BILLINGS — A fourth-generation Montana ranching family has turned their passion for quality beef into a direct-to-consumer business, giving Billings residents a chance to buy meat straight from the source.
Lamont and Jennifer Herman opened Montana Prime Meats, at 524 Liberty St., in the Billings Heights in 2020.
Check out the store here:
"We used to put them (cattle) on a truck and send them off to wherever and then they come out in the form of fast food restaurants or supermarkets, wherever," Jennifer said. "We just decided it was time to keep the meat here in Montana."
The shift was driven in part by growing demand for transparency about where food comes from.
"The consumers have been asking for that for a lot of years," Lamont said.
The Hermans raise their cattle without a feedlot, keeping them in pastures and bringing feed to them.
"We don't have a feed lot. We have them out in the pastures. We bring feed to them. We have a little bit of a best of both worlds," Jennifer said.
A pound of ranch-raised ground beef at Montana Prime Meats costs $8.
"Our prices are affordable, and the quality is definitely good," Jennifer said.
One of the shop's more unexpected features has become a customer favorite. A drive-through window for meat and coffee purchases.
"We didn't know if people would buy meat through a drive-up window, but they do, which is really crazy. So, we added the coffee as a natural, I mean, just it works perfectly with the window, right," Jennifer said.
The trend of ranchers selling directly to consumers is growing across Montana, according to Raylee Honeycutt, executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association.
"I think consumers are very interested in where their food is from," Honeycutt said. "For the past five years we really have seen a lot more producers looking to diversify their operations, whether it is engaging in meat processing or going direct to consumer sales."
Now, the Hermans are preparing for their next step. Rather than transporting their livestock to a processor in Sheridan, then bringing that meat to the storefront, they plan to bring processing in-house by the end March, allowing them to offer both fresh and frozen meat packages.
"That's a key element, we believe, is we'll be able to see every aspect," Lamont said.
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