Rocky Mountain Oysters.......

......OK, now that I have your attention! Wednesday was the big broker meeting at Maverick Ranch, in Denver, CO!



I'll start at the end, that doesn't make much sense, but it will explain the Rocky Mountain Oysters!

This month is Maverick's 20th anniversary. They brought in all of the brokers from around the country to kick off some new initiatives. They treated all of the brokers, office and support staff to a wonderful dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver's oldest restaurant. They hold liquor license #1. Denver became a state in 1857, the Buckhorn has been around since 1885!

Drinks were ordered and appetizer were served, buffalo sausage and, yup, Rock mountain oysters! If you're not familiar with them, they are, well, smashed bull scrotum fried and served with cocktail or horse radish sauce. When in Rome..... They actually weren't all bad but a little on the chewy side :) The remainder of the dinner consisted of buffalo prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes, it was awesome!

Rewind back to beginning of the day. Since production starts early, they wanted everyone at the plant early, 5:45am to see how production runs. Luckily, harvest(slaughter is not a nice word in the industry) actually takes place some place else. The whole program starts with the carcass rolling in off the truck.

From there they took us through fabrication into box beef and buffalo. As the carcass makes its way through the system, every guy is responsible for removing their "piece"; There is the ribeye guy, the chuck guy, etc.... All the way to the bone guy at the end who dismantles what's left and put in bins. The total time from arrival to box beef is about 10 minutes!

After that we went through the chicken room, the pork room, the ground beef room, the entree room and the lab that test everything that goes through the system for anti biotic, hormones, steroids and pesticides. Nothing leaves this plant that tests' positive for almost 50,000 substances down to a billion parts per million. That last statement is one of the new initiatives. Because of their stringent testing policies, they are the first food producer in the country to carry the USDA "process verification" stamp, one step away from certified organic! In fact, the company is commited to being 100% certified over all proteins in the next 3 years, very exciting news!

The remainder of the day consisted of meetings. Marketing, operations, production, sales, executive; Everyone got a chance to talk about their department. I left the house at 5:30 am and didn't return until about 9pm! A very long day indeed, but exciting times to be representing a great company!

-Rich-