Bill Kurtis explains the Tallgrass Story in his own words.

1. Taste

No one said it was going to be easy starting a grass-fed beef company. Many ranchers had tried to go back to the old ways of finishing their cattle in pastures, but they failed because the meat was tough or they couldn’t figure out a way to fatten the animals when winter turned the grass brown. Or they couldn’t find a market. Ranchers raise cattle; they’re not, as a rule, salesmen, promoters and advertising executives.

The grassy road to success was littered with broken cowboy dreams and abandoned hay meadows. And that was only five years ago.

Still, as the sun came up over the big blue stem east of my ranch house a year ago, I felt the entrepreneur’s ghostly spirit set my skin to tingling. And I knew instinctively—times had changed.

The first sign was Dr. Allen Williams and his partner Dr. Matt Cravey. Like explorers Stanley and Livingstone, they had ‘found eachother’ during a mutual quest to locate the perfect grass-fed animal, one with genes that made it tender, tasty and able to fatten quickly on nothing but grass, just the way those first English breeds from the Mayflower did.

Most of those original genetic profiles had been scrambled out of existence by the corn tsunami that hit sixty years ago and swept away those lovely, salad-bar days in the pasture.

But Williams and Cravey were relentless, searching herd after herd for beef’s holy grail. Lesser men would have folded, discouraged by too many bad rib-eyes in the small, dusty watering holes of Montana.

But not this duo. They were following a vision, dreaming that a few of those genetically perfect grass-feeders had survived and were actually grazing on little islands of forage dotting the American pasture where they had been stranded by the giant wave of corn.

But how would they know? There was no bovine DNA databank to find a match.
Members of the Tallgrass team on the ranch in winter

Ah, here’s the Eureka moment.

Backing his pick-up into the corral, Dr. Williams lowers the tailgate and pulls out an ordinary looking computer attached to a long cable that connects to a…wand. Yes, an ultrasound machine.

That in itself is nothing to raise an eyebrow. It’s what comes on the screen that drops the jaw of any leather-faced old-timer in the yard.

There, in its digital-age glory, is a picture of a rib-eye muscle on a living animal. Filtered through the carefully programmed brain of Dr. Williams, the process produces a consistent judgment of tenderness. Every time.

Like Alexander slicing through the Gordian knot, it cut the primary obstacle standing in the way of the grass-fed beef revolution—how to consistently deliver quality.

With the right genetic heritage it was clear that pure grass-fed and grass-finished cattle could be as tender as the best prime beef.

It was enough to begin planning a start-up, the Tallgrass Beef Company. To our surprise, everyone we talked with said "what took you so long?"

But there was another unknown that had to be answered before full launch; the matter of taste.

We gathered some potential investors at one of Chicago’s premier steakhouses, Harry Caray’s. Out came a tray of tasting samples: a filet, rib-eye, hamburger and New York strip, carefully cut into small portions so that the eight people sitting around the table could taste each piece of meat. Just like a Napa wine tasting.

The hush was agonizing. They chewed slowly as if savoring the body of a smooth burgundy.

Then, from the other side of the table came a comment. “I’ve traded cattle on the Mercantile for 40 years, and this is the best steak I’ve ever tasted.”

Everyone concurred. And everyone invested based on tenderness and taste as pure as the prairie.
Bails of hay scatter the ranch in midsummer

We decided then and there that we didn’t have to make any apologies because our meat was “grass-fed." We now put it up against prime as an alternative on the beef menu offering the original taste of deep beef flavor, a steak that you want to spend time with.

Taste | Health | Sustainability