FOR culinary professionals
We know that as a culinary professional, your standards and expectations are high. We work hard every day to ensure our products live up to our own high-quality standards and meet your needs for flavor, consistency and transparency. Here are a few of the things we do to accomplish this.
Where to Buy
We’re proud to partner with What Chefs Want for distribution to the Foodservice Industry in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee.
American Wagyu
As a chef, we know the value that you place on serving a product that differentiates you from the competition and ensures your guests that you have taken the extra step to provide the very best. American Wagyu, or the crossbreed between Japanese Wagyu beef and American Angus cattle, produces an amazing beef product that is incredibly high in fat marbling (AKA flavor) and is unparalleled to most of the beef available in the US market.
While our process to produce American Wagyu is both time and resource intensive, we go to bed every night knowing that our beef is not just one, or two steps better than the next guy, but in its own league. As the American consumer continues its search for the next "artisanal" or "handcrafted" or whatever buzz word you wish to choose, the demand for alternatives for conventional beef will continue to grow. By serving Black Hawk American Wagyu beef, you can provide a product that is both familiar and at the same time aspirational. Many consumers have heard of the quality difference of Wagyu, but so few get to experience how amazing it really is. Let's change that.
Whole Muscle Grind
When you order most ground beef, you often know very little about the product. There is never a label presenting what cuts of meat were used in the grind, and it has become generally accepted that, for the most part, all ground beef is the same. It's not. The truth is, most ground beef is often a great use for the undesirable cuts of beef that would rarely if ever be sold whole. In fact, most large producers use only about the last remaining 25% of the yield from an animal in their ground beef. You can probably guess which parts those are.
We believe that this is the wrong approach. Using the less desirable cuts is absolutely a good way to reduce waste and maximize profits, however, it greatly sacrifices quality. When we break our animals down, we reserve just a few of the the primal cuts and use the remaining beef for our Whole Muscle Ground Beef. What this means for you is that Black Hawk ground beef uses some of the absolute best cuts available in our grind. This produces ground beef with both an amazing depth of flavor, unlike anything you could ever get from a large-scale producer.
As consumers become increasingly interested and concerned with the quality of their food, we know that Black Hawk will provide you with the ability to offer a ground-beef product that exceeds consumer expectations and is produced with a focus on flavor over our own profit.
American Raised and Grazed.
As a chef, you are likely very familiar with the increasing importance placed on food sourcing. More and more customers are concerned with the story of their food; where it comes from, who made it, and what makes it different. At Black Hawk, our meat provides an amazing story to share with your customers, and the assurance that what they are consuming came from a farm that truly cares about their product.
We not only raise our calves on our bucolic pastures in Kentucky but when the time comes to introduce a grain diet, the white corn and alfalfa that we use in also grown here on our farm. This is incredibly rare and allows us another level of quality control. We also use less corn and more roughage (in our case alfalfa) than the other guys. Additionally, our state of the art composting barn helps us take the waste from the cattle and return it back to our farm in the form of fertilizer to grow more alfalfa and corn. This creates an incredible closed-system on our farm, reducing waste, increasing yields and promoting environmental stewardship.
When you sell Black Hawk beef, you can do so with the confidence of knowing you are supporting a small, regional operation with values centered around quality and environment.
Only the good stuff
While we choose not to use them (and we'll explain why below,) hormones and antibiotics are two important tools for large-scale cattle operations. Hormones allow commodity producers to reduce the amount of time that it takes to fatten-up a calf and bring it to slaughter. By speeding up the process, this means more money to their bottom line. By using antibiotics, those producers can help increase their yield (fewer sick animals) and help to ensure that the health of their overall herd. In most commercial operations, the goal is to cram as many animals onto one acre of land as possible to increase yields (and decrease costs.) Because so many cattle are concentrated into a crowded, stressful, and unsanitary space, this creates an environment that is susceptible to the mass spread of disease. To help mitigate this, the entire herd will often be fed a constant dose of antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease. In this concentrated environment, antibiotics play an important role to ensure food safety standards are met, but it can also lead to the development of antibiotic resistance with bacteria - jeopardizing the health and safety of the entire food supply.
At Black Hawk, our beef is never given antibiotics or hormones. Consumers have started to demand that their meat be free of these products, and for us, this was no problem. Because we take the time to slowly fatten up our herd (500 days on grain vs. the industry average of only 150 days) the need for growth hormones was actually counterintuitive to our goal of slowly developing fat marbling in our animals. We also don't crowd our animals, giving them plenty of room to live a healthy life without the need to preemptively treat for disease using antibiotics.
We know that the (often valid) concerns around hormones and antibiotics are major points of concern for your customers, and we are proud to provide a product that meets this growing expectation.
We're Here For You
We're always happy to talk and meet with our chefs. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.