At the dawn of the 21st century, bison ranchers were in a desperate search for customers. Things were so dire that many went broke and others bailed out of the business.
Today, there's a new search. But this time, the industry is looking for more people willing to raise bison. The American public has discovered it has a taste for bison meat.
"One of our major priorities for 2008 will be to bring new producers into the business to help meet the surging consumer demand," the National Bison Association said in a December news release.
"In the past five years, the bison industry definitely has rebounded," said Russ Miller, who manages media mogul Ted Turner's 15 ranches, all but one of which run bison.
With 45,000 animals, Turner is by far the biggest bison rancher in the nation. The next largest is a Wyoming operation that runs about 3,000 head. Just on Turner's Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman, about 3,500 bison roam, Miller said.
Turner has played a large role in the turnaround of the bison industry, in part through the construction of 54 Ted's Montana Grill restaurants around the country, places where people are encouraged to sink their teeth into a slab of bison meat.
The restaurants have introduced bison to a wide swath of diners.
"They provide a good job of providing a good quality first bite of bison," said Jim Matheson, assistant director of the National Bison Association.
Turner's high profile celebrity status clearly helps bring people in the doors, and they get a dose of Turner's environmental ethic as well, which is part of marketing bison. Turner and other bison ranchers maintain that the shaggy giants are easier on the land than nonnative beef cows, plus the meat is higher in protein and lower in fat than most other meats.
The restaurants help move a lot of bison but they also have a secondary effect. If customers enjoy their meal, they start looking a little more closely at the bison meat they're starting to see more regularly in supermarket coolers.
Another boost to the marketing comes from the increasing national preference for natural foods.
"The natural foods industry and the bison industry have kind of come together," Matheson said.
"We're a great little part of American agriculture that I think has a great future," said Bob Dineen, president of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats in Denver. His company deals only in bison and distributes it around the country under the Great Range brand.
Dineen said demand is high enough that he's paying 15 percent more for carcasses than he did a year ago, he's getting ready to double his number of employees (he currently has 23) and he's always looking for more supply.
There could be more on the way.
In 2007, the number of bison slaughtered rose by 17 percent to nearly 50,000 animals. Per pound prices rose to $2.04, an increase of 24 cents. And prices for breeding animals also rose by 20 percent, indicating more ranchers are planning to expand their herds.
At the November bison auction at Custer State Park in South Dakota, breeding bulls fetched $2,100 and mature cows brought $1,000.
Breeding animals in 2000 brought an average of $316 a head, well below the cost of raising them.
Still, the industry has a long way to go to catch up to its heyday in the 1990s, when breeding animals brought $3,000 and the bison association had more than twice its current membership. But in those days, the focus was on production instead of marketing and that's what led to the meltdown of 2000 and 2001.
There was never a problem selling prime cuts, but lesser cuts like roasts and burgers were languishing in freezers.
"That's kind of gone away now, too," Dineen said.
He credited the increased demand to consumer education, the spread of Turner's restaurants and a growing American appetite for "alternative protein sources."
Bison meat has become a standard offering rather than a novelty in many nationwide grocery chains, particularly natural foods giants like Whole Foods and Wild Oats, and consumers are coming back for more, Dineen said.
Plus, the hide market is strong, and byproducts like organs have found a niche in the pet food industry.
"Our issue now is growing the industry on the cow-calf side, getting more producers involved and increasing the supply," Dineen said.
That could be difficult. Lots of people who jumped into the bison business in the 1990s wound up with burnt fingers and smaller wallets.
"A lot of people got out of the business," said Dan Day, a bison rancher from Kalispell and president of the Montana Bison Association. "I really doubt it'll ever get to the point that it was."
His group has about 30 percent of the membership it had a decade ago, he said, and though some ranchers recently joined his group, he said he's not aware of any new bison ranch startups in Montana.
And starting a bison business is no simple matter. Unlike cattle, they often are undeterred by a standard barbed wire fence, so owners need heavy duty corrals and chutes to handle them. Bison ranchers also need to understand low-stress techniques for handling the animals, to keep both people and bison safe. Though privately owned, bison retain much of their wild nature.
The National Bison Association offers online training programs, books and other materials for people interested in the business, but it hasn't seen a surge of new operations either, Matheson said.
Rather, the increased production is coming largely from established operations that are expanding, which means the people who stuck it out through the bad times are seeing a rapidly growing market again, with three consecutive years of double-digit growth. Today, U.S. and Canadian bison ranchers own about 500,000 animals.
Turner, too, is planning for additional growth, Miller said.
"We're expanding because we don't yet have all of our ranches fully stocked," he said. "We have no second thoughts about raising an indigenous species on the Great Plains."
Teds Grill in the Baxter
If you're hankering for a bison steak, you'll have a new opportunity to bite into one in six months.
A new Ted's Montana Grill will be opening its doors in Bozeman's Baxter Hotel early in June, said George McKerrow, the company's president and a partner in the enterprise with media baron Ted Turner.
"I'm the restaurant guy" in the business, McKerrow said Friday from Atlanta, where the company is headquartered.
He said the Grill will occupy spaces formerly used by the Robin Lounge and the Baxter Grill, the large room in the back of the building that has housed a number of restaurants over the years. The new Grill also will offer catering.
No lease has yet been signed with David Lusoff, who owns the spaces in the historic landmark in downtown Bozeman, but the parties have worked out an agreement and plans call for opening to the public June 2.
"That's absolutely correct," Lusoff said Friday. Both the bar and restaurant have been closed to the general public since July, but have hosted catered functions.
Ted's Montana Grill is a chain of restaurants founded in 2002 and is credited with helping to jumpstart a teetering domestic bison industry at the time. The chain now includes 54 restaurants concentrated in the eastern and Midwestern states, but plans call for 100 of them around the country. This will be the first store in Montana.
"We're really excited about it," McKerrow said. "We've always wanted to be in Montana."
Turner lives part time on the Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman, where he has a herd of about 3,500 bison. He is the largest bison rancher in the country, with 45,000 animals on 13 ranches.
Opening a restaurant in Bozeman was challenging because most of the chain's outlets are in bigger cities.
"It's a difficult market to justify, with the population, compared to the population of other cities," McKerrow said.
It will be one of three new grills to open in 2008, he said.
The grills specialize in bison meat, ranging from steaks to burgers to pot roast to meat loaf. They also offer prime beef, chicken, fish and pork, and vegetarian dishes offered in what its menu calls "classic comfort food" style.
About 42 percent of the chain's sales come from bison meat, of which it sold 1.4 million pounds in 2007. About 25 percent to 30 percent of that meat comes from Turner's ranches, McKerrow said.
Prices range from $8.99 for a "naked" bison burger to $23.99 for a ribeye. The menu also offers "blue plate classics" like roasted pork, crab cakes and bison short ribs.
Along with food, diners can be assured of an "eco-friendly" experience. The goal is to be 99 percent "plastic free," according to the company's Web site. "That's why we reinvented the paper straw," it says, adding that to-go cups are made of biodegradable cornstarch.
The grill "will be good for the Baxter and good for downtown Bozeman," Loseff predicted.
Bison basics
- As native animals, bison tend to prosper across most of North America, if allowed proper feed and water.
- Bison thrive in cold and nasty weather.
- They give birth without human assistance.
- They generally have a low impact on landscapes, if managed properly.
- Raised without growth hormones, questionable drugs and chemicals, bison qualify as "natural" if not organic meat sources.
- The meat contains a fraction of the fat that beef, pork, salmon or even skinless chicken contain, so it has fewer calories yet comparable protein.
- The taste is similar to beef and bison can be substituted in most beef recipes, but because it contains less fat, care must be taken to avoid overcooking.
Source: National Bison Association