Eleven hours is a long way to travel by yourself. You quickly get acquainted with your vehicle, podcasts, and there might even be some karaoke with your favorite music artists – at least that was the case for me. But it was all worth it when I pulled up to the doors at Certified Angus Beef (CAB) on my first day of my internship.
I walked in the front door and was immediately greeted by John Stika, the president of CAB, along with several team members I had the pleasure of working with all summer long. When the president of the company you work for knows you by name, it’s kind of impressive. But that was only the start to what would make a memorable first day.
CAB has a long-standing tradition of serving breakfast every other Wednesday morning for its employees. The Wednesday I arrived happened to be one of them, and I was immediately enveloped into a company culture that made you feel like you were part of the family. (Except there was no retiring going on like in John Wayne’s “McClintok!”) From that day forward, I came to understand that my summer was going to be filled with passionate, impactful and quality-driven experiences and people.
As you’ve come to figure out by now, I don’t let the grass grow green underneath my feet for very long, so it was no surprise when Kylee (my mentor for the summer) announced that we were headed to the flint hills of Kansas to capture content for one of the brand’s award winners. Before I knew it, we had pulled up to Debbie Blythe’s ranch and we were headed to the pasture to start photographing her cattle.
When you meet Debbie, you quickly realize that she is very passionate about growing grass. So passionate, in fact, that she is currently serving as the chairman of the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. SHE. LOVES. GRASS. She knows more about what’s happening in the microbial interactions in the soil and how cattle interact with it than anyone I know. As she went into a litany of facts about her pastures and livestock, you could tell that she is passionate about her work and is always focusing on the way her cattle help the environment they live in. We sat in one of her pastures eating pizza and talking all-things cattle and the industry as a whole – so cool.
From Debbie’s ranch, we took off and headed for Manhattan, Kansas, where we spent an evening at LABCo. Restaurant & Meat Market – a family-owned eatery that features award-winning steaks from CAB. I had a chance to sit down with the owners and learn how during the pandemic, they shifted their restaurant model, opening a meat market and completely changing the way they did business. A feature story came out of this experience and it was so neat to capture the trials and tribulations of being a family of entrepreneurs. It showed me that not only are our producers passionate, so are the partners that the brand works with to bring beef’s pasture to plate journey full circle.
Certified Angus Beef builds relationships with beef producers who are passionate about the cattle and promoting the best branded beef.
Next up on the to-do list for the summer was to create a social media plan for Certified Angus Beef’s Cattlemen Connection Facebook and Instagram platforms. In the process, I watched one of my fellow interns, Kindle, interact with consumers on our brand’s test kitchen TikTok platform. It was so cool to hear about the questions social media enthusiasts were asking, as well as her approach to answering those questions. It made me realize that not only is the brand impactful to the beef producers, CAB has built a level of trust with consumers to where they are a staple in recipe development and gaining a better understanding of beef as a whole. That’s pretty neat.
Certified Angus Beef builds impactful social media content that consumers trust and is always striving to build a positive reputation.
Not only is the beef high-quality, but so are the people that make up the Certified Angus Beef brand. Throughout the summer, I worked with a variety of people that were excited to come to work each day with the intention of making it a great day. They use their skills and talents towards the betterment of the brand and strive to create high-quality work that puts the beef producer and their product at the forefront. In my first week, I was tasked with writing a news release on one of our new hires. I had to push myself to create higher quality work, and it challenged me as a professional. Certified Angus Beef sets the bar high with the intent of being the best.
Certified Angus Beef is a brand driven by high-quality people that are working on behalf of producers to promote the planet’s best protein.
As a 4-H and FFA member, there were many years that I received my calf checks back with a premium box checked that indicated it was a CAB carcass. At the time, I didn’t understand the impact that brand had on my family, but I do today. Certified Angus Beef works on behalf of beef producers to raise the standard and promote the best beef to consumers across the globe. It was such a pleasure to have worked with them this summer and I am looking forward to beef’s role in the world thanks to their hard work and dedication.
IF IT'S NOT CERTIFIED, IT'S NOT THE BEST.
Lauren