Can I Really Sell My Meat Products Directly To Customers? Yes!

Photo By: Kyle Mackie

This is a question many people are asking. Can I market my meat products directly to consumers and the answer is, yes. Farmers have been doing this for years and if you do it right it can be very profitable. One thing I have to remind you of is you have to check your state regulations on how to market and sell this product! Each state is a little different with how you are able to market these products. For example in my state, we can not sell meat by the pound unless it is processed in a facility with a state inspector. If this is not able to be done in a nearby meat locker, it can still be processed and sold, but it has to be sold beforehand by the whole, half or quarter of the animal (depending on the animal). Along with this it needs to have special labeling on the packaging. Again, make sure you check your local state regulation.

The next question that often arises is, are there going to be people that will want to buy this product from me? And the answer is also yes. I am not saying everyone that you talk to is going to buy from you and that is okay. Here is some information from the National Chicken Council's Website on the consumption forecast of meat per capita for 2023 in the US. They predict the average person will consume 55.8 pounds of beef, 52.1 pounds of Pork and 118.1 pounds of poultry for a total of 227.5 of red meat and poultry products consumed in 2023.

You may be thinking how is this good news? Stay with me, we are going to do a little math. I am going to stay at surface level but let's say you have an average beef weight of 1200 pounds, after processing you have about 485 pounds of beef. What this equates to is roughly feeding 9 people! isn't this great?!?! Now take the population of 10,000 people of the nearest town. According to my math you would need about 1,112 beef cattle to feed that city for a year! Now what if the largest city an hour away had a population of 500,000? They would need 55,556 beef to support that city!. So if the average household size is 3 members and the average beef animal produces enough meat for 9 people, you will need about 3 families per beef. If you produce 20 head of beef to go to consumers, you will need 60 families.

We hope this was helpful and encouraged you that you got this and can begin to market your farm produce directly to customers. Just a friendly reminder to check your local regulations.

If you found this helpful join our email list to stay up to do date. Subscribe below.

Subscribe