The woman who’s trying to put local meat on plates in Anchorage restaurants

Kyla Byers will admit that middlemen usually get a bad rap when it comes to business.

But for Byers, who has been delivering vegetables grown in Southcentral Alaska and is now working to get locally produced meat to restaurants, having a service like hers is one born out of necessity.

"I think in some cases, it's clearly a service that's needed," she said.

Byers owns and operates Arctic Harvest Deliveries, and since 2014 she's been a go-between, connecting farmers with restaurants that want to serve more local food.

She picked up the work of "Delicious" Dave Thorne, a local chef who had also been distributing local vegetables to restaurants. Fellow chef Rob Kinneen also tried to do meat deliveries. Despite growing interest from restaurants, as full-time chefs, neither had the time to focus on deliveries.

So far Byers has worked to get vegetables into 30 restaurants in Southcentral, with an eye toward trying to get local meat into them, too, though it has been much more slow going, she said. Just a handful of restaurants in the area are buying from her.

Amy Seitz, executive director of the Alaska Farm Bureau, said middlemen like Byers are a good place to start as the Alaska meat industry continues to grow.

Current production of meat product is small and large food distributors need larger quantities if they're going to sell it to restaurants. Herds could start to grow, though. Seitz said she thinks the privatization of McKinley Meat and Sausage Plant should provide more stability to farmers after years of constant threat of shutdown. In her opinion, now farmers can feel more confident investing in livestock knowing there will be a place to have the animals slaughtered and receive the USDA stamp required to sell all meat commercially.

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"Having someone who is willing to pick up and distribute to restaurants is just one more piece to the puzzle," Seitz said. "Because I know restaurants are interested and would like to get more meat in; it's just working out all the details."

But with only a few livestock producers who have relatively small herds, it's been a challenge.

Farmers are busy and don't have a lot of time to market their product, Byers said, and most restaurants are used to working with major food distributors that don't sell locally grown meat due to the small scale of meat production in Alaska.

Since local meat is produced in small quantities, restaurants must order a full or half carcass of the animal. That requires the chef to butcher the animal, a time-consuming process.

It also means that chefs have to get creative.

"It's pretty easy to buy a rib-eye out of the box from (food distribution company) Sysco and put that on the menu," said Scott Mugrage, a Delta Junction cattle farmer who works with Byers to supply beef. "With a carcass, with a side of beef, they have to be inventive."

In early June, Tyler Howie purchased half a local hog through Byers. Howie, head chef at Middle Way Cafe, smoked the animal overnight in a smoker he built for his mobile food business, covering the half-hog in a spice rub and injecting it with a lime juice marinade over the course of the evening.

Most of the cooked meat — charred, crispy skin and all — was diced up and served in a taco at an outdoor music festival in Kincaid Park the day after its delivery.

Howie said it's become easier to buy local produce for restaurants, but there are still challenges, and cost is a big one.

For example, buying a steak from a farmer for $18 a pound would translate into a $40 steak for a consumer. He said someone like Byers can negotiate with the farmers — and the chefs — to come to a place where the can make it work financially on both ends. 

"People are starting to realize the difference," Howie said. "Farmers are getting that, too."

Katie Wright, Phat Kid food truck and Kaladi Commissary chef and manager, said it's a good challenge trying to use up all of the animal. The food truck and its sister truck, Phat Taco, both use the pork for tacos, carnitas and Cubano sandwiches. She said they'll even take the hocks and smoke them for a barbecue "throwdown" with other Anchorage chefs next month.

"It's completely different than when you get half a cow, and you cut it down and you see all the different parts and where it comes from," she said. "It's really a beautiful process."