South of Laramie, past the DMV, 307 Meat Company is a local meat company that has been providing beef, pork and fish products to the area.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelcey Christensen, founder and president of 307 Meat Company, has had to deal with some challenges in order to continue providing meat products.
“The problem was, we opened right as COVID hit,” Christensen said in an interview. “We are still encountering a lot of challenges with COVID-19 to the standpoint of we couldn’t get supplies.”
Some suppliers weren’t willing to supply the company with basic items such as gloves, hair nets and packaging material because they were too new and didn’t have a solid relationship yet.
Christensen says that their suppliers put other companies first, which he clarified was understandable from a business standpoint. The lack of materials to properly work with and distribute products was one of the tougher challenges the company faced for nearly over a month.
Outside of business challenges, Christensen said that the state didn’t place any regulations on the company that weren’t out of the ordinary from anyone else. He says that they have to follow social distancing rules and workers must be masked.
Extra sanitization was also implemented by the state, but Christensen says that they already met that level of cleaning beforehand. Everything the company works with is cleaned and sanitized several times a day, so they haven’t changed much of what they were doing.
As a new brand in the area, 307 Meat Company has had great community support. Christensen says their customers enjoy having more local meats available and having more choices than local grocery stores. Customers finding the company has been the only major problem.
“Some people have a hard time finding us since it’s a new development and it’s not on Google Maps yet,” Christensen said. “They all end up at the weigh station instead of the next turn, about a quarter mile south.”
One of the more nationwide challenges that has passed over the company has been meat shortages. Since 307 Meat Company is still a small business, they haven’t had to close their doors.
Christensen explained that the meat shortage is certainly a thing around the country but is only happening because large businesses like Tyson must close their product facilities due to high numbers of staff.
While 307 Meat Company only has a few employees working, social distancing is easier meaning they can stay open and keep product moving through. Large brands can’t maintain that with thousands in one facility.
“When you shut down a facility in Greeley or Fort Morgan, harvesting 6,000 to 6,500 heads of cattle a day and you shut them down, that’s a lot of meat that’s not being produced,” Christensen explained.
Since the company is still open and producing products, they are still making money and helping the community, specifically selling to local restaurants. They don’t sell their meat to any grocery stores in Laramie, instead they sell meat from their own facility.
All the meat that comes through the company is Wyoming raised, nothing from outside the region. Christensen takes pride in selling local meat instead of bringing it up from Texas or other major meat suppliers.
“On the beef side we work with four different producers,” Christensen explained. “On the pork side, we work with one producer.”
Regarding the seafood that the company sells, they get it from a larger business who only works with smaller fishing vessels around the country. The fish can be tracked to individual vessels so there is little room for a middleman.
This means that the fish is caught by a small owned company, sold to the producer who then sells to 307 Meat Company directly.
The company has gotten proficient at processing their meats so that customers can buy products sooner. Christensen says that beef “is a two-week process” while pork takes much less time with a “seven day turn around.”
The seafood the 307 Meat Company provides has a short timetable, taking 48 to 72 hours to be caught and shipped to the company’s facility. COVID-19 has made this more challenging as fishermen aren’t out as often but the company hasn’t been held up too much.
Even though 307 Meat Company has faced some serious trials from COVID-19, Christensen says that they intend on continuing what they’re doing.
