Blue Apron just partnered with the godfather of sustainable meat — and the move will transform its meal kits
Bill Niman at his family farm in Bolinas, California.Roman Cho/BN Ranch
In 1969, Bill Niman bought his first ranch, an 11-acre plot with pigs and chickens that roamed freely, for $18,000. Over the next four decades, that ranch grew to several hundred acres, and he built up his own sustainable meat supply company, Niman Ranch.
At the time, there weren't many farms who let their animals graze in open fields and spend time in low-density feedlots. Niman, who is essentially the godfather of sustainable meat, pioneered humanely raised livestock in the US.
In 2007, Niman launched BN Ranch, a small network of farms in California and New Zealand that only raise grass-fed cattle and free-range turkeys.
Now, he has sold BN Ranch to a meal kit company with a national reach: Blue Apron. Niman's not leaving — he will be in charge of building a supply chain for all the beef, pork, turkey, and chicken that Blue Apron ships in its 8 million meals every month.
Take a look inside Niman's family farm, where Blue Apron will source some of its meat.Bill Niman lives and works on his family farm in Bolinas, California, where he raises grass-fed beef and free-range turkey.
Since launching BN Ranch in 2007, Niman has built a small network of ranches in California and New Zealand that produce meat under the BN Ranch brand. His own ranch, which is meant to serve as a model for the larger operation, borders the Bolinas Bay.
By acquiring BN Ranch, Blue Apron will greatly increase the number of ranches in its production network, and start to work with ranchers who raise pigs and chickens, too. Before, Blue Apron bought its meat from dozens of farms across the US.
“I really enjoy the camaraderie and the opportunity to continue my life’s work, and change the way people eat and raise animals the way they should be raised,” Niman tells Business Insider. “It’s what my family does, and now we can do it in a much more impactful way.”
Niman started supplying to and consulting for Blue Apron, a meal-kit company valued at $2 billion, after he met co-founder and chief operating officer Matthew Wadiak in 2012.
“I think one thing's for sure: We are seeing brick and mortar stores shutting down across the country. And we’re talking about a trillion-dollar industry with food. I think it would be naive to think that will be buying food in the same way in 10 years,” Wadiak tells Business Insider.
“Through technology, we have opportunities that we haven’t seen in traditional food systems. Most of the energy used in a grocery store is keeping customers warm and food cold. It’s the most inefficient way to properly manage a food system, and customers pay for that.”This year, Blue Apron will buy tens of thousands of cows, chicken, turkey, and pigs, which will go to slaughterhouses near the ranches that raised them. The meat will then go to processing facilities, where it will be frozen and shipped to Blue Apron’s warehouses. The company will incorporate the meat into its meal kits for customers.
Niman says the partnership will allow him to scale BN Ranch and make sustainable meat more affordable for the masses. “It was challenging to scale, because we were a small ranch,” he says. “Now that we’re scaling, we’re going to be able to bring down the costs of production and distribution.”
The acquisition also makes financial sense for Blue Apron. Unlike many restaurants and grocers, which tend to only purchase expensive cuts like pork tenderloins or strip steaks, Blue Apron will buy the entire animal and design its menus to use every part.
“We can pay farmers more, while paying less for meat,” Wadiak says. “By vertically integrating, we’re going to be more lean, and that’s better for everyone.”
Working directly with the ranches will also allow Blue Apron to cut out middle men (like secondary processors or breeders) and buy the meat at a lower cost per pound.
A larger goal, Wadiak says, is to help fight climate change. Blue Apron will be focused on working with farms that don't use petrochemical fertilizers, which emit a great deal of CO2.
However, it's important to note that whether ranches feed animals grass, grains, or corns, raising livestock takes a big toll on the environment. Scientists at Japan's National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science estimate that producing 2.2 pounds of beef emits more greenhouse gas than driving 155 miles.
Transporting meat from New Zealand will likely also emit a lot of CO2, and as Buzzfeed's Ellen Cushing notes, meal kit customers are also left with waste from all the plastic packaging. (Though it's recyclable, many cities don't accept it for curbside pickup.)Though New Zealand is far from the US, Niman says ranches there can raise cattle at peak condition when it’s wintertime in North America.
“It’s the same idea as if you would harvest a tree-ripened fruit,” he says. “In order to do that on a year-round basis, you really need to be in the northern and southern hemispheres, because it’s driven by nature. When the grass is at its best, and grazing animals can get fat and mature, that can only happen at a certain time of year in any one geography.”
Teaming up with Blue Apron will give Niman’s vision a much wider reach. "This is really going to change the way people eat," he says. BN Ranch meat will start appearing in Blue Apron’s meals later this year.
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