WHATS BEHIND THE MENU PRICE OF BEEF?
by: Miranda Reiman Part 1 Farm and ranch freezers are often full of home-raised beef, yet producer families still enjoy the classic steakhouse experience now and again. With a quick scan of the menu and some cowboy math, most producers figure the New York strip list price at a hefty premium to the weekly salebarn reports for beef on the hoof. That means either A, someone in the restaurant business is getting rich or B, it takes plenty of work and capital to get beef to the consumer. The reality is everybody is taking a little piece of the pie all along the way, says Mark Polzer, vice president of Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB). Product doesn’t go right from the packer to the plate; there are many important steps in between. Rick Cassara owns John Q’s, an upscale steakhouse in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Theoretically you could go directly to the packers, but they would have to provide a whole host of services to me that a distributor does, Cassara says. One is that he cuts the steaks for
