Western Meat School Business Accelerator

---

Brought to you by the folks that organized the Western Meat School short course, we would like to invite you to consider joining a small, intensive business accelerator launching in March of 2024 that builds upon the curriculum of the  short course. 

The Western Meat School Business Accelerator is a 7 month long peer learning experience for meat producers and brands that are scaling their production and sales to reach multi-million dollar sales goals while producing high-quality local and regional meats. If you are dabbling in wholesaling or going full blast into a variety of market channels, this program will help launch you there with all the tools. 

This Accelerator will help you solve the ugliest problems in your meat business, uplevel your financial recordkeeping  systems, improve your profit potential, build marketing prowess, sell the whole animal, conduct volume forecasting, launch a value-added product line, and more. You will lay bare your business to other similarly sized meat businesses and collectively understand how to identify your key business  metrics and compare them to your peers. This is a "all-hands-on-deck"  immersive experience that is guaranteed to take your business to the  next level.

The WMS Business Accelerator will take place from March-September 2024.  

The program features bi-weekly group learning and discussion gatherings on core topics designed to take your business to the next scale (seen in the flyer below).

Program applications will be accepted from Dec. 1st, 2023 until Feb 2nd, 2024.

Applications will be reviewed the week of Feb. 5-9, 2024. 

Invitations to participate will be made the week of Feb. 12th, 2024. 

Full payment must be received by Feb. 23rd to participate.

First group call will be Tuesday March 5th.

Since this is a small peer learning group, we  will cap the audience at 20 similarly sized meat producers/brands. This is a competitive application process. You must apply no later than February 2nd, 2024 and selections will be made the week of February 12th, 2024. As part of the application, you will have to agree to fully participate in  the seven-month long program, including the bi-weekly group calls, working with a business coach, developing an Action Plan, and sharing your financial information with the group. If you cannot commit to these things, this program is not a good fit for you.

Application Link Here

To enhance the learning experience and to achieve our grant deliverables of providing support for scaling meat producers/brands, we are limiting the audience of this Business Accelerator to the following types of operators:

-Farmers, ranchers, or meat brands/aggregators/cooperatives

-Applicants should be the owners, operators, or key management staff. There can be 1-2  of you in the operation that participate regularly. If you don't know the financials of your business, you are not the right person in the business to apply.

-Businesses can be sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, cooperatives, or other corporations.

-Produce at least 10% of the livestock/poultry used in your business. 

-In operation for a minimum of two years and have a minimum of three employees. 

-Gross meat sales of ~$500,000 to $5 Million and year-round sales.

-Moving from DTC to wholesale meat sales and/or branded products (or a combination of direct, wholesale and retail).

-Must have completed the Western Meat School short course in the last three years. If you  haven't completed it yet, you can still sign up and complete the  self-paced version before the Accelerator kicks off in March 2024.

Apply Here