A conversation with Kern Meat Co.’s Matt Sherman

You don’t see a lot of managers in general wearing bow ties, let alone meat-company managers—and we’d bet the ranch that Matt Sherman, general manager of Kern Meat Company, is the only bow tie–wearing guy in the business with a master’s and a Ph.D. in American history, credentials that, surprisingly, have helped him pilot “the smallest biggest food service company in St. Louis.” 

How did you end up in the meat business? When my wife received her Ph.D. in medieval history and I got one in American history, the job market was not good for either one of us. There were two jobs in her field and 13 in mine—in the entire US. The academic job market has always been a good indicator of where the economy was going, so that was unsettling. So my father-in-law approached me and asked if I had an interest in taking over the family business. My mother-in-law jokes that I have three degrees: an MA, a Ph.D., and an M.B.D.—“married boss’ daughter.” My father-in-law has his M.B.D. as well; Kern has been a family business since its inception 72 years ago.

Did having two advanced degrees in history help in the meat business? A lot more than people might think. First, a liberal arts degree never can hurt you. I’m a trained researcher and like to immerse myself in things—so everything from historical archives to meat and safety specs. My second field is in American political development, which helped me find patterns in history and later on in markets for products. My background also helped me develop a very detailed HACCP [hazard analysis and critical control points] plan for Kern, for example, which has paid dividends, especially recently. People joke that I’m the most educated meathead in St. Louis.

How did Henry A. Kern, the founder, choose the meat business? In the 1940s, he was a meat cutter at the former Will Docter Meat Company—near the former Union Market—but as soon as Pearl Harbor was bombed, he enlisted in the Marines and became a non-com [officer] where he was able to use his meat-cutting skills, storming beaches in the Pacific theatre with his kitchen kit literally on his back.

And he returned home to St. Louis and founded Kern Meat Co.? He was one of several in the military to do that. There was an explosion of little meat companies that popped up all over St. Louis after the war. Just 28 years ago, there were 17 meat companies here. Kern is one of the last ones left, and the last one that deals with hotels, restaurants, and institutions. The rest became large broad-liners, which means they carry a lot of inventory and sell everything from sugar packets to flatware and kitchen chemicals to cabbage…as well as meat.  Those places typically only have one or two so called “center-of-the-plate” experts, we have 19. We’re specialized. Meat is all we need to know about. 

How did you assimilate into the company?I had helped, more or less as a utility man, several years before I was approached to run it. In doing so, I learned every aspect of the plant before becoming the general manager. One Christmas, I was cutting meat, ribeye steaks, on the production line, where I wasn’t supposed to be. My father in law asked what I was doing, and weighed my steaks, which all were within the allowed tolerance. He didn’t realize my father had taught me how to cut meat at an early age. When I was younger, I wanted to enter culinary school, but I studied history instead. It’s funny how things work out.

Have there been any game-changing moments at Kern, like say, when free-range chickens or grass-fed beef came along? Adding Certified Hereford Beef to our portfolio in 2008, and having them as a partner, was important for us. We’ve done cutting after cutting [blind tasting of like products], and it outperforms time after time, so it became our flagship program. And Kern only pulls from two plants, which helps with quality and consistency, compared with Certified Angus Beef, which has, like, 30 packing houses across North America.

Would you say Certified Hereford Beef is better than Certified Angus Beef?  The American Angus Association was on the ropes in the ’70s, and they deployed an plan of action to save the breed when they created the first branded beef program, Certified Angus Beef, in 1978. It’s arguably one of the most successful marketing programs of the 20^th century, and it’s also a great product. However, others followed suit to capitalize on their brand. When I started in the industry, there were 87 branded beef programs in the country, 49 of which were Angus derived. Today, when people hear the term “Angus,” they automatically believe it is a quality product. It is the USDA’s job to make sure that the meat qualifies for a respective program and adheres to universal standards: a particular marbling score, a certain ribeye size, etc. Each program carries different genetics and requirements, and we’ve found Certified Hereford Beef outperforms other brands in the marketplace.

That said, Kern does carry Angus beef. Our Black Canyon Angus offers great genetics and excellent marbling scores. We also carry Mishima Reserve American Wagyu, a cross of Black Angus and Japanese Wagyu bulls. That product is exclusive in the Midwest, where we are master distributors. It’s arguably the best steak I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s not cheap. On middle meats—the tenderloins, ribeyes, short loins, strip loins—it costs about three times as much.

What other exclusives does Kern offer? Joyce Farms is exclusive in this region. They’re vertically integrated and raise two kinds of birds, an American Cornish Cross and a Poulet Rouge, a slow-growing heritage breed from France that’s worth $3 more per pound. Whereas commodity birds grow to full size in six weeks, Poulet Rouge birds take 12 weeks and are pasture-raised, both of which allow more flavor to develop. The skin is thinner, the breast isn’t as large, and they develop longer legs and harder bones, which produce a phenomenal broth that’s second to none. Prasino, Café Osage, and The Tenderloin Room carry it, and Edera [coming soon to the CWE]. Joyce Farms also raises a Heritage Black Turkey, which also benefits from pasture and forage. In America’s quest for speed and efficiency, we’ve bred the flavor out of chicken. Again, genetics matter, and we as consumers have forgotten what that means when it comes to chicken. Joyce Farms has not.

What’s the story on Brewer’s Crafted Pork, another item exclusive to Kern? Vito Racanelli became a friend after buying from us for his restaurants for so many years. He’d worked for Anheuser-Busch for years developing different food products and reasoned that if hogs were fed malted barley, the meat would taste like beer. He tested his theory, without us involved, and was successful but realized he needed a meat expert to take it to the next level, which is where we came in. We developed the program, set up a pasture program, and picked out a contract farmer, and now we carry the products. It’s the first branded program that Kern has vertically integrated. 

So where does Kern buy malted barley? From the same companies that supply it to breweries. It’s not spent grain, so it is more expensive than other animal feeds. It has a broader nutrient profile, the hogs love it, and you can taste a difference. But since the hogs are pastured, the malted barley acts like the body of the beer and the pasture acts like the spice of the beer. You can taste the depth of the pork through the malted barley in the fat, and then the other flavors—the spice of the turnips, the acorns, the random produce, whatever it’s foraged for—come out in the meat.

How important is meat grading? The process was developed over a hundred years ago, and like any standardized system, has its flaws, due to breed variation, regional differences in weather, sileage and forage quality, grain accessibility, and in some cases, residual food waste. Animals in Idaho are fed potato peelings, for example, whereas cattle in the big five cattle states—Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska—are fed cereal grains and cereal by products. Technology can flaw the system, too. In 2017, packers began using camera grading systems—some of which turned out to be faulty and led to a downgrade of USDA Prime—which ultimately led to a mass recalibration of the equipment.

Can you taste the difference in potato peel–fed versus grain-fed cattle? A more refined palate can recognize potato-finished cattle—the difference is in how it coats your mouth, like corn oil versus olive oil—but the average consumer probably won’t pick that up.

How do you make sure that Kern gets the best available product and the better grade doesn’t go to someone else? I can’t give away all the secrets, but a big part is nurturing the partnerships, both with our packers and our farmers.

Why does Kern carry so little wild game? Bison became popular, and almost ubiquitous here, over the years, partly due to its low-fat content. We do carry some elk, wild boar, and quail and pheasant on occasion, but it boils down to demand…wild game is not as popular in St. Louis as it is elsewhere.

Do you prefer New Zealand lamb or Colorado lamb? Kern carries both.First and foremost, Colorado lamb is 10,000 miles fresher. It’s finished with grain, whereas New Zealand uses different breeds, grass-raises them, and grass finishes them. All those omega-3’s in the grass produce a gamier taste. So it’s matter of preference. I prefer Colorado lamb.

Is there a big difference between fresh versus frozen protein?Meat has a lot of water in it, and when most people freeze meat, they don’t wrap or vacuum it properly, which leads to freezer burn. And when meat gets frozen in a residential freezer, the water between the muscle cells expands, and the meat will and shed a lot of that water when it’s thawed and then cooked, resulting in a dryer, mushier piece of meat. Now a blast freezer prevents a lot of that, but most people don’t have blast freezers in their homes. Bottom line: There’s nothing better than a well-aged steak that is fresh.

What’s the optimum time to age a steak? The industry standard is 21 days for a wet-aged steak, but a few years ago, based on research and shear force tests [measures tenderness in beef] that we conducted, we experimented with longer times. At 28 to 35 days, something magical happens, and beef tastes great. Ever since, we’ve aged our steaks a minimum of 35 days.

Are there any secrets in the beef-grading process? Most people don’t know that within the main [USDA] grades—Prime, Choice, and Select—there are grades within the grade, based on a marbling score: three for Prime, three for Choice, and two for Select.

Does Kern dry-age any meat? Personally, I like a dry-aged steak, but the American palate generally does not at all. To dry-age beef properly, you need a lot of cover, and most packing houses over-trim to make dry-aging cost-effective, so you end up trimming off too much otherwise usable product. We dabbled in it, but it’s just too expensive, especially given the lack of acceptance.

Who does Kern sell to in St. Louis? We pretty much deal with all the country clubs in town. Then there are long-term clients like Tony’s and Dominic’s, the Four Seasons, Smokehouse Market and Annie Gunn’s, and Truffles Butchery, as well as newer clients like Carmine’s, Balkan Treat Box, and indo. That’s just a few of the locals. We also have 13 distributors that pick up every day and send it out to eight other states. We have a pretty big footprint in the Midwest. 

Talk about the health and inspection standards at a USDA-inspected facility such as yours. Every facility is assigned a FSIS inspector [Food Service Safety Inspector]. Ours has four plants on his route, so he can spend two hours at Kern and sometimes the whole day, if we’re the only plant operating. Right now, we’re the only local plant operating full-time, even in the midst of the Covid crisis. They make sure we’re complying with our FSIS, HACCP, and SSOP [Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures] plans. They look for cross contamination between pork and beef and lamb, perform temperature checks, calibrate thermometers, check labeling, monitor our catch weights [approximate weights], do sample testing. They even look for condensation. And there’s much more. It’s a daily, weekly, monthly routine, one that we’re all used to by now. 

Condensation? All of the summer humidity in St. Louis can cause condensation on ceilings and pipes, and since water is a carrier for pathogens, we have to monitor our HVAC equipment daily to make sure warm air is not mixing with cold air, creating condensation.

Might some of these federal inspection programs trickle down to restaurants in the post-COVID era? Most definitely. Diners now want to be put at ease before they go to a restaurant, as well they should. The successful restaurants of tomorrow will have a comprehensive list of reassuring procedures in place. A lot of the corporate ones already do, and they will be held to them. The mom and pops will have to both establish and practice them to survive.

How badly did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your business? We’re fortunate to have a lot of health care accounts that have been with us for decades. Our distributors do as well. Our business is down, but we’re not down and out.

Was it the coronavirus crisis that caused Kern to begin selling direct to the public? Partly. We’ve always gotten calls asking if we sell direct to the public…so there was increasing demand. I could sell meat all day long, and Kern could pocket all the money, but for me there had to be more. I wanted it to matter, so we decided to donate 10 percent of those retail sales to the Gateway Resilience Fund, which directly benefits local restaurants and small businesses. 

How does the direct-order process work? Customers order online—they can order two steaks or a hundred—then pick them up curbside at our plant on Cherokee Street. So if you want a certain steak at a certain weight, fine, that’s what we do. Yesterday, a guy ordered one of everything that we sell; I’m not sure why.

Did the Covid-19 crisis cause you to pivot in any other way? We were approached by Old Tyme Produce, Sunfarm, and several other distributors in the Midwest, to supply them with meat for their new retail operations, which we’ve done. So we process wholesale accounts in the morning, then retool the packaging equipment and labelers, and service the retail customers in the afternoon.

Will it become a permanent part of Kern’s business? I’ll let demand make that call, but I bet we continue with it. Some of our new customers are coming back once or twice a week. We’re building goodwill in ways we’ve never done before.

Does Kern have a plan for 2020 and beyond? We’ve been wanting to expand for some time now, and that will finally happen this year. Our new facility, in Bridgeton, will be the largest meat-processing facility in the metro area, with new efficiencies aided by new technology. What we crank out of our existing 5,000-square-foot building on a daily basis is amazing. People were calling us the smallest biggest food service company in St. Louis. The new building is over four times as large, so we may lose that moniker. No matter: We’re poised for some serious growth. 

What’s a little-known fact about Kern? What started as a family business is still one, and there are families within families. Our foreman has been with us for 40 years, his dad was the foreman before him, and his grandson is now working here, too, so you have a third-generation family working at a third-generation company. We’re all very proud of that.