Meat+Poultry - April 2018 - 81

Two Chicks Beef Jerky
is bringing some
feminine faces to a
masculine market

I

n the past, when people spoke of beef
jerky, images of old fashioned cowboys
gnawing on leathery pieces of dried meat
while sitting around a campfire came to mind.
Today, the refined meat snack has become
the go-to nosh for more than just the modern
cowboy. Hikers, endurance athletes, low-carb
dieters - today's jerky consumer can be anyone
shopping the snack aisle for a high-protein onthe-go food.
Not only has the beef jerky consumer
changed but so have the beef jerky selections
available. The beef jerky section of grocery,
convenience and specialty stores has grown
far beyond big name suppliers like Jack Links
and Oberto. Today, there are countless jerky
flavors to whet consumer appetites, and a large
number of players in the jerky game.
Duke's, Krave, Three Jerks, Epic, Chef's
Cut - there is no shortage of jerky brands
on the shelves. With that kind of saturated
market, differentiation is the key to success.
Enter Two Chicks Beef Jerky. "It's a real
male-dominated market and we wanted to
stand out," says Shannon Ronan, co-owner and
co-founder of the 3-year-old jerky company.
"We're the only women-owned jerky company
that I know of," she says, "so we wanted to
show that off with the name of our product
and our branding."
In lieu of the masculine images of bulls
or cowboys that typically don beef jerky
packages, Two Chicks Beef Jerky features a
silhouette of "two chicks" (Ronan and her wife
Breelyn MacDonald, who is also co-owner and
co-founder of the company). The black and
red packaging also features the slogan, "It's the
meat that matters!"
"We want our customers to know that our
company is run by two women and that our jerky
is made from quality ingredients," Ronan says.
The jerky is made from 100 percent grass-fed
beef with a simple, minimal ingredient recipe -
beef, tamari, honey, lime, garlic and pepper.

"It's not too processed; it's
like the old-school cowboy-style
jerky. It tastes homemade,"
MacDonald says, which isn't a
coincidence.

FROM HOBBY TO BUSINESS
Two Chicks beef jerky is the kind
of jerky one would make in their
own kitchen, which incidentally
is where the business began.
Six years ago, while Ronan
and MacDonald were prepping
for a lengthy cross-country road
trip, they decided to bring along
homemade jerky for road food.
They had just started dabbling
in jerky making a few months
prior. They were looking for
quality food to eat while hiking
but couldn't find anything that
was high in protein and from
a source they trusted. Jerky was the high
protein snack they were looking for, but
they weren't satisfied with the selections on
the market at the time. "We wanted to know
where the meat was coming from," Ronan
says. The only way to know that was to select
the raw ingredients themselves and make
their own.
The couple stockpiled their homemade
jerky and hit the road from their Bay Area
home on a five-month national park journey
around the country in the summer of 2012.
They shared their jerky with new friends they
met on the road and always got rave reviews.
After returning home and having friends
and family start requesting to pay for their
batches of jerky, Ronan and MacDonald
thought they might be on to something.
"We started looking into what starting
a jerky business would entail," MacDonald
says, including "what permits we would need;
what ingredients we would need; what kind of
money we would need."
In order to get the ball rolling, the couple
decided to conduct a Kickstarter campaign to
raise some seed money to get the business off
the ground. They sought out $5,000 from the
online funding platform. After the campaign
was over they ended up getting $6,000 from
contributors. "We should have asked for twice
that much," Ronan says, joking that starting a

"We want our
customers to
know that our
company is run
by two women
and that our
jerky is made
from quality
ingredients."
- SHANNON RONAN

The "two chicks" of Two
Chicks Beef Jerky are
Breelyn MacDonald (left)
and Shannon Ronan.
What started out as an athome hobby, turned into
a business for the couple.

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