was ever interested in buying a meat locker, Brunkow owned a farm near Paxico. She started out raising chickens then added goats and, eventually, cattle. She processed the chickens, and with the help of YouTube, processed her first goat.

“I’m one of those people who wanted to make sure I was using absolutely everything,” Brunkow says. “I tanned the hides of our goats. I made broth from chicken feet. I tried everything, and it was fun to see how much of an animal we could utilize.”

When she added cattle, Brunkow called lockers about turning them into beef, but the discussions about keeping most of the byproducts didn’t go as planned.

“I was astonished by the customer service at lockers,” she says. “When I was having these conversations, I eventually realized I just needed to do it myself. Now owning a locker, I can see this side of it, but I have a lot of respect for the people who do want to keep and use everything.”

Buying a business

Brunkow was initially interested in opening a locker in Paxico, but soon heard the locker in Alta Vista, about 30 miles southwest nestled near the intersection of Highway 177 and Kansas 4, was for sale.

“I didn’t really even know where Alta Vista was,” Brunkow says. “So, I started to look into that, and that started a great adventure.”

While Brunkow believed in her vision, others saw things differently. She faced skepticism from real estate agents and banks, one of which claimed she didn’t have the right “physical qualifications” to run the business.

“Is it because I’m short?” Brunkow asked sarcastically. “Convincing people I could do this was a real challenge.”

The mother of five daughters wasn’t going to let a few hiccups deter her, however. She kept searching and eventually found a female-owned bank in Council Grove that believed in her and helped finance the purchase.

“It was awesome and a great feeling to finally have someone see the vision and believe in me,” Brunkow says. “They didn’t see any barriers because of something that really doesn’t matter. I did not have the butchering background for large animals, but I did have the business background and the leadership background.”

A team in place

While Brunkow has a business background, she’s quick to point out her employees were and still are integral to Alta Vista Meat Co.’s success.

“I already had a team here that knew what they were doing,” she says. “That allowed me to learn how to work the harvest floor, how to butcher. I could never do this without all of them. I have an amazing team I never would have imagined being so blessed with.”

Brunkow started working full time at the locker in May of 2020, shortly before the sale closed and the previous owner retired. Scott Unruh was one of the key employees who stayed, and he serves as the head butcher.

“I interact a lot with my employees,” Brunkow says. “When my employees don’t feel happy and healthy here, how can my customers be taken care of?”

The locker business

Alta Vista Meat Co. is several businesses under one roof, though it started as only a custom locker providing butchering and processing livestock for individuals who were keeping their own beef or pork. It also has its own retail cases offering individually packaged steaks, roasts, hamburgers and other specialty products. And, as a state-inspected facility, it’s also a resource for wholesalers that have a whole animal processed and sell the meat at events like farmers markets.

Brunkow spends most of her time dealing with the farmers and ranchers who are selling their meat, entrusting others to handle the consumer side of the business. The goal is to help both businesses and consumers understand the value of a locker.

“I knew I was buying a business in an industry that was under appreciated, underutilized and was kind of getting pushed out,” Brunkow says. “Some consumers have that mindset of ‘How can I get meat as cheap as possible?’ They don’t realize what they’re missing. Time and space are not minimized here because it’s more about quality than quantity.”

Cut cards and time

Custom processing is exactly that. Consumers get to choose exactly what they want from a side of beef through a “cut card,” which is basically an instruction manual for butchering.

“I am adamant with any employee working with customers regarding cut cards,” Brunkow says. “If they take you two hours with someone, that’s OK. I do not want the consumer to feel rushed. This is a very large purchase for them and they’re not going to come back if they end up with a bunch of cuts they’re not going to use.”

Alta Vista Meat Co. methodically walks customers through their cut card, quizzing them about how many times a year they cook cuts like roast and minute steak. Alta Vista Meat Co. doesn’t charge extra for things like Denver, ranch and chuck eye steaks, which require more labor to create out of traditional roasts.

Since it’s a state-inspected plant, customers can sell portions of their orders they don’t want or can’t use.

“They could end up buying whole beef, get all the steaks they want for a whole year and resell the hamburger and pay back part of the cost,” Brunkow says.

Brunkow also tries to explain her service usually isn’t less expensive than buying meat in a grocery store, but there’s a quality difference based on the aging process that’s worth spending extra.

Most beef in grocery stores is wet aged, which means it’s vacuum sealed in its own juices shortly after harvesting. At Alta Vista Meat Co., a carcass will hang for up to 10 days in a cooler set at optimal temperatures for relaxation of my muscular fibers. This resting process allows enzymes to tenderize the muscle and moisture to escape, which helps intensify flavor.

Solving the hamburger problem

The quantity of hamburger can be a problem for anyone buying beef from a locker, whether it’s for use at home, in Alta Vista Meat Co.’s retail case or those who sell steaks and roasts as part of their business. There’s only so much ribeye and filet in a steer. Creating those high-value cuts and others lead to what’s called trim, a mix of lean muscle and fat that’s usually ground into hamburger. 

While the quantity of hamburger varies based on the size of the animal and decision made on the cut card, most people will end up with several hundred pounds of ground beef from a single animal. There are significant quality differences between custom ground beef and store bought. One of these differences being the cooking yield. Wet-aged beef made into ground can lose up to 22-27 percent of its weight when you cook it because of how much water it contains. While beef from a locker like Alta Vista Meat Co. loses closer to 5-7 percent.

With a grant from the state, Brunkow has expanded a specialty product room at the locker that allows for the production of items like summer sausage, premade hamburger patties, bratwurst, jerky and snack sticks. The snack sticks are made from finely ground trim stuffed into a casing and cured. They cost more to produce, but also command higher prices.

“The grant gave us the capacity to make 25- to 50-pound batches of specialty products without shutting down the entire processing line,” Brunkow says.

More education

Like retail customers, wholesale customers also need help from time to time, which Brunkow is happy to provide. Whether it’s assisting with the process of getting state licensing to sell their meat, helping them with labeling or even working with them to solve the hamburger problem.

“Snack sticks are a huge investment for a producer to get made and you never know how they’re going to sell,” Brunkow says. “As someone who’s sold snack sticks as a farmer at an event, I’ve shown up to events and completely sold out and I’ve shown up to events and not sold any.”

To lessen the initial investment, Brunkow allows wholesale customers to store trim at the locker in increments of 25 pounds. They still pay the initial processing fee for the animal, but they don’t have the increased cost for a specialty product and can still adjust depending on their exact needs if one flavor sells faster than others.

Beyond state lines

Alta Vista Meat Co. is in the process of becoming a federally inspected facility, which will allow the wholesalers who have their meat processed there to ship it anywhere in the U.S. While the increased marketing opportunities are one reason for the change, it’s also one of the requirements of another grant Brunkow received.

She’s currently having the locker’s entire electrical system upgraded, and the money will also go to improving how live animals are harvested.

“It will help create a safer environment for the animals and employees and improve the overall quality of meat by making the harvesting process smoother,” Brunkow says.

Brunkow says from what she understands, the difference between federal and state inspections are fairly minimal. There’s different paperwork and more of it on the federal side and an inspector will be on site more frequently, but everyone still has the same goal of ensuring everything that leaves the locker is safe for people to eat.

Freedom to grow

In the four years Brunkow’s owned Alta Vista Meat Co. its staff has more than doubled. They process an average of 15 to 17 cows and six to eight hogs each week, in addition to the lamb, goats, bison, elk and deer that come in.

The crew’s efficiency is one reason for the locker’s success, but the crew is also efficient because Brunkow has created an atmosphere where they’re free to experiment, whether to help current customers or find new ones.

“I do set boundaries people have to follow, but I’m really big about freedom with employees,” Brunkow says. “They’ll try different recipes for the snack sticks. One started a TikTok account. One of the highlights of our year is doing a haunted house at the locker. That idea came from one of my employees.”

Employees say the freedom also makes the job family friendly because Brunkow encourages them to stay home with sick kids and to go watch them participate in their activities.

One employee stated, “I enjoy the flexibility and the health care. I couldn’t afford a family health care plan before. Here, my whole family is covered for what I was paying for an individual plan before.”

Others’ success

From the beginning, Brunkow has understood her success depends on others, whether that’s her employees, retail customers getting exactly what they need or wholesalers being able to grow their businesses. Her only regret: not buying a locker earlier.

“I wish I would have bought a locker sooner because I absolutely love it,” she says.

This story originally appeared on the Shop Kansas Farms website, www.shopkansasfarms.com.