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Reviving a Family Business with Matt Campbell · Conservation Stories

• 0:06
  Speaker A: Welcome back to conservation Stories. I'm excited today because I'm meeting a new friend, which is one of my favorite things to do. This is Matt Campbell, and Matt is the processor for Carter Key Meats. And as some of you may know, that Carter key meets some of it stays local. And we sell that out of out west mercantile. But also some meat goes to whole foods, which is probably not what. The part that you process. You process the meat that folks are going to get from Carter key meats at out West Mercantile. So what I'd like to do is know all about you. So can you tell me about your background and.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: Well, I grew up in Seagraves. My family owned a small meat market there, and that's where I learned the trade. Then I left for 30 something years and worked in the oil field, and I got an opportunity to leave the oil field and start a small business, and so I got back into it.
• 1:02
  Speaker A: That's great. That's great. You know, fun fact, we lived for many years. My husband and I farmed between Wellman and loop.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:10
  Speaker A: So we have eaten many a Dixie dog.
• 1:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:13
  Speaker A: They're pretty good. They're pretty good. So that place is kind of an old establishment there in Seagraves. Too many years. Yeah. So are you back in the same building?
• 1:23
  Speaker B: No, the original building is torn down, and we built a brand new one in 2015.
• 1:29
  Speaker A: Okay. So you. You know, what was your, like, goal and dream for this small business?
• 1:36
  Speaker B: Well, I had a couple of goals. The main one was to earn a living.
• 1:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be nice.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: But I also wanted to create some jobs in seagraves, because Seagraves is one of many small towns that's dying on the vinegar.
• 1:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, we were discussing that before we started recording that this, the concern for all these communities, because I grew up in a small community just south of Seagrass Brownfield, you know, and see that same thing. And I'm guilty as anybody else because I live in Lubbock now, you know, and so I saw that, you know, when we got out of farming and had a town job, so to speak, you know, that was the first time that we had lived in town and experiencing that, I did realize, oh, this is why people move to town, because it is actually kind of nice. It's pretty nice to be right down the road from target. But, you know, I'm grateful that we got to raise our kids out there, you know, in that small community. And there is really. That's the heartbeat of our region, is those small communities, and they are all dying on the vine because it is hard to find something that you can do there that will make a living.
• 2:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of the industries that used to be there have folded up, and farming is less labor intensive and more mechanized. So people just had to find jobs.
• 3:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly that. I mean, that's really kind of where we were after we quit farming. You know, it's interesting time to be. Be opening a small business there. And has it been difficult for you to find labor?
• 3:15
  Speaker B: Well, we've always been able to find help, but, yes, it is difficult to find people with any skills or experience. So we basically had to train anybody that we helped train your own?
• 3:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Keeping people in the packing industry is not always easy.
• 3:36
  Speaker B: No, it's not.
• 3:36
  Speaker A: It's not because it is a skilled labor job. A lot of people don't understand that. And I know that probably safety is a huge issue for you guys, too. How do y'all handle those kind of things with your employees? Y'all do a lot of training or.
• 3:51
  Speaker B: Well, not necessarily, but the crew. So I have a core group of guys that have been there since we opened, and they typically train anybody that we hire. Yeah, and we keep a lot of band aids in the bathroom.
• 4:05
  Speaker A: Yes. And it's kind of a touchy subject. Right. Cause a lot of people don't really wanna necessarily. They don't wanna necessarily think about how their cow gets to their plate, you know, but it is something vital to us and it's vital to our food supply chain.
• 4:23
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Covid kinda brought a light to that.
• 4:27
  Speaker A: So one of the goals for Sarah, the conservation nonprofit, is to really help people understand how safe their food is, really, and that you can trust locally sourced food. And can you talk to us some about that process, what it means to go through that, and how you work with the government to ensure that?
• 4:50
  Speaker B: Well, we're under USDA inspection, so we have an inspector on site every day watching everything we do. And we also have what we call a HACCP program. A HACCP plan. It's just an acronym for, here's the way we do things. And they're always checking to make sure that we're following what we said we were going to do. And it's all about cleanliness, wholesomeness, making sure that from the time the animal arrives, that it gets treated humanely and that the meat stays clean and wholesome until it leaves our facility.
• 5:27
  Speaker A: So that USDA inspector who's covering the cost of that, is that something you have to cover?
• 5:35
  Speaker B: No, no.
• 5:36
  Speaker A: The government provides that.
• 5:37
  Speaker B: The government provides the inspector. We have to occasionally pay for a little overtime, but no, they pay for the guys wages.
• 5:45
  Speaker A: So what does it look like if, like, say, somebody were to set up shop but not be USDA inspected, what does that look like? Is that possible to do that?
• 5:57
  Speaker B: Yes, it is. So you can be under what's called custom exemption, where I raise an animal that I want to put in my home freezer. I can take it to a custom exempt shop. They'll slaughter it, process it, package it. I take it home and consume it myself.
• 6:14
  Speaker A: Yourself. Okay.
• 6:15
  Speaker B: If I wanted to sell that meat, it would either have to be processed under state inspection or USDA inspection.
• 6:24
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 6:24
  Speaker B: And we were under state inspection for several years, but because we have so many customers in New Mexico, we decided to go USDA.
• 6:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, because you're not far from Hobbs, right? Yeah, I can see that. So how many years have you been there?
• 6:39
  Speaker B: Eight years.
• 6:40
  Speaker A: Eight years. So has it grown at the rate you expected?
• 6:45
  Speaker B: Yes. So, you know, we started out with a business plan, and the reality has pretty much matched our plan with a few changes here and there. But, yeah, the projections were close.
• 6:57
  Speaker A: Great. So can people come in and buy straight from you? You have? Yeah, that's what I thought. Because I will say that's kind of a loaded question, because I have seen rave reviews on Facebook about people like, you need to go in there. You need to buy some meat in there. It's really great. I remember growing up, you know, we would go to three places when we went to get groceries. We went to the produce stand, and we went to the meat market, and then we went to the grocery store, you know, and I remember that going back to the way our communities are now. When Walmart came in and all of that changed, and everyone, they didn't want it, you know, they knew what was gonna happen, and it was gonna close all of our mom and pop shops, and it did. They all closed and went out of business. And now Walmart is closed in Brownfield, and what you have is dollar general, you know, which is like the scourge of the south or something. I don't know.
• 7:58
  Speaker B: Well, the climate changed. You just had to learn to compete in the new climate.
• 8:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's really true. Yeah. And is it difficult, you know, there's a lot of talk, you know, on the beef processing side about, you know, how, you know, it's hard to compete with the big guys. And then there's the top three, and they're all. They've all merged, and it's just impossible in that industry. But you're making it work.
• 8:26
  Speaker B: Well, we had to find our niche. Right. We had to figure out where our market was and then go after it. And it's worked out.
• 8:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. So you have another generation behind you that's going to.
• 8:37
  Speaker B: I do. I have a grandson that's working for me now.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: There you go. That's amazing. So, my goodness. What do you think your dad would say about all of this?
• 8:46
  Speaker B: He'd say I was crazy.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: I can see that. I can see that. Oh, that's funny. So you've got a grandson there that lives nc Gray's. You got other family that's there?
• 8:59
  Speaker B: Well, I was raised there. I have family.
• 9:03
  Speaker A: So y'all, half the town, most of.
• 9:07
  Speaker B: Them have moved off. But, yeah, I had family in Seminole, Brownfield, Seagrave.
• 9:12
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of. That sounds familiar to me. And probably a lot of people listening that, like, you're from this area, you're deeply entwined. Yeah. And that's, you know, your story of going off and working into the. In the oil field and then being able to come back is pretty, you know, extraordinary. To be able to come back and be able to build a business is. It's a huge blessing, you know, for your family, but also for the, you know, that kind of to value the places that we're from, you know, and returning back to them and investing in making those places better. That's really. It's really a rewarding thing, and you should be really.
• 9:55
  Speaker B: And I'm glad I did it. I don't regret a bit of it.
• 9:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your, you know, you mentioned a while ago that you had a business plan, which is really important. And, you know, can you tell us kind of what made you decide to do that? And how did you go about doing your research or whatever you did for that?
• 10:15
  Speaker B: So I had to have a business plan and a feasibility study to get the lenders to even talk to me. So it's not like I decided I wanted a business plan. I had to have one. But it was a good tool. I mean, I'm glad that I did it because it helped steer me in the right direction.
• 10:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I remember not long ago seeing a video of a local farmer here. Jeremy Brown is his name, and he was being interviewed by NRCs and the NRCs. I don't know if he was a conservation planner or what, but made the statement that, like, this farmer is, he treats his farm like a business. He even has a mission statement, you know, and I think that, you know, it's really is vital for us to really, you said while ago, we're in a different climate. We really have to be business savvy, you know?
• 11:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's a business. I mean, you know, it's a family business, but it is a business.
• 11:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. So how many, how many customers are you processing for?
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Oh, I don't know.
• 11:20
  Speaker A: Really?
• 11:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, so I have, you know, regular customers like Cotter key, but then we get people off the street every day. I mean, I don't track that. So I don't really know how many.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. You are just always busy, though.
• 11:35
  Speaker B: We are. Thank God. Yeah.
• 11:37
  Speaker A: That's great. That's great for you. And it's great for seagrass.
• 11:39
  Speaker B: You bet.
• 11:39
  Speaker A: So you mentioned that people drop stuff off. So kind of what does that look like? And people, people that are listening, they have maybe some goats or, you know, they've got a pig, or they bought a pig after a, you know, ffa sale or something.
• 11:56
  Speaker B: Well, we try to schedule all our work, so people call all the time and they'll ask how soon they can bring an animal in. So we'll put them on the schedule. We try to do five a day. Five in, five out every day. Our capacity is limited by our storage. Right. So I have a cooler and a freezer. When they're full, they're full. And so we try to keep five in, five out every day.
• 12:23
  Speaker A: So I have a question that I've always been curious about and I've never understood about aging beef, hanging beef and aging it. Why and how. What does that process look like?
• 12:36
  Speaker B: Well, so there's dry aging and there's wet aging. Dry aging is where you hang a carcass or a loin or a piece of meat in a controlled atmosphere, and it evaporates moisture, and the enzymes in the meat grow, and so it changes the texture and the profile, the flavor profile of the meat. We don't have a dry aging room. We hang beef for two weeks for 14 days, and that works really well for us. After about 21 days, you don't really get any more tenderness, but the flavor will change. So if you're a person who lacks blue cheese, you might like 60 day age beef.
• 13:24
  Speaker A: No, I've had that before, and I don't.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: Okay, then you probably want to stick to 14 day dry aged beef, right?
• 13:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. So really, it's about the taste, and it's about tenderizing it.
• 13:36
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 13:36
  Speaker A: Okay. Well, obviously we know that you process beef, but what else? What else are y'all processing on just anything.
• 13:45
  Speaker B: Rabbits, if it walks on four legs and you want to eat it, we'll take care of it.
• 13:50
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay. That's a little scary, but okay. So, after you process, obviously, you have to hide. And I don't know if you're aware, but Lacey and I have traveled a lot this last year and met with folks in that a textile, natural fibers, leather world. And there's a big push now to stop buying leather from areas where there is deforestation happening. And we have also been hearing that sourcing animals from those areas. The hides often are scarred because there's so many things for them to rub up against and, you know, hit and knock and damage the hide, which we don't really have that problem here because there's nothing for them to. I mean, it's just Texas. West Texas is just right. The land. So what. What are y'all doing with those hides? And do you see, like, what are your thoughts on? Would you be interested in, like, creating another market, if there's a way for that?
• 14:59
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 15:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker B: There used to be a strong market for hides, but it fell away not too long ago. In fact, we stopped trading with China. China was buying a lot of the hides from the United States. But, yeah, I mean, if there's some way to rejuvenate the hide market, I'm all for it, because right now, we're just having to throw them away.
• 15:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's such a shame. And I know, you know, some of these larger brands that we've talked to are, you know, trying to understand that that supply chain and, you know, is it still here in the United States? And it's my understanding that there's three tanneries left up by the Great Lakes, but obviously, nothing in this area except probably maybe down in Mexico.
• 15:43
  Speaker B: Right.
• 15:44
  Speaker A: So I guess kind of, like spinning and milling and, you know, making clothing. It's all, you know.
• 15:52
  Speaker B: Well, the EPA, I think, put a lot of the tanneries in the United States out of business.
• 15:57
  Speaker A: Okay, that's interesting. Yeah.
• 15:58
  Speaker B: They couldn't meet the requirements.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: Is that right? That's really interesting. Well, yeah, I'll have to look at that.
• 16:05
  Speaker B: Don't quote me on that. That may not be exactly true.
• 16:08
  Speaker A: Well, it is a high water use process. Is that correct?
• 16:12
  Speaker B: There's a lot of chemicals involved.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. I'd be interested to know more. That's just not something I, again, have never learned about, but did spend some time down close to the border and looked at some boot company there, you know, so. And that kind of piqued my curiosity. On top of meeting with these people that are like, where can we get this leather from? And especially if they can trace it, they want to be able to know. They want to know the farmer behind that piece of leather. You know, that story is important to those brands as well, so. And I mean, that is something that is really a new developing market. I think that we are just now getting, becoming aware of and need to find a way to really tap into that and provide those. Those stories that they need.
• 17:04
  Speaker B: Well, I've got hides. Anytime you find a place to sell them.
• 17:07
  Speaker A: Okay, well, you heard that. Okay. So if you need. If you need some hides, we know exactly how to trace them. And they are definitely from a non forested area.
• 17:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:17
  Speaker A: Deforested area. There was never any forested deforest here. Well, thanks again for listening in, Matt. Thanks. I really enjoy getting to know you, and I'm excited, you know, having spent so much time in seagraves, it's exciting to me. I can envision exactly where things are there, and I can also really understand the impact that you're making there. And thank you for what you're doing.
• 17:38
  Speaker B: Well, thank you.
• 17:39
  Speaker A: Well, thank you again for listening in to conservation stories, and we hope that you will listen next time. And we hope to be getting with Jeremy Brown. We mentioned him earlier and hearing some about what he's doing on his farm. It.