The Untold Truth About Grass Fed Beef Marketing | Nicky Fiorentino DSH #793
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So by eating grass fed beef, you're essentially avoiding the possibility of consuming those toxins. To me, that seems like a stretch. I think the other side, which is analyzing the, you know, omega threes and sixes. Well, OK, if omega threes and sixes are so important to you, why are you not eating fish that has 1000 percent more omega three and six than any form of Angus beef?

All right, guys. Got Nicky Fiorentino here from The Meadery. We're going to talk meat today. One of my favorite topics. Let's go. Let's go, baby. So you have a butcher in San Diego, right? We do. We have a butcher shop in Mission Gorge. We also ship online nationwide. Nice. Yeah, and that's what caught my attention because a lot of butcher shops just sell locally, but you're able to scale to the masses. Yeah. So we deliver nationwide. We deliver to Alaska and Hawaii. Most of the others don't.

And when I got a warehouse, I had a couple big offices in the front that I didn't need, and I turned them into a butcher shop. And that's been a whole experience in and of itself. Yeah, and you also use billboards. And you said that was one of the best marketing you've ever done. Yeah, it's crazy. I put up billboards after about three and a half years of the shop being in business. And within three months, the shop had doubled in size. That's insane. Billboards just drive so much traffic. It's crazy.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner, but I'm glad that... Yeah, that's insane to me because they're all over Vegas. And in my head, I never thought they worked, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, I think when you're a marketer by trade, you have a tendency to discount things. But I always said to myself, yeah, that won't work. But...

I gave it a try, and I was very, very wrong, and I'm happy that I was. I can see it working for butcher shops because you get a lot of repeat business. So if that billboard brings in a few people and they're reordering, it's a good ROI. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, any customer that we gain is almost certainly coming back to the store. And, you know, the billboard, I learned a few things about billboards. The most important things I learned was, number one, you have to have a very...

captivating message that gets people's attention. So our first billboard says in big, bold letters, you can't beat this meat. A lot of people walk into the shop with a big smile and said, I had to just see who did that. And then another thing that I learned is that the billboard has to directionally be

if you're trying to grab local traffic directionally facing the flow of traffic to your store. So we have scaled the billboards now, and I had the only one that has failed was directionally opposite catching traffic that was leaving our vicinity versus something that impulsively you could just easily turn to. That makes sense because no one's going to turn around for a butcher shop.

I mean, maybe someone, but they'd have to really want that meat, right? Yeah, exactly. Now let's get into the nitty-gritty of the meat types because you have a very interesting take on this grass-fed movement, which is hot right now. Yeah. I'll preface it by saying we carry grass-fed, grass-finished beef. We carry grain-fed. We carry Wagyu. So I do believe that whatever somebody wants, we're going to serve them.

their desires. When I'm asked what my thoughts are, I'll state my thoughts. I think that grass-fed beef is a very well-marketed and positioned product, and I don't think that the grass-fed versus grain-fed Angus beef argument really has a clear winner, quite frankly. I think that there's some good points that are being made, but

I also don't agree with a lot of what's being said. There's a lot of movement on the grass-fed side. It seems like that's kind of winning the debates, I see, at least on social media. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of big guys talking about grass-fed beef. You had Paul Saladino, Liver King, plenty of other influencers. And I think that data, I'm a marketer, right? So I really try to understand what the data is that they're saying can be manipulated and manipulated.

What I see Saladino saying is that, well, there's all of these toxins that are being put on the grains that these Angus cows are consuming. So by eating grass-fed beef, you're essentially avoiding the possibility of consuming those toxins that were put on grains, which a cow ate and digested. To me, that seems like a strong...

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Then there's, I think, the other side, which is analyzing the, you know, omega-3s and 6s, the nutritional properties of grass-fed versus grain-fed beef. And, you know, again, I think there's a really good argument that says, like, well, okay, if omega-3s and 6s are so important to you, why are you not eating fish that has 1,000% more omega-3 and 6 than any form of Angus beef? Yeah.

Yeah, that's the wrong argument to have. Yeah, so it's like, sure, grass-fed is mildly incrementally better than grain-finished in certain nutritional areas, but at what cost? You're probably paying potentially more for that. Way more. Not potentially. Grass-fed, grass-finished is way more. And on top of it, I think you're sacrificing a lot of flavor.

You are. It tastes different. Yeah. I mean, there's just fattest flavor. And, you know, I do believe that every body reacts differently. And, you know, the people that feel better after they're eating lean beef, we want to be there to serve them. But at the same time, I'd rather ask all of those people, why are you not contrasting Angus versus Wagyu? Why is it grass-fed versus grain-fed? Because Wagyu is dramatically healthier in a lot of regards, but

And everything that the grass-fed people are stating, you get with Wagyu, as well as the flavor and tenderness, that that different breed, because Wagyu is made up of four breeds of cattle that are different than Angus beef. So if you're telling me I can get the flavor and the nutritional benefits of Wagyu as grass-fed, why aren't the influencers talking about that?

I've never heard someone advocate for Wagyu over grass-fed, to be honest. So, yeah, that could be a new narrative we start here. Yeah. I mean, you know, Wagyu, you have similar levels of omega-3 and 6 as grass-fed beef. Wagyu is rich in monounsaturated fat, which is the good fat, whereas Angus is more saturated fat.

And then additionally, Wagyu has 30% higher CLAs than Angus. And there's a ton of benefits to CLAs as well. What's CLA? Linolenic acid. CLA. I forget the C. The benefits of that are improved metabolic. It's anti-carcinogenic as well as an anti-inflammatory.

Nice. Yeah, I could see that. Is Wagyu way more expensive than... So Wagyu can be dramatically more expensive, but again, it's how you shop, right? And everybody sees Wagyu or hears the word Wagyu and they just picture some hugely fatty Japanese A5 ribeye, right? That's not all Wagyu is, you know? And that's something that I've really focused on is like, okay...

How can we educate people on the other cuts in beef? One of the things that I think we've done the best job with is picanha, which is, you know, it sits above the sirloin. And that's a phenomenal cut of beef. So there's a lot of different options that you can get when purchasing Wagyu. And not all of those options are crazy, fatty, marbled beef.

Yeah, there's American Wagyu, there's Australian. Yeah, there's lots of different kinds of Wagyu. And then, you know, you delve into genetics as well. What percentage of the steak, because American Wagyu, for example, is going to be 50-50 crossbred most of the time, half Angus, half Wagyu. Whereas, you know, Australian, you're typically at least purebred, which is 93.75% or higher.

Damn, 93. And then there's what's called full blood, which is 100% Wagyu genetics. And full blood exists in America, Australia, as well as Japan. And Japanese is usually the most expensive, right? Japanese is the most expensive, yes. Yeah, because they have the A5. Correct. And that's like one of the highest grades you can have, right? So A is a carcass rating that's only in Japan. Okay.

The Australian full blood that we sell is genetically identical to Japanese, but it's really cool. It doesn't look like anything that you're getting from Japan. So it's going to eat more like a steak. It's still going to have a heap of marbling. And you can get different marbling scores as well. But the Australian stuff, because of the way that it's raised and because of what it eats...

different farming practices yield different types of steak. Genetically, we're identical. You go to the gym all the time. I eat too much Wagyu. We look different, right? I got to try some Australian Wagyu, man. It's fantastic. And a lot of our customers, they walk into the store and they have never tried Wagyu before and they try a piece of Japanese and a piece of Australian and

A lot of them come back and say the Japanese was amazing, super rich, but I need more of that Australian. Wow. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. Because people always just assume they go to a restaurant and get the Japanese. It's like the best one. Yeah. And, you know, I tell people, and I'm probably the only person that really loudly speaks this, that Japanese Wagyu is not a good dinner steak. I mean...

It's a fantastic appetizer. It's super rich. I mean, and, you know, they call it a holiday steak in Japan for a reason. It's a treat. It's not something you eat a 10-ounce slab of. You're going to be, you know, on the couch asleep. It's very heavy. The USDA grading scale. So we had a phone call before this, and you were saying you'd rather have a Creekstone Choice than a Costco Prime. Yeah. I mean, I think that the USDA grading system is –

hyper-dependent on who the guy grading is, right? I also believe that Creekstone in particular, we've sold their stakes in the past. Right now, we're selling Double R Ranch, which I would say is similar in notoriety. Double R is the Snake River Farms Angus division. Got it. So I've seen such variance in...

the marbling of prime and choice. We sometimes get choice steaks in that look like they could be Australian Wagyu, and we sometimes get prime steaks in that look like grocery store select stuff. That makes me pretty weary of the USDA grading system. I know it's an imperfect human decision, so I'm not being too critical of it. But at the same time, its consistency is difficult.

I wonder how it's based. Is it all just human eye or is there a scale? Yeah, no, there's a human rating. Oh, really? So there's no like metrics they use? Well, they have a, you know, a guideline of what choice should look like, what prime should look like, select, you know. Damn. But it's...

There's no, like, buddy with a tape measure saying, you know, here's how much fat or measuring, like, the fat-to-meat content. So it's, you know, it's subjective. That's how it should be. Yeah, they should be using an AI scale and put the meat on there. For sure. Determine the ratios. And there's, I know there's, like, X-ray or MRI detection occurring in the Wagyu world as to trying to figure out how cattle are marbling, you know, which prior to slaughter...

Do we need this cow to be longer so that it achieves a higher marbling score, or is it ready for market? Interesting, yeah, because the marbling, there's a whole score system for marbling, right? Yeah, so whereas USDA is pretty much select choice prime is what everybody's seeing. On the Wagyu side, there's the BMS scale, which is beef marble score. And in Japan, it goes to 12%.

In Australia, it goes to nine. I think that was like Australia's nod to Japan that, you know, we'll never get to a 12 or just giving them that nod for whatever reason. Some, it's also subjective. And now there's brands out there that are what's called table grading their own beef and assigning themselves 10s and 11s. And so it's subjective.

It's not like a government-controlled, regulated score. Oh, okay. So it's all subjective. It is subjective. Yeah, if I was the owner of a meat company, I would just give myself high scores. I mean, yeah. It trickles over there, too, right? Like we've seen, whether it be Japanese or Australian, we don't buy anything Japanese below a 9. We're just 9, 10, 11, 12. Wow. And...

the nines sometimes come in looking like 12s and the 12s sometimes come in looking like nines and, you know, it's a little bit of luck of the draw, but thankfully when you're at our level,

it's all tastes good. Yeah. Even if it's a bad nine, it's still going to be awesome. Absolutely. Compared to the grocery store. Absolutely. I mean, look at the meat there. Yeah. You probably don't shop there ever. Oh, sure. You'll buy at the grocery store? Yeah. I mean, I'm not buying steak at the grocery store. That's what I meant. The steak and turkey and chicken and shit. Yeah. If, uh, you know, if I'm feeding tons of people and they don't have to eat Wagyu, then, you know,

I'll still go once in a while. What's your top sellers? Top sellers are probably our off cuts. So we have a steak called a Denver steak, which is cut from the bottom of the chuck, chuck tail flap. Fantastic steak. It's affordable. It's, you know, I think it's like 60 bucks. Super marbled, great flavor, real tender. So that's a great one. The picanha that I mentioned, our top sirloin, we cut them into...

They look like little filet mignons. So they're eight ounces. Those things are great. A lot of people that don't want a ton of marbling love those because they're still nice marbling, but it's not overwhelming. And then, you know, all the crazy stuff always moves, like all the Japanese. And we're also Kobe beef certified. And not a lot of people have that, right? No. There's, I think, like six or seven of us. That's it? Yeah. So it's super hard to get. It is. What's the qualifications?

Honestly, we weren't really privy to much of the due diligence process. We had to answer some questions and whatnot, but I know that a pretty thorough background check was done on us. Wow. I think where I've gotten lucky in this business is my internet marketing background. A lot of my counterparts are fantastic butchers or artisans, but-

We've been able to really posture ourselves nicely online, which a lot of average butchers might not know how to. Dude, I hate it because I go to a couple butchers out here and you can't buy shit online. Yeah. It's so annoying. Yeah. I mean, it's like a first world problem, but. It is. I mean, and it's, you know, we launched during COVID. So we very quickly learned how to ship online.

get meat cold to people's houses. Because people couldn't walk into your store, right? Yeah. Wow. We launched purely online, and then the storefront came probably six, eight months after the internet launch. What does better for you revenue-wise? Revenue-wise, it's still online. Okay. But storefront is way better profit margins because we're not shipping. Yeah. Are you going to scale to other cities? I can see it happening. I think there's a franchise play there for sure. It's a good name. Thank you.

You trademark it? Yeah. Nice. Got all the socials. Yeah, that's a really good name, the metering. I mean, well done. Thank you. I'm surprised it wasn't taken, honestly. No, it was. Oh, it was? Yeah.

The most expensive thing was the Instagram handle. They figured out what I was doing, and they put the tax. Someone got it. Yeah, yeah. I know a couple people that have paid tens of thousands for IG handles. I think I paid like $11,000 or $12,000 for the handle. Holy crap. Just what's the handle? The metery? At the metery, yeah. Wow. And so there's all these, you know.

Similar ones, but the only one I couldn't get was the YouTube. It was like just some dead channel that hasn't been touched in years. You'll have to hit them up directly. I tried. It was like in Russia or something, like just randomly. Was the domain taken, the website? Yeah, everything. So you had to buy everything? Everything, yeah. That makes sense. But it was worth it. I mean, it was like, okay, I knew that there was a business there and, you know,

It was a worthwhile investment to try to own what I perceived to be a very good, timeless name and domain and social properties that corresponded to it. It's an interesting transition for me just witnessing this because you had a successful background in e-commerce. So to go towards a butcher shop model is interesting. So my background is actually performance marketing. So I did lead generation for a real long time. I did some e-commerce work.

as well, but like never Shopify. Yeah. Shopify was brand new to me. I was doing more of like affiliate type e-comm, but my, you know, the depth of my background was in performance marketing lead generation. Got it. Yeah. And you did super well there. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I still am in that world as well, dabbling around and, you know, making moves when I can. Yeah. Um,

But it's, you know, it's very similar to, and I took a lot of the learnings from that world into the meadery. And it's like if anybody's bought leads before, you know you get what you pay for. Yeah, you can't cheap out on leads. Exactly. Yeah. And same goes with meat, quite frankly. Like if you buy the cheapest meat, you're going to have the cheapest experience. Yeah, 100%. I don't cheap out on meat anymore. Right. Yeah.

And, you know, I bet you don't have to eat as much of it to be satiated. No, one a day, one meal a day. Right. And it's not an accident, you know. The cheap stuff you can consume a lot more of. And that's another thing that people don't really know about Wagyu is that, you know, they look at it, they just say fat, fat, fat. But guess what? You're going to eat a third of what you eat in just lean Angus beef, you know. You're going to have to change your IG handle to the Wagyu King. Yeah.

I try to fly under. Yeah, you're pretty low-key with your personal one. I don't. Our customers are businessmen and women, and I don't do the internet flexing. We just try to provide as great a service as we can, and I know our customers appreciate that. The health influencer game is a risky one, too. You get under a lot of ridicule. Yeah. I mean, I think that the grass-fed Wagyu...

And don't get me wrong. I'm not afraid of getting on the Internet and speaking my mind. I've built quite a TikTok following doing that. But I just don't like taking positions in topics where there's good arguments on both sides. Like the grass-fed, grain-fed one. I have my beliefs. But at the same time, who am I to say somebody that is subscribed to the grass-fed theory is wrong? Yeah.

So I'd rather treat that person with respect, carry the product for the, you know, small portion of people that actually want it. And if I'm asked this opinion all the time, what I think of it, then I state my mind. Makes sense. You know. What about the raw meat crowd? Raw meat? Yeah, you sell that? Like liver and stuff? We don't, but I can see ourselves starting to sell that. We're getting more people that ask for it. Mm-hmm.

Liver King, definitely. I buy his supplements, actually. Yeah. He definitely created some of that demand. I think Sal Dino probably did as well. Him and Paul did very well with their supplement line. I took them, too. And we're believers in it. I want...

And someday probably will to launch like a primal burger that's a blend of beef and offal. Yeah, there's a brand out of Austin, Force of Nature. Yeah. Do you carry their products? I don't. Seen them. Big admirer. Yeah, I like their brand. Yeah, great, humble brand. I like the way they source for me. Sourcing is important to me. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm like on the spiritual end of things, and I think it really matters how the animal is being sourced. Totally. And, you know, I don't know.

I'm an animal lover, and I think that that's something that's also super important in choosing your meat is, you know, I see the farms that these cattle are raised on or the pigs or whatever, right? I know that they're having a good life, right? And, you know, I've watched podcasts from the ButcherBox CEO, and he's the same exact way. It's like the animals have one bad day.

But that's life, right? And we all have that one bad day. And I'm thankful that the farms that we source from, I know, are giving those animals a good life. Yeah, that's good to know about ButcherBox because they are a mass market. So I actually assumed that they didn't care about that side of things. No, you know, they're hugely grass-fed, pro-grass-fed guys. I mean, I don't think they own any—

grain fed beef. Wow. They don't offer any grain fed beef. So they're big on the marketing side of the health benefits of grass fed beef. But, you know, I've listened to their CEO pretty much every podcast he's done. He definitely speaks to, you know, the animal industry.

the animals in a way that I very much relate with. That's cool. And I saw you're launching a monthly subscription too, right? Yeah. So we launched that last November. So it's eight months old now. Nice. Yeah. Increase the company valuation, right? MRR? Yeah, for sure. It took me three years to do that too because I think...

When I think of a subscription, I was always, I mean, the meatery was built on customer service, right? Because there's enough guys out there that you can get Wagyu from. So I knew that we had to separate ourselves just by providing extreme customer service, which we do. I always was terrified of the thought of like a customer getting a box of $400 box of Wagyu that they didn't want. They forgot to cancel or forgot to pause it.

And now I lost that customer for life. And thankfully the technology has kind of improved and we launched our subscription. You can pause it, you can swap, you can skip. And that's the other thing that has improved is the box itself. So you're not just getting the same thing month after month. We've got, I think it's like 70 or 80 items now that you can. Yeah. The supply chain on that sounds intense. It is. It's been a logistical nightmare. I bet. I, uh,

I was super lucky to hire a COO who actually is now a partner of the business, Carlos. He has just taken so many operational issues in my life. Yeah, I bet. The box is doing well, though? The box is doing well. It's growing. It's a completely new type of transaction for us and analyzing –

subscription revenue and cohorts and, you know, AOCs and stuff like that, that previously we just looked at repeat rate and lifetime value. Yeah. New metrics now, right? Now it's a whole new set of metrics. And, you know, then you delve into the attribution conversation about which marketing channel am I actually attributing this to because attribution is all messed up, as you know. Oh, yeah. With the Google and iOS updates, right? Yeah. I mean...

It's been a brutal couple years trying to figure out how to properly attribute traffic now. Yeah. You just have to have an omnichannel approach, and you have to just look at the big picture. Absolutely. Drive yourself crazy trying to drill in too tight. Yeah. What's next for the media area, man? I think next... So right now we're focused a lot on the storefronts. We're going to open up a...

express concept in a different northern part of San Diego very soon. I think we're going to try to keep increasing retail. I mean, with the billboards working as well as they did, I feel like we've got a good little equation going there. And then growing the subscriptions, you know, we're still available for one-time orders and just keeping it growing. I mean, it's steadily grown year over year and

So from a business standpoint, I would say that's next. We did just actually harvest our first full-blood, I'm sorry, purebred Wagyu cow. Nice. So that was being raised out in Colorado. That will be to us tomorrow. Okay. It looks amazing. So we'll have our own line of Wagyu potentially. Let's go. We'll see. Yeah.

Let's get it, man. We'll link below if you're watching this, guys. If you want some meat, 15% off for military and first responders, right? Yep. Which is a huge discount. So that's awesome. But yeah, check them out, guys. Thanks for coming on, dude. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for watching. Peace.