It's time for Barbecue Nation with JT So fire up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your smoker cooking.

Now from the Turn It Don't Burnet studios In Portland, here's J.T.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Barbecue Nation.

I'm J.T.

along with hall of famer, not a Haller, famer, Leanne Whippin, my co host.

And we thank you for spending the time with us today and letting us come into your world.

We have a lot of fun doing this today.

Our first guest.

We got two guests today.

Marvin Weinberger, who is the inventor of the Grill Fighter.

Marvin's gonna hold one up in a minute.

We're gonna talk about that.

And then later on, our old friend Will Homer from Painted Hills Natural Beef is going to join us and tell you exactly why beef prices are high.

I'm sure it'll be stimulating, as always.

No, he.

Will's a great guy, and if anybody's got his p. His finger on the pulse of the beef industry, it's Will.

Anyway, back to Marvin.

Marvin, like I said, is the inventor of Grill Fighter.

Everybody gets stuff.

Gifts, Christmas, so on and so forth.

And you don't hear me say this very often, but I actually recommend this product.

I'm gonna let Marvin tell you about it here, but he sent one to me.

I've used it three or four times now, and it's a great product.

And instead of inundating you with lots of things to give, I think this is a good thing right here.

So, Marvin, welcome.

Sorry for the long intro there.

How did you come up with the Grill Fighter?

Well.

Well, first of all, Jeff and Leanne, it's really a pleasure and honor to be with you, and thank you so much for this opportunity.

I think, like a lot of inventors, it started with annoyance.

You know, I like the barbecue, and I, you know, I enjoy the social aspect of the cooking and the sharing and the recipes and all that, but, you know, but the.

The cleanup was always something that I sort of, you know, did after everybody had gone home, because it was just.

It was just such a, you know, it was just such a necessary evil.

And it was always so hard, you know, to get the job done.

And then, of course, you know, I started reading about, you know, the dangers of using barbecue brushes with bristles and, you know, swallowing bristles and all those sort of things.

And so I said, there's gotta be a better way.

Famous last words.

Maybe for some inventors, from those words to the invention is a short time.

In my case, it took five years.

I sat down and scientifically tried to deconstruct the problem.

And I came up with a checklist of what would constitute an ideal grill brush.

Not knowing what that would be, but if I could accomplish each, if I could check off each of these requirements, I'd have something five years later and some issued patents.

I recently, just recently issued the, the grill fighter, which you can see here.

And by the way, thank you for suggesting it for your gift guide.

I can say now that a number of other people are including them in their gift recommendations, including just today I heard from Steve Rakeland that he's going to be recommending as, as well and actually is already has it on some of his guides.

There are a couple things which, which, which make it special.

I think first and foremost is the use of chain mail.

But not just any chain mail.

It's chain mail made from square wire, which took a long time to figure out how to do.

And the square wire is welded.

So this gives extra scrubbing power, if you will, because each of the surfaces, basically it feels, if you will, like a, a flexible rasp.

In fact, in the development we actually used this when the painters came in to remove the wallpaper from the walls.

I'm not saying that's what you should buy it for, but it actually did a very good job at that.

Now part of the reason it works is because there's a silicone sponge which provides flexibility so that the, the, so that the chainmail can follow the contours of the grill.

Now this looks and feels like a sponge, but in fact it's made of food safe silicone, which means it absorbs nothing and is also safe up to some 500 degrees temperature.

So just using the chainmail with the silicone backing is, should be enough for you to do most of your cleaning.

But if you want the sort of easy way out and, and, and, and, and I find it to be the most fun and entertaining.

And it's something which I invite my guests to watch.

I dip the grill fighter in any bucket of water.

We also ship it with something we call the steam cauldron, but basically any water container.

And crank the grill up as high as it will go, even 500 degrees, and let the grill fighter clean using steam.

So that's the second way to clean.

The third way I, you know, to try to simplify the project, I start usually by using this, this plow so I can actually lift off the big debris before I even begin the cleaning.

And then the fourth way, and I think you said you may have Jeff you tried this?

I did.

This looks kind of like a bottle opener, and it actually does also work as a bottle opener, but it's all part of my invention.

It's called the rasp, if you will.

I get very annoyed when it comes to trying to clean underneath the grill bars.

And usually in the old days, you'd have to take the grate off and then scrub the grill bars.

So what you do with this is you basically insert this between the bars, twist it, and now this serrated top edge is cleaning the bottom of the grill.

But if you don't want the grill grate to actually come up, you push down with this surface.

And this way you can clean the grill grate without lifting it accidentally.

Of course, if you want to lift it, you can do.

You can do that.

I have never seen a brush or an item do that.

I love that.

Yeah, Works really well.

Well, you know, I. I basically looked at all the surfaces inside of the barbecue and said, how can I clean them?

In fact, one of my friends, Johnny Maggs, who had me on his show, he actually took the sample that I sent, and he tried it out, cleaned the inside of his Weber grill, and found it did a really good job because the sponge allows it to sort of follow the contour.

Now, you know, the inside of his grill was.

I'm not saying anything about Johnny Mag's grill, but my.

The inside of my Weber grill, I've never touched it.

It's just, you know, it's just tear incognito.

It is gross.

But I said, okay, I'll try it.

I cleaned it up, came out nice.

And then I was able to take advantage of another key feature of this product.

And this was actually one of the very first specifications.

It had to be not only indestructible, but you had to be able to clean it up in the dishwasher.

If you.

If you look at the back of it, you actually can look all the way through this.

All the way through this.

The metal to the sponge to the other side.

We did that so that water can go through in order to be able to clean all of it without having to disassemble it.

So basically, I.

You just put this in the dishwasher.

If it's really gunked up, you may have to do it twice.

But it's indestructible.

It's stainless steel food safe silicon.

That's it.

And it cleans it up and it.

And so Johnny Mags now uses it also to clean the inside of his barbecue.

Well, I thought that's an excellent feature, too, because most grill brushes, I would never put in a dishwasher.

Usually I just put them in the garbage at some point.

Exactly.

Exactly like that.

But I like the chain mail flexibility, too, in there, you know, with.

With regular brushes, or you can get the scrapers or there's a ton of them, but they don't.

They just sit on the very top, you know, and so you're always trying to angle them a little bit or do whatever.

I found with the flexibility of the silicon pad and the.

And the chain mail, let alone, you know, turning it, twisting it, bringing it underneath.

But that flexibility got more of the.

Of the great bar cleaned is what I'm saying.

Instead of just the very, you know, top one third, a lot of them.

Are tapered down, so that would do the job.

Yeah.

By the way, you may have noticed that we purposely have the.

The sponge and the chainmail overlap the frame so that you can also clean this way.

Imagine.

If you were to visit me and I welcome you to one of these days.

I have a shed full of prototypes, dozens and dozens of models that didn't work.

Or that, if you will, they were part of the process of discovery where, okay, we like this, don't like that, so keep that feature.

Now, how can we improve it further?

And we tried many, many things.

By the way, you maybe.

Maybe you have in your home one of my early products I invented for large manufacturing something called the.

Their chainmail scrubber.

It's just.

It looks like a sponge, but it's covered with chainmail.

They've sold over a million, God bless them.

That was my first foray into creating cleaning products using chain mail.

And it works really well.

But in that case, the chainmail is smooth, which they wanted because they didn't want to scrape the finish of the seasoning off of the.

Off the cast iron.

But it's also unwelded, and unwelded is safe enough when you're by hand rubbing, you know, the bottom of a pot.

But you can put a lot more energy and a lot more.

You can leverage a lot more force when you're cleaning a barbecue.

That's why I insisted on using welded chain mail and then invented the method, which is a trade secret for using square wire, the ends of which have to be lined up just so and then welded so that basically you have four attack surfaces built into the wire, which gives you a much better abrasion when you're cleaning the grill.

It just makes it easier.

Mm.

Well, I think.

I think it works.

Really?

Well, you're going to have to get Marvin.

I need one.

You have to get Leanne one.

You were, you were across the pond when all this came on.

So I didn't have your address in Dubai.

So send me your, your, your address.

I will, I'll be very, very glad.

And, and, and is there a lot of barbecue in Dubai or you.

Well, we brought some there.

You bring back any chocolate?

Yeah, the pistachio chocolate.

Of course I did.

You know what?

I was thinking about you the other day.

We were down at World Market.

Not to get off topic here because we're running to the end of the segment, but there was the Dubai chocolate with ground pistachios in it.

Yeah, that's what they do.

Yeah.

And I bought one of those and was, I was thinking about you the whole time.

I ate it.

So they're good.

Marvin, very quickly, how can people find this?

Can they go to the Innovation factory?

Do you sell it other places?

Well, our website is, our website is Grill Fighter tools.

But you know, I'm perfectly okay if they want to go to Amazon.

We currently sell a combo, the Grill Fighter plus the cauldron and even a very high quality canvas apron which looks like a suit of armor for $39 in the new year we're going to be able.

You can also.

You'll also be able to buy just the Grill fighter standalone for $29 on Amazon or at the website.

Very good.

Now all over the world, fantastic.

Marvin Weinberger, the inventor of the Grill Fighter.

Thank you for being with us.

We wish you a happy holidays and good luck with that.

I think you're gonna do.

Yeah.

Congrats.

More than reasonably well.

I haven't even tried it yet.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

Happy holiday.

Happy holidays.

We'll be back with Will Homer right after this.

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Hey everybody, it's Jeff here.

I want to tell you about something really cool.

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Hey, welcome back to Barbecue Nation.

I'm JT along with Leanne.

Our second guest today is an old time favorite.

It's not that he's that old.

He's just a favorite.

Will Homer, the COO of Painted Hills Natural Beef.

And of course, you see it in the news every day.

You hear about it at the grocery store, you're talking about it at the bar when you're stopping and having a beer on the way home.

Beef prices.

And Will's going to sort it all out for us today, right?

Oh, no, don't.

Well, thanks for having me on again, Jeff.

I appreciate it.

And yeah, and Leanne, it's great, great to get back.

It's been quite a run.

Hasn't.

Sure has.

Yeah.

So thumbnail, eight minutes we got in this segment.

What's going on with the beef prices?

Because some places I've actually seen them down a little bit, not exponentially, but most people don't follow it as close as like the three of us do.

Right.

But they're still pretty high for the average pocketbook, especially now we're getting into the holiday season and everybody'd like to have a nice rib roast, you know, on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, whatever you do.

But you're looking at that and you're thinking, God, that's half my car payment.

Oh, now ease up a little bit.

Well, I drive a cheap car, so.

It'S not that crazy.

But it really is.

I listen to a lot of cattlemen that really get, they think they know everything.

You get a little extra time on their hands, whether at horseback or feeding cows or whatever.

And they know all the answers.

But the truth is I had a guy, I watch a lot of this YouTube noise, and he summed it up the best is beef is high because it's in high demand.

And if it wasn't selling, the store wouldn't rock it as high as they're selling as they're pricing it and they wouldn't be selling it for that.

And part of the reason it's that high.

And don't misunderstand that they are getting it for nothing and marking it up because it's in high demand.

They're having to pay more to compete for it as well.

Sure.

So, so the consumer today has recognized that that beef is good, it's good for them, it's good to eat, and they are simply in line to get it at this new 10, $11 a pound ground beef price, that's, that's fair and that's good, that's honest.

And, and the other side of that I'm always going to run with, you know, nationally we, we eat more beef today than we have and oh gosh, 10 years or more.

And what they do is they call it disappearance.

We make £57 per person go away in the United States into what our own, our own consumption.

That's more than it's been.

When we started our business 30 years ago it was 47 pounds.

And so think about that.

That's just demand.

People are demanding more beef, they want to eat more beef and they're paying more for it to get it.

So it's just supply and demand and the consumer's hungry for it.

So does that mean that you're making more money?

No, no, no, no, Absolutely not.

No.

We are, we, we.

Now the noise, that's a whole nother segment.

But, but the noise created this, is this, it's kind of two edged in the same time.

The noise first created that said hamburger was high priced.

What created a boom in demand.

That created a spike in what we, we, we.

Nationally they call the box beef price, which is a reaction to how hard the consumer is pulling on the supply of beef.

And we saw record high in September right after they said ground beef was high.

That was a shock.

No one expected that.

We, from our cattle side, we all contracted thinking, oh my God, they're picking on us on the TV just like they have for the past 30 years and we're not going to sell near as much beef.

Slow down, hold up, keep the cow in the, in the pasture, you know, and it was just the opposite effect.

Now we've moved on here forward and the administration spoke some more about imports and all these other things and it didn't affect your counter, it didn't affect the flow of beef very much.

But that all that conversation created a scare in what?

The futures, the futures market.

And the futures market is just like the stock market.

And the fact that a lot of people in there speculating and a lot of people that don't belong, but it took a big chunk out of the projected price of your cattle.

Did it affect any real cash transactions anywhere?

Not a lot.

A few.

It made our calves a little bit cheaper.

It did knock some of the extreme premium off the top.

I've gotten a little break.

The Fed cattle I'm having to pay for and turn into boxes now come really close to making sense.

And they haven't for 36 months.

So, so we've, we found ourselves in a really bad place in September.

September kind of helped.

All of a sudden now we're at the end of the year.

We're behind on having the cattle we need for next year.

We've spent a lot of money on putting them out front.

The beef's going to have to be higher.

And, and, and if demand is like it is today, as, as from the consumer side, if demand is like it is today and when you get to March and April and things start warming up and that grill comes back out of your, out of your garage, it's going to be higher.

It's going to be markedly higher.

So that's, that's just so I guess.

Buy now and freeze.

It's all.

Yeah, it's always going to be that way.

I think after the first of the year, you know, I know me, I, I have ran into this holiday the wrong direction completely.

So there's probably going to be Painted Hills natural beef and freezers around somewhere after the first year that I'm going to be looking for homes.

So, yeah, it's, it's been a crazy year.

And, and, and, and the cattle side, the cattleman, as far as a cow calf guy ground on the ground, he's still totally in control.

He will lose control when they have too many calves coming.

But the industry doesn't think that's going to happen.

I, I don't know if it's going to happen or not, but it's, it's going to be, I don't know, it's going to be fun.

Well, I seen the, you know, you and I talk a lot and I send you links and stories and you do vice versa, like that.

And then you get, you get the.

Somebody that gets on one of the business websites and says, oh, oh, no, it's, it's going to be two or three years before we can get the amount of live cattle back in, you know, in the past year, because we're that short.

And then the next guy says, no, it's gonna be like maybe 18 months.

And it, you know, I think they all are, are giving you their honest opinion, you know, and what they're projecting.

But I don't think anybody really knows.

That's just me.

It's very complicated.

It's a big, it's a big industry.

It's complicated.

It's got lots of levers, kind of like the, the, you know, the import beef conversation.

It doesn't take very long for the import beef conversation.

To erode down to all of a sudden, the stakes in your case are from some other country, some other planet, you know, which is not right.

But.

And other countries, you know, a big, a big export of a big exporter of beef is Australia.

Australia harvests the same number of cattle that we do here in the United States.

They harvest in a week and they take the whole month of December off.

And so they don't produce nearly.

It's not like apples to apples.

It's just right.

There's a lot of difference out there.

So, okay, we're gonna take a break.

We're gonna be back with Will Homer, COO and head janitor there at Painter Hills Natural Beef.

We'll be right back.

Attention, stations, contact jeff@thecowboycook.com for distribution of the show after December 13th.

Hey, everybody, it's JT And I have eaten.

If you've ever looked at me, you know that.

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Check it out.

Welcome back to Barbecue Nation.

I'm JT along with Ms. Whippen, my co host and co conspirator.

By the way, this is where we usually let you.

Have you not let you talk about your pink powder?

Yes.

Pinkpatter.com and new spicy pink powder is coming out shortly.

I should be getting a palate any day now.

So it's sweet with a little bit of heat.

The new one will be a little bit hotter and spicier for those who like that.

And it's very versatile and won best rub on the planet.

And my dad invented it and it's been around since the 70s.

Awesome.

So will the old version be available too?

Yes, it'll be original.

And then we'll have the spicy as well because some people.

Awesome.

Have commented that they want it spicier for other things.

Awesome.

I need to restock, so I'm preparing.

And new labels.

And new labels, too.

So, yeah.

On the new label, do you have like a little chili pepper in your hand or a sombrero?

There is a little chili pepper kind of on the spicy one, but it's still the dancing pig.

And that is a pig that my dad drew many years ago.

I have the original of that.

So it's pretty cool.

Yeah, cool.

So we're talking to Will about, you know, it's Christmas time Christmas when this show airs.

Christmas is two weeks off and people are making decisions.

And you notice too if you look at the national media now and I got them on my phone just before we started record this said eat ham for Christmas.

You know, because the honey baked people and all the, you know, they've, every retail chain now has their own spiral cut, you know, flame torched without, with or without diesel, whatever, you know, and that.

But what can people kind of expect?

And I'm, I'm putting you in a spot here because you have no control over the retailers, Will.

But usually they'll run a little special around Christmas.

A lot of times it's a little smoke and mirrors but.

Or they do the, the loss leader.

And we touched on at the last segment about they'll bring beef in from Canada or someplace and that'll be.

Used to be, not now, but it used to be that was the stuff you bought for 499 a pound and then you had your premium brand over here which was whatever the price was at the time.

Are you seeing that again coming up this year perhaps?

Well, I think that's always the game of certain groups.

I mean that's just, that's just the way they operate.

I know, I don't know.

I've been in the, I don't know stage for so long now that I'm tired of trying to predict.

But there will be those, those opportunities for folks.

I think that, you know, nationally I'm seeing that the rib price is probably softer than it should be considering the value of the, of the fed animal, the finished animal and all the costs you got in them.

Because I think that they all, we all said the same thing back in September to our customer, which was we, we don't know if we can promise you those extra 200 boxes of ribs like we have in the past.

We, we don't know.

We, we play, we don't play a game.

But it's, it's a, it's kind of the, it's kind of the, the rules of the road here.

September, October ribs don't sell very well and we store those in, in sometimes in the freezer, sometimes just in rotation to build a great big wave.

So we have a wave when it comes time for the retailer to buy the rib right before Christmas.

And, and usually you commit to those for less money than you should and you, and you commit to more than you probably can make.

And you just do a lot of things so that you can make sure they're gone.

And this year I stood my ground and I said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

I'm not.

I don't have any in the cooler today.

They're all selling today.

I can't afford to not sell them to the guy standing at the door with the money.

I don't know.

Now here we are December 1st, and we're.

I'm sitting on some ribs and I don't have any of those pre, you know, guarantees.

I don't know if these are going to leave or not.

And the only thing, the only thing I can share with you that I know is that my ribs will lose 25% of their value from December 24th to January 1st.

That'd be the same rib.

I'll have the same cost in the steer.

I have everything else.

Just once we get to January 1, nobody wants them anymore, so they've got to go.

They got to go for Christmas.

And.

And I don't know.

I don't know what the big guy tells anybody.

I don't know what they commit to.

I've heard stories in the past where when the packers such as myself, I'm a little bitty guy, right?

Don't lose tight of the.

I'm only doing 300 head once a week.

I'm just a little tiny guy.

But usually what happens in my world happens to everybody.

But I.

But I was explained to me one time.

One years passed when the packer stood up and said, hey, I don't know, they're going to cost a lot of money.

I'm not going to guarantee them for your ad for Kroger or Walmart or whoever.

And they just simply moved rib eyes off the front page to the back page or to the second from the back page, lowered the price a dollar instead of $7 or $5, whatever that was, and they destroyed the rib sales for the year.

So I heard you.

I listened to you guys talk to Meathead and I listened to you talk about Thanksgiving and you talked about turkeys and the beef guy was kind of poo pooed on the side.

And I think that the big retailer is going to do the same thing to us this year because we've been asking for so much money and we've been trying to stay alive and keep in there.

I think the retailer is going to do the same thing and put ham in the front just like you mentioned, and turkeys and all the things we used to do and put us back in the cage where we belong, and we're going to get stuck with all those ribs.

So I.

That's.

That's the.

That's pretty deep.

I know, you guys, we get pretty deep here sometimes, but.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the world that I'm.

I'm.

That I'm walking into today.

That it's.

So I get a rib roast every holiday season.

And last year was the first year that Winn Dixie and Publix both had them on sale.

All right.

So I went to Winn Dixie, you know, like four or five days before, and they said, we're all out.

Even though it was in the flyer, you know, they're all out.

So I went to Publix and they said, we're all out.

I said, well, when are you getting more?

And asked Winn Dixie, I don't know.

I don't know if we're even getting one.

They couldn't even answer the question.

But it was the first time that ever happened.

I have a feeling I'm going to run into that this year, too.

Yep.

Yep.

And that's our.

And that's in.

In our defense, and I say our collectively as the whole industry.

Sure.

The.

The big guy.

In September, I'm gonna give away a little secret.

In the September, I. I tried to actually find somebody else's ribs to help me answer that question.

Do you gonna have Christmas ribs?

I'll go find somebody else's.

And the answer was no, we don't have any beef either.

I didn't have any ribs to save.

They didn't have any either.

They had the same.

They had the same answer I did.

I don't know if I can do Christmas.

So now here we've come to Christmas.

What's our retailer done?

Well, I think they've just changed the focus and said, well, a beef guy.

But I do agree, I do believe, because the entire industries harvested fewer cattle in an effort to fend off the losses involved, we have less beef on the market.

Less beef for industry.

A consumer who wants to eat more, as we started in the first segment, means that the price is going to be higher on the counter.

It's.

It is.

It's that simple.

But it is.

And I feel like people are going to pay it.

And they are.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you go.

Do you go home and talk to Captain Morgan every night?

Yeah.

You should.

If you don't, you should.

Yeah, I know.

But you know, the other thing, and I Think I mentioned this on the Thanksgiving show, and we've talked about it before, but, you know, if.

What about a strip loin roast?

We've done that.

Yeah, we've done that.

We did it.

I remember I tied two of them together one time on TV for you to make it look like a ribros.

And they're.

They're fine.

They're fine.

Yep.

They work great.

They're clean, they.

They cook faster.

They.

They're.

They're less shrink and less loss in them.

And I'll be honest with you, if you.

And.

And again, I'm a computer nerd and a digital nerd here and all.

The strip loin price for the future, for out here into December and such has been 5, 10% higher than I've ever seen it.

And I would say that tells me that the retailer has also said, I'm not going to get on my ribs.

I better be defending myself.

So I'll get the strip loin, too.

So that's floated that price nationally just a little more than historically it would.

I.

That's it.

You're absolutely right.

They're gonna.

They're bouncing around.

They're looking.

They're looking hard.

It's a.

It's usually this industry is typically an industry where I'm supposed to come up with the item that they want to sell, and I kind of forced to make everything else go away.

And we've been in such defense.

We haven't done that for a while.

We've been trying to sell everything right.

Or only as limited what we have.

But, yeah, it's a. Yeah, it's a crazy.

It's a crazy gig, man.

I'm telling you.

We supposed to be talking about easy, simple stuff.

Jeff.

Not today.

Your golf game.

Your golf game.

My golf game.

Yeah.

That would be simple.

All right.

That was very simple.

I can do it all in this room.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I just think it's a great.

Not to belabor the point, but I think a strip loin you probably have.

If you run into what Leanne did last year, where you went to a couple of the big guys and they said, we don't know.

We're out.

We don't know.

And, you know, you can look down at the case and say, because they're still cutting stakes off that, you know, whatever they have in there for a strip loin, get one of those.

If they bring it in.

Yep.

If they bring it in.

That there.

Yeah.

Yep, it works.

And I'll.

And I'll tell you another little secret.

This little Secret from the cook's end, half of the people at your table won't know the difference.

Oh, sure.

No, you know, they will not know the difference.

Well, then those aren't my friends.

Good answer.

I'm talking about the one, the, the satellite guest set your.

At your dinner.

That's what I'm talking about.

Not, not the inner, not the inner grill circle there.

But it's true, because when I did that, I can tell you, the, the folks, some of the folks at the table, they, they didn't know the difference.

And then of course, the guy, really good friend of mine who's a retired restaurateur and chef, he goes, why are you doing cooking strip loins?

Yeah, there you go.

You know, instead of ribs.

And I said, well, it's because that's what they had, you know.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

All right.

So you've cooked strip loin too.

I think I know that.

You got your own private stash.

I mean, me?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you got your own private stash of stuff.

But I also know you've done strip loins before.

That's just a little, little bit of inside baseball there.

Anyway, we're going to take another break because we're a little over.

So David will lose the last three hairs on his head.

And we'll be back with Will Homer from Painted Hills Natural Beef and miss whipping spicy pig powder right after this.

Attention stations.

Contact jeff@thecowboycook.com for distribution of the show.

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Hey everybody, it's jt.

You know, I talk about painted hills all the time and we always say beef the way nature intended.

But it's more than that because each bite of Painted Hills will make your taste buds explode.

Put a big bright smile on your face and whoever's at your dinner table will have a big bright smile on their face.

And you can thank me for that later.

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You won't regret it.

Hey, everybody, J.T.

here.

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Welcome back to Barbecue Nation.

I'm JT along with Leanne Whippen, hall of Famer, and Will Homer, COO of the best beef on the planet.

Painter Hills somewhere.

Yeah, Beautiful downtown Fossil.

If you've never been to Fossil, as I used to tell people, you can't get there from here.

You can.

You just have to have big right foot.

Yeah, yeah, that is, that is true.

I did watch a deal this morning about the first yeti footprints they found on Mount Everest, you know, 50 years ago.

And I thought that's kind of like driving to Fossil in January, but like that.

How short do you think that we are as far as live cattle going into next year?

You don't have to, you know, it's not like 17,152, that type of thing, but are we 10% short?

20% short?

Zero.

Oh, I don't know.

I.

It's too.

I, I haven't paid much attention to that.

I.

They say that.

What was this comment?

They say that they've.

They've shorted the kill, the harvest numbers for 20, 25, roughly two and a half weeks now.

So it's taken two and a half weeks out of production, but we still don't have enough cattle for the capacity that we have.

So there's this measurement, you see, you see in the news today that Tyson has chose to bail out of the business in Nebraska in one of their plants.

They got one just down the road from that one, but.

And then slow up.

And that's just a capacity issue.

And so, you know, right now we have cattle for what I think it was like 68 or 70% of the cap capacity that we have.

And they're adding to the capacity with the plant, the new plants that we've kind of the government's funded portion of, and yet the cattle are shrinking and, and, and just here on the ground, calves are overpriced.

They cost too much money.

At least looking at the futures market and what we think we can get for them.

But we know several groups that are short for their feeding invent cattle that they typically buy in the fall and feed in their feed yard to sell to a packer later.

And next summer, spring and fall, they don't have that inventory.

And those numbers are in the 20 to 30 to 40% short.

So, so, so we, we know the calves are still coming to market and People are still bidding them up, and they're still trying to fill those shortages.

Overall, I can't give you a real number as to what short we're going to be.

I can just tell you that as we.

As we emotionally calculate in our brain, you know what these feeders are going to be short.

The cattle that haven't been put on feed yet in our system in painted hills, natural beef we have.

We typically fill our schedule using video auctions, which is a transfer of ownership at the ran, but they use a video, the computer, the Internet, the television to show us the cattle and bid on it.

Cattle against others.

And we didn't use that this year for a large portion of what we do.

And so it kind of put us in a bind.

It put us behind.

We don't have what we need for the future, but we think everybody kind of did the same thing.

Remember I said, whatever happens in my backyard happens in everybody's backyard.

So we're all kind of in the same boat.

We're behind.

We're trying to fill the hole.

We believe there were a lot of cattle we saw go by, A lot of heifer cattle we saw go by.

So Ranch sells 500 head, they sell 250 steers, and they sell 200 heifers.

And there were a lot of those heifers that actually sold for more money than the steers, which is not historical.

If you're just going to beef, that's not historical.

They went for more money.

And our assumption is that those cattle are going to be bred and put back in the system.

Now, that means two years down the road, we have more calves.

But what that really means is that the heifer mates to the steers aren't going to be in the feed yard next to the steers, which means they aren't going to be ready for the butcher box.

Butcher block.

There won't be on the butcher block.

At the same time, there won't.

The cattle won't be there.

So we think that hole.

There will be a hole for cattle, and that will be April, March, April, May.

We think it'll get.

It'll get.

It won't get Covid short, but there will be.

I. I love that there's shortages because the system is really.

Is really.

I call it spoiled.

I shouldn't use that harsh a word on the butchers and the meat managers and all the things that make the beef go away because we need them all.

But it's awfully easy to get beef.

You know, those guys you went into Leanne and they did.

They said, no, we don't have it.

If their management was okay with that meat manager buying from some other distribution cycle, they could have had beef from somebody.

But there's other management decisions in there.

But there's always beef available from somewhere.

That's my point, is it might not be as nice quality.

It might be something y' all embarrassed by, and that's why they can't use a different channel.

But there's always beef available.

So.

So if Will Homer was given a magic wand.

Yes.

To if you will fix the problem.

Oh, God.

See, to me, this is just cyclical business stuff.

But that's.

It kind of is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if you were going to fix the problem for the perception of the public, what would you do?

Because we've talked about the P word before, and that's, you know, with the world that I live in, the goofy world of media, that doesn't help anything because it's always, you know, whose hair's on fire the fastest and the longest, and then they move on to the next story.

So what would you do?

You still alive?

I have.

I have a. I. I told us.

You make me answer the deepest damn questions.

Why can't we just talk about simple stuff, Beef and.

It's good.

It's great.

Yeah.

Let me tell you a little story about some grocery stores.

We have the privilege of working with some grocery stores in the Northwest.

The Northwest still has independent grocers, little stores owned by historically aging owners.

Right.

The owner's gonna retire or wants to retire or wants to do something at 80 something years old.

What are they gonna do?

They're gonna.

They got.

They're gonna.

Are they gonna sell it to their kid?

They didn't make any money there.

They didn't make a lot of money in that grocery store.

They.

They made a living and they had a nice living.

And, and their kids may be involved in the grocery store and they may not be involved in the grocery store, but how are they going to sell?

Are they going to sell?

That land value alone of the grocery store makes it too valuable to sell to someone to come in and buy the grocery store.

Unless it's part of a big.

The Safeway of the world or whatever.

Right.

They can spread the cost around.

The same thing happens in a ranch is an old rancher is sitting there and we've talked about succession and hand downs and all those things for 20 years now.

Nobody knows how to do it.

It doesn't.

It's not comfortable.

It doesn't work very well.

Because families divide things up and there's no real money there to pay for the land.

So let's take the land, let's buy it from dad.

There's the, the land value has gotten so crazy that you can't raise cattle to pay for it.

Now they.

That you can this week.

Right?

But the thing about the beef business is it goes up and down.

It goes up and down and it goes up and down and, and must come down and, and so we don't know, nobody knows if this turn, this turn in the industry, they call it, they turn.

It's a hype.

The money all goes to the producer and now it's taken away from the packer and it's tough on the retailer and all those things.

Nobody knows how long the turn lasts.

They've been, they've been talking about the turn was going to peak in 24.

Well, that didn't happen.

The turn was going to peak in 25.

That didn't happen.

The turn.

Now it's going to get tougher in 26.

And then they think, well, maybe 27, I might.

So nobody knows.

Nobody knows what the turn is, but when you're going to buy a ranch, you do more than three years worth of payments.

So you just don't know.

We just.

I don't know.

You just don't know.

We just swim in this business the best we can.

The consumer does the best they can buy the beef they want to eat.

Not.

Don't, don't run around and skimp on a dollar somewhere.

You're gonna pay for it in the end.

I don't think they do that anymore.

They don't.

I don't think they cross the street.

We've talked about it.

I don't think they cross the street for 10 cents on a gasoline anymore.

So.

But, but you know, it's a. I don't know.

I, I don't think I answered anything.

I think I'm.

I'm learning from all these cattle talking heads that just talk in circles and.

It'S okay.

Will's gonna stick around for after hours, but.

No, I'm not.

Yes, you are.

Yes, you are.

Or you're gonna see that Blake Shelton image of you everywhere.

I promise.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

But Will, thank you.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you.

And to give our listeners the insight.

I mean, I don't think other shows, unless they're a cattle oriented show, but not so much a cooking show.

Well, you.

Yeah, you do.

You give me a.

You give me a release for all the stuff that I read, and then I turn to the wall back there and yell at it and go, what are they thinking?

And so I. I hope people get something out of it.

I hope they listen to me or they don't just think I'm nuts, but I know I'm nuts.

It is crazy.

And.

Yeah.

And somebody's got to do it.

Anyway, Meathead will be here next week, and that's going to wrap up the yearly shows for us, but that's next week, and so will we.

Hope you have a great Christmas.

Okay.

Yes, you guys as well.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

And we'll be back next week, like I said, with another edition of Barbecue Nation.

Until then, remember our motto.

Turn it, don't burn it.

Take care, everybody.

Attention, stations.

Contact jeff@thecowboycook.com for distribution of the show after December 13th.

Barbecue Nation is produced by JTSD, LLC Productions in association with Salem Media Group.

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