Goodman In The Wild
Goodman
Instead of bringing great meat to our people, with the help of our friends at Lake District Farmers and Big Green Egg, we took some great people to the source of the great meat.
Here at Goodman, our belief in what we do can be summed up with just six words: great meat, great wine, great people. It’s a simple philosophy but, behind it lies years of work, years of knowledge, and years of relationships. That’s a story we want to tell more in the coming months. But how to do it? How do we shout a little louder about the quality of the steaks we serve, about their origins, and the care that’s taken to get them to such levels? How do we show people just how good our suppliers – and the farms that supply them – are? Some would bring the suppliers and farmers to the restaurant. But not Goodman. We thought “how do we take the restaurant to the suppliers and the farmers?” And thus #GoodmanInTheWild was born…
Instead of bringing great meat to our people, with the help of our friends at Lake District Farmers and Big Green Egg, we took some great people to the source of the great meat. (And, yes, we took some great wine along too. We may have christened it #GoodmanInTheWild but we have certain standards…) We’ve worked with many great suppliers over the years, from Nebraska and other parts of the world, and will probably continue to do so. However, like many businesses, we’re taking a much closer look at sustainability, animal welfare and ethical practices: things that are also at the heart of everything Lake District Farmers (LDF) do.
So we took 20 of our long-standing customers to the Lake District for a couple of days, to meet the team behind LDF, to meet some of the farmers that supply them, to see their farms, and to see their cows. Of course, it also speaks volumes about LDF and their farmers that they were so willing to show people what they do, and how and where they do it. The farmers that supply LDF are, according to co-founder Dan Austin, those that consistently go the extra mile. “It’s the little things that make all the difference,” he explains to the Goodman In The Wild team. “Those extra steps the farmer takes, what I call ‘the one percents.’ Some are obvious, such as the vast spaces the animals can roam and the quality of the grass. Some are not, and Dan gives some examples, such as the farmer who spends 20 minutes or more a day to watch his cows walk to the feeder “so he can see if there’s anything wrong with them.” Or the farmer who hand-fed an orphaned bull calf (occasionally treating it to honey), and who knew the individual personalities of his herd so well, he’d already identified which of his adult bulls he could place him with. “I asked him ’won’t that be dangerous for the calf?’ and he said, ‘not if he’s with Galahad, he’s a gentleman.’”
Credits
Interview by Neil Davey
Photography by Tom Bowles
