InBusiness: StoneBridge Beef Is One Of The Largest Producers Of Grass-Fed Beef In Minnesota
In 2003, a physicist working in the Twin Cities decided to retire and move to rural Minnesota to start a beef farm. Now one of the largest single producers of grass-fed beef in Minnesota, StoneBridge Beef provides their product to some of the most renowned restaurants in the state.
Mike Stine worked as a research physicist for St. Jude’s Medical Center in the Twin Cities where he researched and discovered the health benefits of certain foods.
“I worked the last 20 years, before I started this business, for the likes of Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and other startup companies developing medical products,” said Mike Stine, owner of StoneBridge Beef.
This led Stine to practice what he preached by founding StoneBridge Grass-Fed Beef as an alternative to the industrial model of raising cattle.
“So I got involved in this because I felt that there is some medical benefits to grass-fed beef. We don’t sell it as medicine, yet we understand that there are medical benefits to this type of model,” explained Stine.
StoneBridge is located about an hour southwest of Brainerd near Long Prairie, Minnesota. It is one of the largest grass-fed beef suppliers in the state, supplying to the greater Minnesota and Metro area. Stine says grass-fed beef is much healthier than feed-raised beef due to it containing much more omega-3 fats.
“The omega-3 fats provide a kind of undercurrent of anti-inflammatory agents. Inflammation, of course, is maybe the fundamental, sort of, anomaly that involves the production of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes,” explained Stine.
Stine says that Stonebridge Beef has grown more than he ever expected, and he is hopeful for the future of the food industry in Minnesota.
“It’s the focus of a lot of the better food movements, and that movement is actually spreading out to smaller towns like Brainerd and like St. Cloud and other places. We’re finding our sales in some of these smaller cities is increasing,” said Stine. “So that’s a good thing as well.”
StoneBridge provides grass-fed beef to over 500 families and well-known restaurants in the Twin Cities including French Meadow, Broders’ Pasta Bar, and Hell’s Kitchen.
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