A well-known direct-to-consumer retailer of steaks, burgers, and the majority of meats that can be grilled is called Omaha Steaks. The company is well-known and a treat for many people thanks to its variety of gourmet boxes and ease of use. Less well-known is the fact that the business dates back more than a century. The fifth generation of this 102-year-old company’s leaders are Bruce Simon and Todd Simon (per Provisioner Online). Describes Todd, “. We are currently the biggest direct-to-consumer marketer of steaks and gourmet foods, with 58 company-owned retail stores, a foodservice division, and a department for business gifts and incentives on a national scale. “.
The business started out small in 1917 with father J. J. and son B. According to Omaha Steaks, A Simon founded the Table Supply Meat Company in Omaha, Nebraska. From the founders, the management was transferred to their offspring, including B. A. s son Lester and his sons, Stephen, Fred, Alan. Todd Simon, the son of Fred Simon and Senior Vice President, is the current President and CEO and son of Bruce Simon.
According to Todd, “Omaha Steaks really is an overnight success that took 100 years to achieve,” “.
Omaha Steaks is a true rags to riches story
Believe it or not, Omaha Steaks hasnt always been the meat industry mainstay it is today. The Omaha Steaks story begins not in Omaha, Nebraska, but actually in Riga, Latvia, during the 19th century. When the Simon family fled Latvia due to fervent antisemitism in the country, they eventually wound up in Omaha, where they were among the first waves of Jewish people to make their way into the city, according to Tablet Magazine, a Jewish cultural magazine.
The Simon family patriarch J.J. Simon and his son B.A. worked together as butchers — which was the family trade back in their European homeland — founding the Table Meat Supply Company in downtown Omaha in 1917. The company grew in popularity among local Omahans, and eventually changed its name to Omaha Steaks in 1966 as the company expanded out to sell their product in other states via the Union Pacific Railroad.
More than a hundred years after Omaha Steaks first inception as a company, the food delivery service has grown all across the nation, raking in around half a billion dollars in revenue as Tablet reported back in 2017. According to the Omaha Steaks website, the company has become the countrys largest direct response marketer of beef and gourmet food. Talk about fulfilling the American dream!
For five generations, Omaha Steaks has been a family business
Omaha Steaks has always been a Simon family business throughout its century-long existence; current CEO and owner Bruce Simon is the great-great-grandson of Omaha Steaks founder J J. Simon. Simon grew up in the family business, going to the plant with his father as a child, and later working there over the summers between high school and college. Bruce Simon was an obvious choice to fill the position because he had held a number of other positions before being named president and CEO in 1994.
Unlike other meat industry juggernauts like Tyson Foods and Oscar Mayer, Omaha Steaks is still privately held, so investors cannot buy Omaha Steaks shares. Although staying private and family-owned has allowed the company to concentrate more on its long-term strategies rather than constantly worrying about quarterly earnings, going public is typically seen as a huge accomplishment for any major company.
The Omaha Steaks inventory has expanded beyond just beef products
The name “Omaha Steaks” is, admittedly, quite a bit misleading. While beef might be what comes to mind when you first hear the companys name, you might be surprised to find that you can actually get a much wider range of specialty products. In the 1960s, Omaha Steaks began expanding its catalog from only offering steaks to also include premium cuts of pork, poultry, and seafood. Since then, theyve added an even more extensive range of products to the menu, as the companys delivery services have become much more widespread.
While steaks are still the prime cut of meat at Omaha Steaks, you can actually purchase a huge range of products besides their signature beef as well — from Polish-style kielbasa to hearty wild halibut fillets. Theyve even got an expansive set of accoutrements to serve alongside the main course, including charcuteries and potato-based side dishes, as well as some decadent wines. Perfect for your next steak dinner. Or your next kielbasa dinner. Or your next halibut dinner.
Dry ice plays a key role with Omaha Steaks
Ever wonder how Omaha Steaks manages to keep their products fresh, even while theyre shipping them all the way across the country? As Dr. Youling Xiong wrote in Lawries Meat Science, “Raw meat is one of the most shelf-unstable food materials due to its abundance in nutrients ideally suited for microorganisms.” This means that transporting uncooked steak products from state to state (and sometimes country to country) takes a lot of care.
When the company began its mail-order operations in 1952, they settled on using wax-lined cartons filled with dry ice to keep the meat cool — essentially mimicking a refrigerator. (This was before polystyrene shipping containers and vacuum packaging had become especially widespread commercial technology, you see.) As polystyrene and vacuum packaging became more popular and mainstream, Omaha Steaks ditched the wax-lined containers and began using those, in conjunction with dry ice as the means of keeping the meat cool.
Dry ice maintains a low temperature without using electricity while vacuum packaging ensures that the meat isn’t exposed to air, which could harbor bacteria.
Omaha Steaks has expanded into the pet food market
Does your dog whine and beg every time you throw a steak on the grill? Next time you stock up on some Omaha Steaks, you might want to consider grabbing some of their signature dog treats, which the company added to their inventory just around 17 years ago. As The New York Times reported in 2004, customers were constantly telling the companys management that they were feeding scraps from their Omaha Steaks products to their dogs and cats. Eventually, the company gave in and decided to capitalize on their popularity with pets and began making dog treats themselves in 2003.
Now, these meat treats for pets aren’t inferior meat scraps left over from the higher-quality meat cuts intended for humans. Were essentially using the same product for humans without the high sodium content and some other spices, according to Todd Simon, the former owner of the business, as he stated to The New York Times. The Times claims that the company’s dog treats closely resemble Omaha Steaks’ renowned beef jerky product, but without all the salt.
A little goes a long way at Omaha Steaks
Omaha Steaks is quite well-known for its lavish and pricey boxes of food. For example, some of these boxes, like their Gourmet Stock-Up Package, which features filet mignon, sirloin, chicken breast, and many, many more meats and side dishes, will cost you a couple of hundred dollars. While these are great deals for doomsday preppers, chances are, you dont need to be spending that much on some fancy meat that you probably cant get rid of fast enough.
That said, Omaha Steaks has plenty of more reasonable packages for the everyday diner — as Business Insider reported in 2018, $20 can actually go a long way over at Omaha Steaks. For starters, its hard not to find at least a couple of promotional sales on their website. But also, you can typically grab a pack of eight sausages (from Polish-style kielbasa to classic beef franks) for around — and a lot of times, just below — $20. The same goes for certain cuts of beef, like their tenderloin tips.
According to Business Insider, the quality of what you get at Omaha Steaks typically exceeds that of what you can find in your local supermarket, but what’s the point of a cheap steak if it doesn’t taste any good? Of course, you can’t beat going to a local butcher or steakhouse if you have extra money to spend, but Omaha Steaks might be the best alternative.
Omaha Steaks got in trouble for violating telemarketing laws
Perhaps youve gotten a call or two from a robocaller at Omaha Steaks trying to sell us on their holiday gift box special thats stuffed to the brim with gourmet hamburgers and tri-tips galore. Well, in 2014, one man in Gresham, Oregon, had received just one call too many, as The Oregonian reported.
According to The Oregonian, Michael Hetherington received 10 unwarranted calls to his cell phone from the company over the course of just a little over a month in 2013. Hetherington did some research on laws surrounding telemarketing and realized that the company could be breaching the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The act essentially states that companies arent allowed to call customers without their permission nor can they use automated programs to dial up random numbers — with added emphasis in regards to protecting cell phone numbers. This is exactly what Omaha Steaks was doing when they called Hetherington those 10 times and he filed a lawsuit against them in 2014.
About two years later, in 2016, the company had to pay out $5 million to customers who had been called in violation of the TCPA as part of the settlement of the lawsuit, which had expanded into a larger class action lawsuit. Customers started receiving checks from Omaha Steaks for about $40 in December 2016, according to Top Class Actions, a website looking into various class action lawsuits across the nation.
Omaha Steaks ran into trouble over their website
The Americans with Disabilities Act is frequently mentioned in relation to tangible objects, such as wheelchair ramps, parking spaces, or restroom accessibility. However, a little-known aspect of the ADA is that websites must adhere to a hazy set of regulations in order to comply with the law.
Some advocacy groups have been known to take businesses to court if their websites arent easily accessible for blind users. However, because these rules arent quite set in stone (the ADA was enacted years before the Internet had become a major facet of American life), these cases are often gauged on a case-by-case basis.
See, if a businesss website isnt rendered properly so that it can be easily read using text-to-speech software, that essentially leaves the website useless and inaccessible for someone whos visually impaired or blind. The Omaha World-Herald reported in 2017, that the advocacy group Access Now had partnered with three blind would-be customers to sue Omaha Steaks for a number of accessibility issues with their website.
The company, however, claimed that it was planning on doing a complete renovation job on the website later in 2018 and did not want to update its website until it rolled out the full update. The lawsuit was terminated shortly after it began, as the ADA is relatively vague with regards to internet compliance.
Omaha Steaks has had retail stores for decades
Youre probably most familiar with the Omaha Steaks website, or maybe even their mail catalogs; after all, its primarily known as a delivery service. But it does have a handful of brick-and-mortar shops across the United States as well. According to the Omaha World-Herald, the first Omaha Steaks retail store opened up in the companys hometown in 1976, as a “pilot for possible similar operations throughout the country.” Prior to opening up shop in downtown Omaha, customers could only purchase Omaha Steaks through the mail or at select restaurants carrying their products.
Though it was a pilot project, the company didnt really begin expanding its brick-and-mortar presence beyond Nebraska for nearly a decade. In 1985, the first retail shop outside of the Cornhusker State opened up in Houston, Texas. (Nowadays, Texas has surpassed even Nebraska as the state with the most Omaha Steaks stores.) The company has since opened up more than 75 locations across the nation, so if youre looking to get your hands on some Omaha Steaks, and you need them fast, you may just be able to drive on down to your nearest location to stock up for the next family cook-out.
Omaha Steaks sources their beef from farms in the Midwest
According to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, Nebraska has a grand total of 6.3 million cattle, meaning that bovines outnumber people in Nebraska by three-to-one. Thats more cattle in the state than there are people in the entire city of Los Angeles!
In fact, Nebraska is the state with the second-highest cattle to people ratio (South Dakota is first, with about 4.5 cattle for every person in the state) — so you know they take their beef seriously over there. According to Omaha Steaks, this beef-centric ethos is whats kept them in the state throughout their century-long history.
According to a 2019 blog post on the company’s website, “This is the heart of beef country, and we love to share that quality with the rest of the country.”
The business takes pride in sourcing all of its beef from farms located throughout the American Midwest and not outsourcing any work to more affordable, remote locations in South America or Australia. The company claims that all of its steak products are made from grass-fed, grain-finished beef, which contributes to the higher quality of your Omaha Steaks boxed set.
Omaha Steaks workers are considered essential during the COVID-19 crisis
Many meat-processing facilities across the country became the subject of controversy when the COVID-19 outbreak hit the United States. According to a National Public Radio report, many meat processing businesses did not cease operations because workers at these plants were seen as essential. Most notably, Tyson Foods has been connected to about 4,500 COVID-19 cases nationwide, according to Business Insider.
Omaha Steaks wasnt quite in the clear either. Per an April 2020 press release, Omaha Steaks continued operations at its facilities and the company said it would be working to maintain social distancing measures at its facilities while also allowing all staff at its plants paid sick leave. As of May 2020, Omaha Steaks has not been linked to any COVID-19 cases like some of its competition, but the attitude among its workers has been “primarily fear,” as Eric Reeder, president of the union representing workers at both Omaha Steaks, Tyson, and Nestlé among others, told the Omaha World-Herald.
Omaha Steaks has been giving back during the pandemic
In spite of the fact that Omaha Steaks may appear to be a stern and distant corporation, at its core, it still upholds the mom-and-pop ethos that its founder J J. When Simon first arrived in the country, he was placed in foster care. Giving back to the Omaha community plays a significant role in that; the Simon family has strong ties to the city and performs numerous acts of service across Omaha and the surrounding areas.
The most recent example of that? The companys response to the COVID-19 outbreak. According to local news outlet NBC 6, Omaha witnessed huge spikes in unemployment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, during the week of April 4, 2020, more than 25,000 people filed for unemployment (for a bit of context, the city of Omaha has just a little less than half a million people).
In response, the Omaha Downtown Improvement Group partnered up with local businesses — Omaha Steaks included — to provide meals for a drive-thru food pantry to help out those who were struggling with unemployment as a result of the crisis (via the Omaha World-Herald). While organizers were initially looking for discounted prices on food to give out, Omaha Steaks reportedly refused to accept a single cent for any of the hamburger or pork chops that the company doled out.
The Untold Truth Of Omaha Steaks
FAQ
Where do Omaha Steaks meat come from?
Why Our Beef is Better. Nebraska produces some of the highest-quality beef in the world, and there are more cattle there than people. The Simon family started a butcher shop in Omaha, Neb. because of that, and that’s the reason why we’re still based here today.
Are Omaha Steaks USDA approved?
Omaha Steaks delivers meat that has been carefully chosen from USDA Choice cuts. According to their websites, both businesses sell humanely raised, hormone- and antibiotic-free beef, but Chicago’s website doesn’t appear to have a section for grain-fed beef.
What company owns Omaha Steaks?
Operated Today by the 5th Generation Simon Family. Todd Simon, a fifth-generation steak expert, is devotedly leading the Omaha Steaks and Simon Family legacies today. J. J. and B. A Simon found Table Supply Meat Company in Omaha, NE. Our steaks are served on cross-country trains.
Are Omaha Steaks shipped fresh or frozen?
You can order from Omaha Steaks with confidence knowing it will arrive at your door frozen-fresh and on time. Your food is placed inside a dry-ice-filled, insulated, portable cooler.