As working parents, Madison couple created Pound of Ground to solve 'what's for dinner' problem

Dinner is a daily dilemma. We all need to eat, but it takes planning and effort to get dinner on the table. Takeout can be tempting, but maybe isn't so great for the budget.

As working parents, Heidi and Jeff Meyer found themselves facing that dinner dilemma more often than they liked. They both worked in the food industry, with stints at Kraft and Oscar Mayer over the years.

Defrosting meat for dinner was often their downfall. That big brick of frozen ground beef that they forgot to thaw earlier would taunt them.

Bringing together those experiences and needs, they created the product they wished existed. Made from 100% pure uncooked ground beef, Pound of Ground Crumbles go from freezer to pan and cooks in under 10 minutes, no thawing necessary.

Creating the new freezer-friendly staple with frozen uncooked beef (and no additives) took nearly a decade. They started out with experiments in flash freezing, using Wisconsin’s coldest winter days and batches of ground beef on trays on their screen porch.

As the test batches for their ultimate quick meal starter grew and they got more serious, they worked out of the USDA-inspected meat processing facility at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building. Initially, the Meyers tested the market in Madison and Milwaukee. Last year, JBS bought the brand and product name, allowing the Meyers to grow to national distribution.

Currently, Pound of Ground Crumbles are available in original, with onion, hearty-sized pieces, and a club pack option. Locally, they are currently available at Kroger and Meijer stores, plus Wild Fork Foods, 635 W. Silver Spring Drive in Glendale. Pound of Ground Burger Thins, frozen beef patties that use the same freezer to pan concept, are expected in stores nationwide later this year.  For additional sales locations nationwide, a store locator is available at poundofground.com.

The couple behind the business

Heidi: I’m actually from Madison and went to the University of Wisconsin. Jeff and I met at a wedding in Madison.

Jeff: I was living in Cleveland. ... We dated, were engaged and married long-distance, then I took a leave of absence from Dow Chemical, went to graduate school in Madison, and never left.

Heidi: Jeff and I both actually worked at Oscar Mayer and Kraft Foods in Madison for years. We have a big background in food, and in particular the meat industry. ... We’ve had varying careers since, mine more in marketing and consulting around innovation and new products. I taught an MBA program at UW-Madison on developing new products. Then we invented this product.

Building their business together

Heidi: We specifically worked on a bunch of Lunchable products. We have a history of doing that, but it is different when it is your own baby.

Jeff: The product is called Pound of Ground Crumbles, frozen uncooked crumbles of ground beef you store in your freezer. It is a 1-pound package, and it cooks from frozen in less than 10 minutes. It comes back to getting ready to eat dinner and you don’t have a plan. You look in the freezer and see that big brick of ground beef. Well, that doesn’t help. So we came up with and worked on the idea for many, many years. Fast forward, JBS foods today has acquired the product.

Dinner on the table, a decade in the making

Heidi: We started kicking it around literally in our kitchen in Madison. I don’t know if I should be proud or embarrassed that it took almost 10 years.

Jeff: It was a decade in the works.

Heidi: We’re working parents. We had done a lot of work in the dinner space, working with a pasta company, a cheese company. People would say “I just need ground beef and then I can make dinner.” We bought a little meat grinder at Menards. At one point we had cookie trays on our screen porch in January trying to flash freeze. We put them in packages, started using it ourselves, giving it to friends and family to try. We just said “We’re working on this, give us feedback.”

Jeff: We didn’t say this was ours.

Heidi: We had worked for companies that did this. We knew you had to validate packaging, the process…We worked it for years, some years more intensely than others depending on our day jobs. We did a soft market rollout in 2018. Then we met JBS actually in the middle of COVID. We had to get on an airplane June 2020. Not a lot of people were on airplanes in June 2020. We did an introduction May 2021. We consider fall 2022 to be our national rollout.

What is Pound of Ground?

Heidi: It is really just ground beef, quick frozen in small pieces. Ideally, they are free-flowing little pieces and you pour it in the pan (right from the freezer). I put the lid on because I like that.

Jeff: You use a preheated skillet, so it is fun to pour it in and hear the sizzle, then put the lid on.

Heidi: Season or sauce it as you normally would ground beef. It is that simple. Sometimes when it is in that freezer section, it gets frosted over. That is just ice crystals. If it ever looks like it is stuck together, no worries, it still works.

Lessons learned along the way

Heidi: Our soft rollout had a different package design. We rolled that out in Woodman’s and Sendik’s. Woodman’s is volume discount, Sendik’s is more high end. It was a great experience to get live consumer input and see, would someone put their hand in the pocket and hand over real money?

Adding to their product line

Heidi: We have the original 100% beef, hearty-sized pieces, then with onion, and a club pack version of the original. We are also launching right now a new product called Pound of Ground Burger Thins, frozen 100% ground beef, six patties in a 1- pound box, five to six minutes in a skillet. They’re a little thinner, like a smash burger. You can double stack them if you’re hungry, or a kid might actually finish them. They are not the quarter-pound size you usually find in the store.

Jeff: Those are just launching, rolling out as we speak.

Heidi: Pound of Ground stands for this convenient meat at the ready, frozen, and I think it can go a variety of places — tacos, chilis, casseroles. Our patty product is called Burger Thins, and we have a trademark on that.

Setting prices and expectations

Heidi: Generally about $5.99 and you can find it on sale for $4.99, and there are always coupons if you’re industrious.

Jeff: A lot of times we get that pricing question. The meal you’re typically replacing that night is DoorDash or carryout. The ability to make a dinner with a $5.99 staple is a great value.

Advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs

Heidi: It can be a long and expensive process. It is making sure you are providing value to people along the way before you sink your time or money into it personally. It is difficult.

Jeff: It is a grind, pun intended. The amount of time is much more than you think.

Ready for any recipe

Heidi: Our oldest is in an apartment on his own. His favorite preparation is our Korean ground beef. The recipe is on our website. It is ground beef, brown sugar, sriracha. ... We put it on rice and vegetables, he just eats it.

Jeff: The benefit of Crumbles is you can make it with items you have on hand.

Heidi: Ground beef is kind of any man’s food, a broadly appealing product. This is just ground beef. Our ‘with onion’ variety does very well in the Midwest, i don’t know if it is casserole country or what, but they really like it. It is just pure onion, mixed in with the meat. They cook at about the same rate.

Jeff: One of the other items we have is hearty-sized pieces, and that is really selling in Texas.

Teaching others leaves lasting lessons

Heidi: I learned so much from my students when I taught. It was a great experience. I was teaching people who didn’t know what a baby carrot used to look like before baby carrots. It shows that eventually a new product will take hold and someday you can’t remember what a product was like before that. We hope that will be this with ground beef and Pound of Ground.

Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email psullivan@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Madison couple created Pound of Ground to solve 'what's for dinner' problem