Men's Journal

Bill Niman and his goats at Stokes Ranch. Photo credit: Chad Case / ChadCasePhotography.com

Forced out of his namesake company, Bill Niman sets his sights on the next new protein.

By Daniel Duane

“A billion people can’t be wrong,” says Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch, one of the biggest U.S. purveyors of humanely raised beef, pork, and lamb. Niman is telling me why he believes goat meat is the next big thing — it’s the most widely consumed animal protein on Earth, and has been for 10,000 years. But he is also showing me his gift for sales, the same knack that has made him the Steve Jobs of gourmet meat.

It started in 1968, when Niman left Minnesota, landing a year later in the original hippie haven: Bolinas, California, an hour north of San Francisco. He and his first wife Amy were experimenting with pigs and chickens when a local rancher gave them six newborn calves. By raising them on fresh pasture with room to roam, Niman produced a beef far superior to anything then available. The American gourmet revolution was just beginning (in Niman’s neighborhood), and top chefs clamored for Niman Ranch beef. What happened over the next 30-plus years is a key chapter in culinary history. Niman established a link between humane animal husbandry and excellent flavor — and created an iconic brand, growing his hippie hobby into an $85-million-a-year business that supplied meat to supermarkets and even produced pork for the Chipotle chain.

Niman is no longer with Niman Ranch. In what he calls a classic case of founder’s syndrome, he was forced out last year after confrontations with new management. “I’m a start-up guy,” he says. “When businesses get to a certain size the culture shifts.”

Instead of retiring to his Bolinas ranch and fading into the sunset, Niman is trying to usher in a new era for meat — which is where goats come in. He believes the entire livestock industry must become more humane and environmentally sustainable. That means giving animals more pasture time so their lives don’t suck and ranchers don’t burn fossil fuel shipping feed around the country. Goats forage on plants that cattle won’t eat, which allows grass to thrive. So adding goats to a pasture can not only give a farmer extra income, it can increase his cattle-raising capacity.

“My mission is to change the way people think about animal-based food,” Niman says. But it won’t work if Americans won’t eat it, so he is putting goat meat in the hands of the finest chefs in the land. He’s also turning his ranch into a “demonstration farm,” where ranchers can see the symbiosis between goats and cattle, along with the heritage turkeys he breeds; he’s convinced he can make a turkey so delicious it will be offered in fine restaurants.

From anyone else, the idea of creating a tastier turkey might seem far-fetched. But from a guy who has put humanely raised beef in every upscale American grocery, it seems, well, inevitable.

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