Locally-raised meat can be hard to come by, but one couple is closing that gap with their new Richland shop.

Cody and Jen Hoseth, owners of Lone Crow Ranch in Eltopia, opened a storefront at 707 The Parkway last month to sell individual cuts of grain-fed and grass-fed beef and pork raised on their ranch and processed at their plant in Connell.

The shop is the former home of Peacock Coffee Roasting, which reopened in October at 910 S. Columbia Center Boulevard in Kennewick under a new name: The Peacock.

Lone Crow offers prime cuts of angus and wagyu beef and pork, as well as ground beef, jerky and meat sticks. It also sells complementary products, such as Washington-made spice blends and rubs, honey, Traeger barbecue grills, smokers and pellets, as well as teas, blankets hand-knitted by Cody’s aunt and Lone Crow swag.

The new store also serves as a pickup location for bulk meat orders – quarters, halves and whole animals – which is the heart of its business.

First-generation ranchers

The Hoseths have been ranching for the past 12 years, but these last few years have seen the business expand rapidly, keeping the first-generation ranchers and their two young sons busy.

Cody Hoseth started ranching at the age of 18 near Deer Park, north of Spokane, where he grew up.

“I just wanted to buy cows and my mom told me I couldn’t, so I knocked on a rancher’s door and told him I wanted to get into the cattle business. He said he’d never had anyone knock on his door like that before,” he said.

The rancher took him under his wing and put him to work.

Later, Cody Hoseth sold his car to buy his first five steers. He delivered hay and did odd jobs to make ends meet, slowly growing his herd and selling to corporate beef conglomerates.

“In 2019, when Covid hit and grocery stores started going barren, things took off,” Jen Hoseth said.

The two had just started dating earlier that year, too. 

Cody Hoseth began having cattle butchered himself that didn’t make weight, then sold the cuts at farmers markets in the Spokane area.

Lone Crow became known in that circle and with supermarket supply chain shortages and rising fears surrounding food insecurity, the couple soon could hardly keep up with demand.

“We just didn’t tell anyone ‘No,’” Jen Hoseth said. “At one point we had meat hanging at nine different butchers. Butchers were getting booked out so we were taking (the meat) wherever they would take it.”

Changing business model

The shift in focus caused the Hoseths to reevaluate their business model and make the bold move to sell their meat independently.

“We decided we weren’t going to sell cattle to corporate beef companies anymore. Ranchers don’t get paid well and during Covid they weren’t getting paid anything,” Jen Hoseth said.

The couple established a streamlined web ordering experience where customers can select their meat and all cuts and pay online. Typically, when people have an animal butchered, they have to deal with the seller and the butcher separately, coordinating two payments.

“We let you know when the meat is going to the butcher and send periodic emails and updates about when the meat is hanging to dry-age, when it is ready to be picked up, etc.,” Jen Hoseth said.

The Hoseths butcher year-round so most products don’t have a waitlist longer than three months. Grass-finished beef is the one exception, being processed only in spring and fall, so wait times can run six to seven months.

They established their first storefront in fall 2020 in a prefab shed on the grounds of their first ranch in Deer Park. The Hoseths wired and insulated it themselves, putting halved logs over the walls to create a rustic ambience. They have since moved the store twice.

First, to the second ranch they leased in Chattaroy when their first son was an infant and operations had outgrown their first 40 acres and then later to its current location open seasonally near Loon Lake.

A move to Eltopia

They subdivided their first 40 into four 10-acre lots and sold off the parcels to fund their next ranch.

The move south to Eltopia came when someone they knew notified them that a suitable property was soon going to be listed for sale.

The Hoseths reached out and were able to work a deal. Establishing a second storefront in Tri-Cities was a logical next step. They also sell select cuts through Local Pumpkin of Pasco.

Lone Crow also can ship meat to the Puget Sound area, in addition to its bulk pickups in Richland, Connell and Loon Lake. 

The couple now run about 1,000 head of cattle, priding themselves on high-quality meats fed a diet formulated by a certified nutritionist with no added hormones that ensures optimal tenderness and marbling. 

Almost everything sold by the cut in their storefront is grain-finished, but the Hoseths emphasized that cows receive grass at every stage, as well as feed sourced from “what’s in season coming off the farms around us – potatoes, apples, sileage, wheat and more.”

What customers won’t find in their herd’s feed is French fries or beef fat like they have observed being added at larger processors they’ve toured.

“People always talk about cheap meat, but someone is always paying for that,” Cody Hoseth said. “Either they’re exploiting the farm, exploiting the laborer, the animals or the land. Smaller programs can’t do that; we have to be good to the consumers, good to the cattle, good to the employees and a lot more sustainable.”

USDA certified

Despite their success, one weak link in the chain continued to be outsourced processing.

There was a vacant former bank building in nearby Connell and the Hoseths decided to establish their own, in partnership with Sam Cossio, who they had hired as a consultant to manage their feedlot after hearing him speak at a young stakeholder event a few years before.

Cossio owns 50% of the butcher shop, managing the personnel and operations side, while the Hoseths focus on marketing, selling, running the storefronts and raising their family.

The Hoseths had a hard time recruiting specialized labor to staff their butcher shop, so they picked up people who wanted to learn, slaughtered an older cow to practice making cuts and watched a lot of episodes of “Bearded Butchers” on YouTube.

The Connell facility is USDA certified. “If it’s not USDA-certified, ranchers can’t retail to customers,” Cody Hoseth said. That includes at farmers markets and to restaurants. 

He noted that there’s no USDA-certified kill facility in the area either. Lone Crow plans to be the first. Cody Hoseth said that this is where the bottleneck lies in the industry for smaller operations.

“It took me almost a year to get my conditional use permit, the reason being that there’s not straightforward zoning to build a slaughterhouse ... There’s no guarantee you’ll get (the permit) either.

He continued, “It’s not a system designed for small buyers to have access, to some extent. Yet there’s a lot of demand for farmers and ranchers to do USDA-certified (themselves), but it’s such an arduous process, such a massive barrier to entry, it discourages ranchers to do it. It costs $1 million bare minimum to build a USDA kill facility with lagoons, etc.”

For now, until Lone Crow receives certification, it works with a Moses Lake operation to slaughter their animals.

The Hoseths’ plan is to open Lone Crow’s doors to other ranchers in the area.

“We help them with their sales, we might feed for them, help them with their website. We like to be super hands-on with people trying to start their programs because it’s something that we felt was needed when we were getting started with no generational wisdom behind us. We want to be 40% to 50% of our own sales for the processing plant and the other half for other ranchers,” Cody Hoseth said. 

“One kill shop working five to six days per week could supply all the butcher shops in Tri-Cities with local meat. We think there should be more opportunity for folks to work with us under their own brands and labels,” he said.

In the meantime, the Hoseths have been enjoying connecting with new customers and fellow food producers in the Tri-Cities. They have been actively reaching out to local farmers for in-season produce to host in Lone Crow’s shop now that farmers market season has passed.

Lone Crow Ranch Store: 707 The Parkway, Richland; 509-821-0442; lonecrowranch.com, Facebook, Instagram, X. Hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday.