Ray Rastelli Jr. discusses the strategies and successes of Rastelli Global, including the opening of a new facility in Dubai.

Hanacek: Ray, thanks again for having me out, thanks for joining me, doing a couple of these Q and As, I appreciate it. Congratulations again on Processor of the Year. 

Going back to a couple of years ago when I was out here for coverage story again, we talked about Rastelli Global and that's a pretty significant part of your business over all, not necessarily the focus of this story, but talk a little bit about what's new on the Rastelli Global side, how growth has gone there. What are some of the success stories you've had over in that end of the business and what's new on the Rastelli Global side.

Rastelli: Sure, the Rastelli Global side continues to grow, much like our domestic business which is expanded from food service to retail e-commerce. Global International has fit pretty much the same bill, what was at one time primarily an operation that serviced the military has expanded now into food service dramatically with about 60 different food service chains that we're working with in that region.

What's really been interesting in the past year and a half, we've actually developed our own processing center. So we do have a processing facility in Dubai, though smaller than we have here in the States, it's actually able to service our food service customer in much more speedy way.

That has now rolled into a retail package as well, our retail product line is expanding into the middle Eastern and northern African countries and within the next two months we'll be opening up our second small production facility in Saudi Arabia.

It's really given us the opportunity to service that marketplace in a much speedier effort and bringing American product to those marketplaces the way they should be.

Hanacek: How does that work? Are you shipping over primal, sub-primals and they're cutting them there? Or how does that logistics [crosstalk 00:01:53].

Rastelli: Yes, so we're shipping over our Pure Land America organic product, our Angus product and even our Wagyu product. We'll ship that product in, by the time it gets there it's go anywhere between 25 and 35 days age on it, so it's perfect for cutting. It hits the room, we've got our automatic slices, similar lines we've got here set up. We're cutting the product, packaging it, getting out to the food service industry and now the retailers.

Some of the largest retailers all throughout Europe are adopting our program and we're really excited about that.

Hanacek: What do you find to be the most popular item or line or items out there among the food service? 'Cause those outlets are not, theoretically, serving Americans, like the military [inaudible 00:02:37] or business, right? 

Rastelli: What they are serving is they're serving a lot of expats, that particular region's got folks from all over the world and they're indulging. They want a very high quality product so our elite Angus program fits really there. Our Prime program and our Waygu program, so on the food service side that's really where we see the growth.

That particular region loves American products, so on the retail side, we're seeing it much more on the everyday type product. Inside our production facilities they're also cook facilities. Things like cooked chicken tenders, and cooked chicken wings, we've expanded into a cooked line there as well. That's more on the retail side but the indulgence on the food service side really is on that upper scale product line.

Hanacek: Anything coming up with Rastelli Global that you can let me know without giving away the deepest, darkest secrets, what's on the horizon for Rastelli Global?

Rastelli: One of the thing that I think is really exciting for us, we just signed a contract with T.G.I.Friday's for that entire middle Eastern region and we will be, not just providing product to their store, but also, and more importantly, providing the product into the retailer. So that T.G.I.Friday brand that will be brought and seen in the supermarkets throughout the entire region will be manufactured by Rastelli inside that entire region.

Hanacek: Very cool. Cool. Well thanks again so much for the update there and, again, congrats on Process of the Year.

Rastelli: Thank you, I appreciate your time.

Check out these other video Q&As with The National Provisioner's Editor-in-Chief, Andy Hanacek, and Ray Rastelli III and Ray Rastelli Jr.

• Q&A update on Rastelli Market Fresh concept and growth
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