Digital Social Hour - The Untold Truth About Grass Fed Beef Marketing | Nicky Fiorentino DSH #793

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Discover the untold truth about grass fed beef marketing with Sean Kelly and Nicky Fiorentino on the Digital Social Hour! 📺 Join the conversation as they unveil fascinating insights into the beef industry, from the intricacies of grass fed vs. grain fed beef to the wonders of Wagyu. 🥩 Nicky, a savvy butcher with a national reach, shares how innovative marketing strategies like billboards and online shipping have revolutionized her business. 🚀 Don't miss out on this episode packed with valuable insights, exploring the nuances of beef quality, the grading system, and the growing popularity of Wagyu. Tune in now to learn why grass fed beef might not be the nutritional holy grail it's claimed to be and why Wagyu could be the flavorful alternative you've been missing. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🎧✨ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Scaling a Butcher Shop 03:09 - Grass-Fed vs Grain-Fed Beef 11:33 - Understanding USDA Grading System 15:56 - Top Selling Meat Products 17:50 - Revenue Comparison: Online vs In-Store 19:30 - E-commerce to Butcher Shop Transition 20:00 - Quality: You Get What You Pay For 22:10 - Grass-Fed vs Grain-Fed Overview 24:53 - Starting a Meat Subscription Service 26:30 - The Subscription Box 27:28 - Future Plans for The Metery APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Nicky Fiorentino https://www.instagram.com/_nickyfiorentino_/ https://www.instagram.com/themeatery/ https://themeatery.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You! With Admi on the new Google Pixel 9 Pro, never rely on a stranger again. Add yourself to any group photo through the magic of AI. Get yours with TELUS at telus.com slash pixel9pro. 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, okay. If omega threes and sixes are so important to you, why are you not eating fish that has 1000% more omega three and six than any form of Angus beef? All right, guys got Nikki Fiorentino here from the meatery we're gonna talk meat today one of my favorite topics let's go let's go baby um so you have a butcher in uh san diego right we do we have a butcher shop in mission gorge 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, they drive so much traffic.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner, but I'm glad that. Yeah, that's insane to me just they drive so much traffic it's 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 uh i always said to myself yeah that won't work but i got it i gave it a try and i, 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, which 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 um 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 yeah I mean we I'll preface it by saying we carry grass-fed grass-finished beef we carry grain-fed we carry wagyu so i i do believe that whatever somebody wants we're going to serve 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 um and i don't think that the grass fed versus grain fed Angus beef argument

really has a clear winner. Quite, 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 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, you know, big guys talking about grass fed beef. You had, you know, Paul Saladino,

liver King, plenty of other influencers. And, you know, I think that data and I'm a marketer, right? So I, I really try to understand what the data is that they're saying can be manipulated.

And what I see Saladino saying is that, well, there's all of these those toxins that were put on grains, which a cow ate and digested. To me, that seems like a strength. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, thebook born in vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play and as an official sportsbook partner of the nfl bet mgm is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day with a variety of exciting features bet mgm offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action.

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Add yourself to any group photo through the magic of AI. Get yours with TELUS at telus.com slash pixel9pro. Then there's, I think, the other side, which is analyzing the, you know, omega-3s and 6s and the nutritional properties of grass-fed versus grain-fed beef. And, you know, again again i think there's a really good argument that says like well okay if omega-3s and sixes are so important to you why are you not eating fish that has 1000 percent more omega-3 and six than any form of Angus beef. Right? 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, right? You're probably paying potentially more for that. Way more. Not potentially. Yeah. Grass-fed yeah 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 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, 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 uh and then additionally, Wagyu has 30% higher CLAs than Angus. And there's a ton of benefits to CLAs as well. What's CLA? Linoleic acid.

CLA. CLA. I forget the C. It's, you know, it's the benefits of that are improved metabolic. It's anti-carcinogenic. Okay. 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 cuts. Yeah, there's American Wagyu, there's Australian. Yeah, there's lots of different kinds of Wagyu, and then you delve into genetics as well, what percentage of the steak, because American Wagyu, for 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 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. 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 um but the australian stuff because of the way that it's

raised and because of what it you know eats different farming practices yield different uh 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, you know, a piece of Japanese and a piece of Australian. And a lot of them come back and say the Japanese was amazing. It was super rich, but I need more of that Australian. Wow. Yeah.

That is crazy. Yep. 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 but it's super rich I mean and you know they call it a holiday steak in Japan for a reason it's it's a treat it's not something you eat a 10 ounce slab of you're gonna be you know on the couch asleep um the usda grading scale so we had a phone call before this and you were saying you'd rather have a creek stone choice than a costco prime uh yeah i mean i think that the usda grading system is hyper dependent on who the guy grading is. Right. Uh, I also believe that Creekstone in particular,

we've sold their stakes in the past. Right now we're selling double our ranch, which I would say is, you know, similar in, uh, notoriety. Double R is the snake river farms.

Um, 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. And 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 metrics they use? Well, they have a guideline of what choice should look like,

what prime should look like, select. Damn. But 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 that's how it should be subjective yeah they should be using an ai scale and something 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,

which prior to slaughter, do we need this cow to be eating longer so that it achieves a higher marbling score, you know, 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, you know, 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 it's in Japan it goes to 12 in Australia it goes to 9

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 uh beef and assigning themselves 10s and 11s and so it's it's it's not like a government controlled regulated score oh okay so it's all subjective it is subjective yeah yeah if i was the owner of the meat company, I would just give myself high scores. I mean, yeah. And it trickles over there too, right? Like we've seen whether it be Japanese or Australian, uh, we don't buy anything Japanese below a nine and we were just nine, 10, 11, 12. Wow. And the 9s sometimes come in looking like 12s, and the 12s sometimes come in looking like 9s.

And, you know, it's a little bit of luck of the draw, but thankfully when you're at our level, it all tastes good. Yeah. Even if it's a bad 9, 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. That's what I meant the steak and turkey and chicken and shit Yeah, if you know if I'm feeding tons of people and they don't have to eat wagyu 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. I think it's like $60. Super marble, great flavor, real tender. So that's a great one. The picanha that I mentioned are 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 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 qualification? 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 do. 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 and uh so we very quickly learned how to ship and get meat cold to people's 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 is still online okay but storefront is you know way better profit margins because we're not shipping yeah are you

gonna scale to other cities uh 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. Oh, someone got it. Yeah, yeah. I know a, 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. What's the handle? The metery? At the metery, yeah. Wow.

And so there's all these 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 and you'll have to hit them up directly i i tried it was like in russia or something like just damn was the domain taken the website yeah everything so you had to buy everything yeah that makes sense yeah 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, you know, 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 is interesting so my background is actually performance marketing so i did lead generation for a real long time um i did some e-commerce work as well um but like never shopify yeah so shopify was brand new to me i was doing more of like affiliate type e-com. But the depth of my background was in performance marketing lead generation. Got it. Yeah. And you did super well there. Yeah.

Yeah. I still am in that world as well, dabbling around and making moves when I can. Yeah. But 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. I bet you don't have to eat as much of it to be satiated.

No, one a day, one meal a day. It's not an accident. The cheap stuff you can consume a lot more of. 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. I try to fly under the radar. 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? So I'd rather treat that person with respect, carry the product for the 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. What about the raw meat crowd? Raw meat?

Yeah, you sell that? Like liver and stuff? Uh-oh. We don't, but I can see ourselves starting to sell that we're getting more people that ask for it um liver king definitely i buy supplements actually yeah uh he definitely created some of that demand i think saldino probably did as well him and paul did very well with their supplement. Absolutely. I took them too. And we're believers in it. I want

and someday probably will to launch a Primal Burger that's a blend of beef and offal. Yeah, there's a brand out of Austin, Force of Nature. Do you carry their products? I don't. Seen them. Big admirer. Yeah yeah i like their brand

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'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. 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 uh pretty much every podcast he's done and

he definitely speaks to you know the animal uh the animals in a way that i 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. Increased 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 metery 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, you know, 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. Damn. Yeah. The supply chain on that sounds intense.

It is. It's been a logistical nightmare. I bet. I was super lucky to hire a COO who actually is now a partner of the business, Carlos. And he has just taken so many operational issues out of my life. Yeah, I bet. The box is doing well, though? The box is doing well.

It's growing. and well it's grown it's uh you know it's it's a completely new type of transaction for us and you know analyzing subscription revenue and cohorts and you know aocs and stuff like that that uh previously we just looked at you know 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 and yeah you you just have to have an omni-channel approach and you have to just look at the big picture

absolutely drive yourself crazy trying not to trying to drill in too tight yeah what's next for the media man i think next so we're right now we're focused a lot on the storefronts um 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 this the billboards working as well as they did i 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 that 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'll be to us tomorrow. Okay. It looks amazing.

So we'll have our own line of Wagyu potentially. Let's go. 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