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Meat Business Fundamentals: Processing Primer for the Producer
April 24 @ 9:30 am - 11:30 am
Looking to investigate what it would take to start your own meat business?
Wanting to feel more empowered in your identity as a business owner and entrepreneur? Wondering about the nuanced difference between state and USDA meat processing regulations?This three-part webinar series will focus on a few strategic business training concepts that will help bolster you and steer you towards skills you need for long-term operational success and viability. Presented by Olivia Tincani, together with her suite of colleague thought practitioners, this series can be taken as a whole or each course individually. Courses are aimed at existing or emerging entrepreneurs. Read individual workshop descriptions below. Choose to sign up for one or all sessions. Once registered, you will receive the Zoom link.
Contact Taylor Muglia with any questions: taylor@quiviracoalition.org
The processor relationship is perhaps the most fundamental one in the pathway from successful ranch, animal and range management to meat product in the hand of happy and healthy meat customers. In this foundational, bare bones course we cover all the basics and some nuances of the middle supply chain elements of a meat business: everything that happens from the moment of harvest until it leaves your hands as sellable product. Topics will include the differences between USDA, state and custom exempt regulations; where to process based on where you’d like to sell; cut sheets and processing decisions; soft skills necessary for a successful processor relationship; harvest timing and tracking.
Educators: David Zarling, NMPAN/Northwoods Group, Olivia Tincani, Olivia Tincani & Co
Presenters:
Olivia Tincani, Olivia Tincani & Co
Olivia Tincani is a food and agriculture business educator and consultant and with over 20 years of experience in the field. Olivia Tincani & Co. provides business, financial and strategic planning and training for small-scale independent food and farm businesses and the institutions that service them. She has specific expertise in entrepreneurial empowerment for farmers and ranchers, program and curriculum design, whole animal supply chains, livestock businesses, and community building. An ambitious spirit infuses her teaching and consulting, inspired by her personal entrepreneurial endeavors. She is currently designing and executing farm business training programming for the The Conservation Fund’s Working Farms Fund, Intertribal Agriculture Council, Fibershed, Chicago Botanic Garden and the Grazing School of the West. Past projects include work with venerated organizations such as Glynwood, Ecotrust, and Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance alongside independent coaching for a roster of small and mid-scale sustainable farms. She served as a Business & Communications Strategist for 8 years for Rancho Llano Seco in Chico, CA. She has deep history in food business operations as the co-founder of landmark joint restaurant/farm enterprises Farm 255 and Farm Burger in the rural southeast, and food service design and management company Just Fare in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on the Advisory Board of the National Farm Viability Conference and was a founding Board member of Kitchen Table Advisors. Olivia splits time between Sonoma County (CA) and her friend’s organic rice farm in Maremma, (Italy), with her hands in the dirt and her skin in the game.
David Zarling, NMPAN/Northwoods Group
David Zarling is a career butcher with extensive boots-on-the-ground experience in humane handling and slaughter, whole animal fabrication and value-added processing, both as an operator and plant manager. He specializes in food safety and operations process management, plant management and team training, as well as new product development.Currently, he manages the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network at Oregon State University, providing direct technical assistance to meat processors around the country, as well as providing onsite team process training and plant management coaching services to processing plants. His management philosophy is that ‘our people are our greatest assets’ and that leadership is a practice of service, allowing our technical operators to do their best work.