Rob:  Well heading to the local butcher shop used to be a fairly common chore.  Over the years though, local processors gave way to national packing companies, supermarkets, and big box retailers.  Yet, there are still a few local packing companies and meat processors that continue to build a business based on decades of delivering quality service and quality products.
Rob:  In our continuing look at entrepreneurial success stories, OSU’s Clinton Griffiths introduces us to the owner of a company with a half-a-century of success serving a niche market.
Clinton Griffiths:  On a two lane road, in the outskirts of Perkins, Oklahoma, you’ll find Ralph’s Packing Company loading another truck with a day’s orders.  The same things it’s been doing for the last fifty years.
Gary Crane:  That’s a big milestone to me, you know I never thought, I never thought I’d see it, but we have seen it and now I have my daughter, son-in-law, they’re working in the business and hopefully they’ll carry on as a third generation.
Clinton:  Gary Crane is the son of Ralph, and runs the company that now processes ten thousand pounds of product every day.  This year alone they’ll smoke nearly five thousand birds during the holiday season.
Gary:  But we do a small amount of slaughtering, of beef and pork animals.  We do a lot of further processing in the fact that we cure a lot of meat.  A lot of pork products, a lot of poultry products, we cure and smoke.  That’s bacon that was smoked yesterday, that’s uh, we call that Arkansas sausage.  We make a lot of beef jerky.
Clinton:  In fact, beef jerky is one of their biggest sellers.  It’s not uncommon to see the familiar Ralph’s jerky packaging being sold in stores across the state.  But comparatively speaking, Ralph’s is a small facility with about thirty-five employees.  Yet, when it comes to meeting government regulations, Ralph’s and others like them are being hung with some big expectations.
Gary:  I’m all for food safety, I’m a hundred percent believer in it, but some of the processes that the government is mandating now is a one-size-fits-all type regulation, and some of these rules are made for extremely large plants; and sometimes these small plants, it’s just almost an impossibility to do it.
And so understanding, interpreting, and executing the process to comply with those regulations has been challenging.  It’s been a learning process.  And that’s one area where Ralph’s has been to The Center.
Clinton:  Oklahoma State’s Food and Agricultural Products Center has helped Ralph’s define and meet those expectations.
We may not always agree, or understand what’s behind the regulations, but we can deliver something where we can comply with the regulations.
Will you bring us some more meat please?
Clinton:  Allowing Ralph’s to keep cooking, keep cutting, and continuing to grow, hopefully for another fifty years, down the road.
Rob:  Now Clinton tells us that years ago the Crane’s learned they could not be all things to all people; so to compete with larger processors, they’ve focused their efforts on small family grocery stores, nursing homes, and state contracts.