Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Christensen.
Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
After graduating high school, my dad and I went to Bridgerland Tech to tour the meat services department. After meeting the instructors and seeing the shop I knew this is what I wanted to do.
After graduating from the program, I went to work in a custom shop where I continued to improve my skills and learn all that I could about the trade and customer service. My dream was to own my shop from which I could provide both retail and Custom Cutting services to the community. In the fall of 2022, we came across an ad for a butcher shop for rent.
With the help of my family, we were able to secure the lease and my dream started to become a reality, and Cache Valley Meats Custom Cutting was established. At that time the shop was not equipped to provide any custom cutting services.
Working with the agricultural inspectors, and a little elbow grease, in the spring of 2023 we met all the requirements to become a Custom Exempt Shop. Our shop is continuing to evolve to meet the requests of our customers and to be able to provide quality products and great customer service.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been relatively smooth so far?
I don’t believe that starting a new business is ever a smooth road. The shop required some improvements that needed to be made to meet the inspection requirements.
These seemed to take a lot of effort and focus. Also being at a younger age I had to learn a lot about all the aspects of running a business in a short time. Even to this day, I am still learning. Establishing our name in the community.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a family-owned business with a great supporting cast of employees. We specialize in processing wild game, custom mobile slaughter, and processing of livestock, and having a retail store where we offer great quality products.
We are known for our specialty prepared sandwich meats such as French Dip, BBQ Pork, Chicken, Philly Cheese Steak, and of course our baked fresh daily rolls to complement our meats. Our in-house-made jerky and meat sticks are becoming quite the popular snack for our customers to take on their outings. In the fall we are popular for our in-house brined and smoked turkeys and hams.
We also can get in any specialty cuts of meat that our customers request and you will be met at the counter by one of our employees with the best customer service in town. On our custom side, we not only offer excellent processing and wrapping but also offer our customers the choice of having us process some of their meat into Brats, Patties, Jerky, Sausage, or Meat Sticks
We all have different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Every time I see a customer come back into our store or get a repeat customer calling for custom pick up makes me feel successful.
