What the plant pays you today. What the same beef brings through your pod.
Today you haul your cattle to somebody else's plant and get paid by the live pound. A pod on your ground sells the beef instead, keeps the truck parked, then fills the rest of its 50-head days with the producers around you. Drag the sliders to your operation.
Your cattle
Today you haul your cattle to a plant and they pay you by the live pound, and the diesel and the hours come out of your pocket. With a pod on your ground the same animal sells as beef under your brand, and the truck stays parked.
Sets take-home retail cuts at 70% of hanging weight. University of Arizona cutting studies put about 3 points of saleable yield between the fattest carcasses and the leanest. Bone-in cuts push the share up; heavy trimming pulls it down.
USDA AMS 5-area fed steer price, live basis, week ending September 5, 2026. Put in what your last check paid.
USDA ERS all-fresh retail beef value. Move it to what beef sells for in your market.
- Plant pays you per head
- $2,957
- Hauling per year (1,920 mi)
- $3,180
- You clear selling live, per year
- $174,210
- Same beef through your pod, per year
- $307,598
That is $2,904 a head after the diesel. The same animal is 586 lb of retail cuts worth $5,127 when it sells under your brand, and it never leaves your ground.
Your neighbors' cattle
A pod harvests up to 50 head a day, with room on the slab to grow. Every head you do not fill with your own cattle is a processing slot you can sell to the producers around you, who wait a year for one today.
- Hanging weight (62% of live)
- 837 lb
- Processing fee per head
- $2,046
- Custom processing revenue
- $613,875/yr
50 head a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year. Open slots are revenue your neighbors are driving out of state for today.
Byproducts
Every head leaves a hide, offal, and tallow, plus roughly 300 lb of fat and bone that never make the box. The big packers earn a drop credit on all of it. Most small plants pay a renderer to haul it away. A pod can do either, or turn it into product.
USDA AMS by-product drop value for steers, week ending September 5, 2026, applied to your live weight. A small plant selling to a renderer may get less than the packers do; move it to what your buyer offers.
- Head harvested per year
- 360
- Byproduct value per head
- $202
- Byproduct revenue per year
- $72,560/yr
Your pathway
Franchise royalty and platform fee come out of pod revenue. Buying a pod outright has neither, and none of the system behind it.
Figures come from your inputs and public USDA price data, and are gross: the pod's own operating costs (labor, utilities, packaging, financing) are not subtracted, and prices and hauling are estimates for your situation. Illustrative only, not a financial performance representation or a franchise offer. See Item 19 of the FDD.
Like the number? The next step is a discovery call.
We walk through your configuration, the current pod pricing, and the financing stack that fits. Producers who complete the funding intake first are considered first.