OUR STORY

During a series of trips across the country, chef Joel Tate and Fine Dining Restaurant Group owner Gavin Fine realized a common thread in their travels - a constant pursuit to find the very best cured meats an area had to offer. The pursuit led from butcher shop to restaurants, specialty grocers to wine bars and everywhere in between. Naturally, for chefs, the exploration was appropriately paired with discussion around which flavors, techniques and processes seemed to yield the best result.

Seeing chef Tate’s passion for artisan meats, Fine made an offer - continue to learn everything he could about curing meats and they would create a company to give the passion life. With his extensive culinary background leading restaurant kitchens and his knife bag, chef Tate headed to Iowa to study at the Iowa State University Meat Science Program. However, he knew education was only one piece of the puzzle. To create the kinds of artisan meats he revered, he would need to absorb as much as he could in every application he could. Experimenting in the Fine Dining kitchens led to staging at various butchers across the country to even more science-based educational training. And then came his very own meat processing facility.

But, as his history would suggest, it wasn’t enough for chef Tate to simply open a production facility. If he were to open a facility to house this new venture, he wanted it to be set apart not only by the quality of the ingredients he was using and the traditional, time consuming techniques he was employing, but by the highest level of distinction in terms of federal inspection. It was time to start the long process of applying for USDA approval.

Chef Tate poured over the details and regulations for hours upon hours over the course of two years and finally received the important distinction in 2017 - making the Bovine & Swine facility one of only three USDA processing facilities in the entire state of Wyoming.

With the new USDA permit and recipes he had been perfecting along the way, Bovine & Swine, Fine Dining Restaurant Group’s craft meat division, was open for business.

Bovine & Swine’s unique flavors and variety of hand-made products are reminiscent of the butchers of the past, the foundations of which are an attention to traditional techniques and high quality ingredients. Attention has been paid to every aspect of the product, from the way the ingredients are broken down to the “snap” experienced when biting into a sausage. Bovine & Swine’s diverse sausage lineup is certified All Natural and Gluten Free (with the exception of the Beer Brat) and showcases both classic and inventive flavors - all hand-crafted in Jackson Hole.