ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Creekstone Farms Premium Beef LLC recently took home the title of North America's Best Steak for its Ribeye Wet-Aged Steak at the 2023 World Steak Challenge, underscoring the company’s foundational commitment to delivering high-quality 100% Black Angus beef.

It all starts with Creekstone Farms’ roots in the Angus industry, said Ryan Meyer, Creekstone Farms senior vice president of procurement and marketing.

Along with a key foundational focus on Angus genetics, refined feeding techniques, and sustainable practices, Creekstone Farms has been doing business with most of the same cattle feeders, ranchers, and suppliers for 20 years.

“That's probably the secret to the success -- just sticking with what got you there and having a consistent program,” Meyer said. “We know that product is going to consistently be very good for us and good for our customers.”

The Arkansas City operation – Creekstone Farms’ sole production site -- is around 600,000 square feet and employs around 1,200 workers. Creekstone Farms supplies customers across the U.S. plus about 70 countries around the world, Meyer said, with export business accounting for around 20% of sales.

“We've had long-standing relationships with two of our E.U. importers,” Meyer said. “One's based in Amsterdam. The name of that company is Nice to Meat, and one's based in Monaco, and that's Giraudi International.”

Creekstone Farms focuses on finding the right customer mix and being able to find a customer that appreciates what they do differently, Meyer said. Creekstone Farms’ portfolio of programs include their All-Natural Program, with the definition of all-natural being third-party verified as having no added hormones or antibiotics from birth. These products are also Certified Humane.

Foodservice focus

A focus on serving restaurant industry customers is an integral part of the company’s success and growth, with the majority of Creekstone Farms’ products going to foodservice accounts.

“We're probably 65-35 foodservice to retail, maybe 70-30,” Meyer said. “That's about opposite of the industry where the volume goes.”

Serving that customer base involves listening to the foodservice market and tailoring products to the needs of culinary professionals – who are increasingly looking to value-added proteins to help address kitchen staffing challenges while also delivering an impactful dining experience.

“Everybody's looking for something of more value -- and easier to execute,” said Michael Sullivan, Creekstone Farms regional sales manager, who is also an experienced professional executive chef. “That's what you're finding in the industry, especially with the labor shortages. They're trying to get creative in any way. “

Sullivan said restaurants are looking for meat products that provide solutions to challenges such as not being able to hire trained kitchen staff who can perform tasks such as portioning steaks.

“They're looking for pre-portioned items,” Sullivan said.

Seeing the foodservice trade wanting and in need of education on traditional kitchen skills and meat preparation techniques from butchery to dry aging, Sullivan helped launch Creekstone Farms’ Cure Camp, a series of free educational workshops for culinary professionals.

Sullivan said a byproduct of Cure Camp outreach is building community.

“I see chefs leaving Cure Camp creating dinners together, seeing a collaboration within the community where they used to not talk,” Sullivan said.

“This is what this is about -- this is how you're going to rebuild the food industry,” Sullivan said.

Creekstone Farms has held another in-person outreach effort with its Chef's Night Out, with the purpose behind the event being less focused on building skills but rather on building community.

“Community to me is the industry we're supporting, which is restaurants and retailers,” Sullivan said. “If you genuinely take care of them, they take care of you.”

Pork

While the company sports the words “premium beef” in its name, Creekstone Farms also offers a pork program, working with a company in Iowa for its breed-specific Duroc program.

“We’ve got consistent higher marbled pork that is a premium product,” Meyer said.

Like Creekstone Farms’ beef programs, the pork program employs the same commitment to consistency in animal genetics and production and processing practices.

“Consistency in sizing, in quality -- that's really what our pork program is based on,” Sullivan said. “Creekstone Farms’ pork is antibiotic-free product too, which is on the label. So we can sell it in conjunction with our All-Natural product.”

The Creekstone Farms story

Creekstone Farms was founded by John Stewart in 1994 in Kentucky as Triad Foods, processing deli meats for customers such as at Walmart or the Schlotzky's sandwich chain, Meyer said.

That business expanded to include a purebred Angus farm operation in Kentucky – the barn in the Creekstone Farms logo is the barn from that property in Kentucky.

“The barn and the logo is what we stand for and where we came from,” Meyer said.

During Stewart’s more than 10 years at the helm, the company focused on developing high-end beef cattle genetics.

“I think at one point in time [Stewart] owned the highest marbling bull in Angus breeds,” Meyer said.

Stewart developed his own line of Angus and sold the genetics, bulls, and semen to ranchers. Those ranchers then sold the cows back to Stewart, and he had them fed and processed in Nebraska, Meyer said. In the early 2000’s, the company began processing in Arkansas City with a company called Future Beef, which had built a technologically advanced processing facility.

In 2003, Future Beef went bankrupt, and Stewart bought the plant, and by May the operation was up and processing cattle under the Creekstone label.

By 2017, Creekstone Farms’ success was attracting interest from outside investors and the private equity firm that owned the company sold it to Marubeni, a Japanese company.

The new ownership brought with it a renewed focus on facility improvements, Meyer said.

“We've been pretty blessed as far as being able to have access to the capital to make improvements,” Meyer said.

Creekstone Farms has increased its capacity by 75% since 2017, Meyer said, adding that in 2024 Creekstone expects to be at double the capacity from 2017.

The Learning Center

As a part of Creekstone Farms’ continued efforts to support its employees and be the employer of choice in the area, the company’s most recent expansion effort saw Arkansas City’s largest employer celebrate the opening of its Walnut Valley Learning Center.

The onsite 20,000-square-foot childcare center will accommodate more than 100 children.

“About four years ago, we started thinking about getting our people comfortable at work,” Meyer said. “It's an important choice of being able to have a daycare right up the street here that they can drop off if they're going to start at six in the morning -- your average daycare is not catered to that. I think the Learning Center is just another attribute that our company has in the region to be able to try to be the No. 1 choice for employees.”