What a great day to be at RCSE! The club was fortunate to have Kristen Fretwell from Hunter Cattle Company talk to the club. And boy was she entertaining!
Kristen started out by telling her family's story as to how Hunter Cattle Company began. The family was living in Pooler and owned a real estate business. Once Pooler started developing, they decided to move closer to Statesboro so they could have more quiet and more land. They bought 900 acres and started raising cattle because they wanted good, healthy meat for their growing family. When the recession hit in 2008, they lost 2/3 of their land and real estate business. Around that time, people in the community heard they had grass-fed beef and started showing up to purchase. Some customers even came in with studies showing the health benefits of grass-fed beef! From there, the business started to grow by demand and through customer power. Hunter Cattle Co now offers beef, pork, dry aged beef and jerky snacks.
Hunter Cattle Co products are sold at Whole Foods (Savannah, Hilton Head, Charleston locations), Lucky's Market (mainly pork), Forsyth Farmers Market, at the farm, and are peppered throughout many restaurants in Savannah. They have their own USDA processing facility which allows chefs and consumers to specify how they would like their meat processed. Kristen said that good books, good neighbors, and the good Lord is how they got to where they are today.