Busty Beef founder Jilly Tyler with her husband Kevin and their sons Nick (left) and Jack (right).
Busy Beef's Jilly Tyler reckons she has the solution to save people time in the kitchen and provide healthy and wholesome beef and lamb meals – boosting red meat consumption along the way.
Jilly, who is based at Dalby, Queensland, has a background in grain and cattle – her family co-owned the Sandalwood Feedlot for more than three decades before they sold it in 2019.
Drawing on this feedlot experience, Jilly was inspired to promote sustainability through maximum carcase utilisation, and to connect smaller beef producers selling secondary cuts with consumers.
She developed Busy Beef – and its flagship 'Weeknight Cook' offering – with a focus on provenance. The brand uses Australian ingredients and suppliers to deliver a range of easily prepared meals that keep the cooking process quick and leave the consumer feeling proud of what they've served.
"We're not a ready-made meal and we're not an ingredient-filled kit like HelloFresh – we sit in between the two," Jilly said.
Listening to consumers
The Busy Beef journey began when Jilly was selected to attend MLA's Young Food Innovators program in 2018.
This gave her insights into global market trends, business start-up skills and value chain design.
During the program, she interviewed consumers about their needs, as she believed working backwards from the dining room table would give her the best insight into developing a 'whole-of-chain' approach.
"I felt there was a real gap in the market when it came to 'quick cook' meals," Jilly said.
"There didn't seem to be an option for consumers who needed the convenience, but they didn't want to simply heat a packet meal up.
"A lot of people also described what they call 'mummy guilt' and felt that if they had just heated it up then they hadn't actually cooked for the family.
"I started with a focus on the busy family, but ironically I found key customers are the young professionals, specifically men, who don't like to cook but care about what they're consuming from a health perspective."
Through her interviews, Jilly was able to pinpoint what consumers look for:
- a 15-minute cook time
- less clean-up
- the ability to cook to freeze
- variety in terms of health and nutrients
- something everyone will enjoy.
"We're a very consumer-led industry – what we do in the paddock doesn't matter if it's not ending up on people's plates, so it's important to hear what those buying the product are looking for," Jilly said.
Keeping beef on the menu
MLA is now working with Jilly to use Weeknight Cook to put red meat on the everyday menu.
MLA Food Innovation Program Manager, John Marten, said there's an opportunity to draw on Weeknight Cook to convert consumers to viewing beef as an everyday meal.
"This project represents the next collaborative steps between MLA and Busy Beef to drive incremental value through utilising more of the carcase with those secondary cuts of bolar blade, chuck and intercostals," John said.
The Weeknight Cook project supports MLA's Strategic Plan 2025 goal to deliver greater value to Australia's red meat producers through:
- investigating new, high-value usage occasions for red meat
- working with early adopters and value-adding companies to rapidly develop, test and evaluate opportunities
- providing producers and brand owners with data and insights to support diversification from commodity to high-value products.
"Weeknight Cook also aligns with MLA's goal of increasing consumer participation in beef and lamb consumption, by offering that more convenient 'quick cook' weeknight meal option for the busy modern family," John said.
Other insights
Another insight from Jilly's interviews with consumers was that they needed some encouragement when it came to adding red meat to their weeknight meal.
"A lot of the research was showing that red meat was lagging behind chicken in terms of consumption," she said.
"However, when we asked consumers why they weren't purchasing red meat outside of steak and mince, they told us they didn't know how to cook with secondary cuts or felt they took too long to prepare.
"Taking the time out of the cooking seemed to be our best solution to supporting MLA's mid-week meals beef campaign."
Jilly is also using innovative practices, such as sous-vide technology and 3D printing.
"My son Jack – along with two of his classmates – created a meatball tray with 3D printing that we used in addition to the sous-vide technology to form the meatball shape and tenderise the meat before it went into the packs."
Looking to the future
The Weeknight Cook products became available at 14 Drakes supermarkets across Queensland in May.
Now, Jilly has turned her sights to launching the Busy Beef website, expanding stock availability at smaller and larger retailers, and broadening the list of smaller producers they source their meat from.
"People do want to know where their food comes from and I think Weeknight Cook can meet that demand, not only with it being a family-owned business, but with its connection to smaller Australian red meat producers," Jilly said.
