Seminole Beef Coming to a Plate Near You
- | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
- March 11, 2008
Beef could soon be another big business for The Seminole Tribe of Florida.
On Monday, the tribe unveiled Seminole Beef, a commercial brand available now in South Florida at the Shake N Burger food court restaurant at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. The eatery serves hamburgers made from Seminole beef.
The beef deal has been a dream in the making for about seven years, Richard Bowers Jr., president of the tribe’s board of directors, said.
The venture is a natural extension of the tribe’s cattle operations, which have generated about $2 million in annual revenue, a drop in the bucket when compared with the tribe’s gaming revenue. That totaled $1.4 billion in Florida in 2006, according to the tribe’s audit.
Launching the beef brand is another move by the Seminoles to diversify their businesses, which also include citrus, sugar cane, tobacco and a number of craft shops. To that end, the tribe last year bought the Hard Rock International hotel and restaurant chain for $965 million.
The Seminoles expect to sell the beef in major Indian casinos and restaurants, hotel chains, U.S. military bases and major supermarkets. Besides the burgers, the brand will later include steaks and other cuts of beef.
“It’s going to benefit all cattle owners throughout Indian country,” Mitchell Cypress, the Seminole tribal council’s chairman, said Monday.
The tribe typically sold cattle through an auction service and the middlemen were the ones who often made the most money from the sales. Now the tribe is taking control “from pasture to plate,” said Don Robertson, the tribe’s natural resource coordinator.
While the Seminoles’ revenue from cattle operations will likely triple with the beef deal, other American Indian tribes also stand to benefit, Bowers said.
The beef venture is a joint agreement with The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe of Connecticut, owner of Foxwoods Resorts Casino, and the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development.
Nationwide, the Pequots and the Mohegan Tribe, also of Connecticut, run the No. 1 revenue-generating Indian casinos at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun, respectively. The two casinos together took in $2.5 billion in 2006, according to the Indian Gaming Industry report.
Cattle raised and processed nationally by American Indians also will contribute to the new Seminole beef brand.
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel
I also recommend clicking the link and watching a Seminole cattle drive and see how the term “Florida Crackers” came into being.
