Earlier this year I wrote about a Dutch company that were applying an innovative business model to the purchasing of meat.  The company, called Koopeenkoe, use a crowdfunding mixed with pull systems style approach.

The site has teamed up with a number of farms who are in turn working with the Lindenhoff meat supplier company.  Lindenhoff are well known for their sustainable and ethical farming practices.  The premise for the business is a simple one.

Each cow on the farms is available via the website, and customers can pledge to buy a portion of the meat from their favourite cow.  Each pledge has to be for €99.95 worth of meat, which works out at around 7.5kg of beef.  As a purely customer driven process, if the (un)lucky cow doesn’t receive sufficient interest then it doesn’t get slaughtered, and no one receives any beef from that particular beast.

The aim is that the only meat that is sent to slaughter is that which has a buyer, so it removes an awful lot of wastage from the system.  Another company operating along similar lines is Zaycon Foods.  The beef (arf) Zaycon have with the food process is the huge amounts of travel the meat has to go through between being farmed to arriving in your shopping cart.

They want to strip out many of these layers, replacing it instead with a simplified Farm > Truck > You distribution system.  Zaycon host a series of sales events around the US, at which you can go and collect your meat (ordered online).  The pitch is that this meat has come straight from the farm, so is fresher and better quality as a result.

Whilst Koopeenkoe specialised in beef, Zaycon offer a whole host of meats, from bacon, sausages, ham and chicken.  Zaycon claim that their simplified model affords them lower prices, fresher food and much less wastage.  They operate across 48 US states and have over 1,000 locations.  You can find out more about their approach in the video below.