Some notes on shipping

This is NOT for people who pick up at a regular pickup location.

The best way to get your ethically raised meat from a farmer you can write to and he will will write back (me) is by getting it one of the normal pickup locations.

Put your zip code into the website and see if you are close to one of our pickup locations. For those of you who already get your meat at a pickup location, you are doing the right thing.

If you don’t live in the right place, or the timing is wrong, or for any number of other reasons you need shipping, then shipping is the way to go.

So now, some notes for those of you who do the shipping thing:

1. You can get a 10% discount if you:

   1. Order between 20 and 25 lbs or even more if it fits into one box. Or two full boxes, etc.

   2. Your order has to fit into one box or two boxes that are pretty full. The boxes are 12X12X12 inches. 25 or maybe even 40 lbs of ground beef will fit into a single box. 20 lbs of knuckle bones and neck bones probably won’t, too much air because of the odd shapes. A full box costs less per pound to ship so it is worth giving the discount.

   3. Your order has to be over 200 bucks. The low cost items like bones don’t have enough margin to pay for 10% off. We don’t dislike the people who get their bones shipped. We just can’t afford to give the discount is all.

   4. If you have made all the hoops to get this far there is one more… You have to ask for the discount. I never seem to remember it while packing the orders until the order is all done and on the way to the shipping office and then it is too late.

2. We ship to:

   1. All of Wisconsin.

   2. Most of Minnesota except the Western and Southern Parts.

   3. A good part of Illinois except the Southern parts.

   4. Maybe part of the Michigan Upper Peninsula.

3. If your meat is cool to the touch when it gets to you, stick it in the freezer. It is still good. If it is warm to the touch, pitch it and let me know. I will send it again. We have only had ONE time where the box got lost or something and didn’t get there in time.

4. We don’t use dry ice mostly because we would have to drive 150 miles round trip to get some and it costs a lot besides just the extra driving cost. Using Dry Ice means no shipping for us.

5. Last but not least. Your shipping costs are not really free. We charge more per lb for the shipped stuff. We have found it works better that way. Probably less sticker shock. I have sticker shock whenever I order shipping supplies…

We game the system a bit with the way we ship. Here is how:

Eau Claire Wisconsin is on a major shipping route and shipping from there cuts about 8 hours off the transit time if we drop off just before the cutoff at 5:00 PM.

Eau Claire is about an hour south of us. So I drive there on shipping day and drop off at 4:30 PM before the 5:00 PM cutoff time. That keeps the shipping boxes in the freezer as long as possible.

Tuesday is the day we ship for delivery Wednesday. I checked and that is one of the less busy days shipping wise.

All packages are delivered within a 24 hour window since we game the system. Unless something goes horribly wrong. That has happened ONCE. Packages make it in time using ground shipping which costs MUCH less than air with dry ice, etc.

We put the customer’s email into the Fedex system so they get notified by email when their package is accepted at Fedex, when it is scheduled for arrival and when it has arrived.

So… Why am I telling you all this? If I go to Eau Claire with a bunch of shipping packages, the costs per pound go down. Simple as that. So I am trying to drum up more shipping is all.

No worries.

SV