On Wednesday, I visited the Spring Creek Office in Edmonton where I met with Kirstin Kotelko and others on the Spring Creek Ranch Premium Beef team. Spring Creek Ranch produces premium beef raised without hormones or antibiotics. As well as delivering a beef product that is high quality and pure, they focus on the well-being and humane treatment of their cattle, and are committed to environmental sustainability through the use of bio waste (cattle manure and crop residues) to produce ethanol; green energy for the local community; and bio fertilizer for their pastures. This capped off what I had seen the previous week at the feedlot and bio-refinery, and gave me an understanding of how these operations all work successfully together.
I got to talk about the vision behind the Spring Creek Beef brand, how it’s run, & look at their promotional material. We then took some promotional material to a local grocer who stocks their product so I could see how it was displayed in the shop, the style of packaging & the various cuts available. They carry a range of fresh (ie steaks, roasts, mince) and frozen beef products (eg burgers, meatballs, stirfry cuts), that are aimed not only at providing a quality dining experience, but also at being very accessible to the consumer.
After that, we visited ‘A Taste of Edmonton’, a food fair where restaurants offer samples from their menus to taste. One of the restaurants, “Zinc”, uses Spring Creek Beef and was serving Alberta Beef Petit Tenderloin with blue cheese mashed potatoes (pictured below). Got to talk to them & taste the product (really good!!!).