Restaurants and food / Los Angeles

Capital Meat Imports

Even a nationwide wagyu importer needs Instagram

Capital Meat Imports is a Los Angeles wagyu importer with exclusive rights to farms in Japan and Australia. Its Instagram didn't match that level, and chefs look up a new supplier before they buy.

The company

48 hours
delivery anywhere in the country: USDA
inspected cutting facility of its own: 24/7
on the cutting floor

The business

Exclusive farms, no account to match

The company holds exclusive rights to farms like Kobe Wine Beef from Hyogo prefecture, Ozaki and Miyazaki Sunflower from Miyazaki, Omi from Shiga, and Stone Axe and Margaret River in Australia. It has its own USDA-inspected cutting facility and delivers anywhere in the country within 48 hours.

It works with the chefs of the best restaurants, and behind the exclusive rights is a family business that deals with farmers directly. What it didn't have was an account at that level.

The problem

What happens after the first conversation

An owner at this scale usually figures chefs don't scroll a feed looking for suppliers. Sales do come through connections, tastings and referrals. The trouble starts after the first conversation.

A chef with an offer from a new supplier looks them up: website, Instagram, reviews. If a company with exclusive rights to Japanese farms has an account like a regular butcher shop's, something doesn't add up. The chef won't say no. They'll just have doubts, and on an expensive product a chef answers for in front of guests, doubt costs a lot.

Udi, the owner, saw our work and decided a company at his level needed an agency at the same level. He wanted the brand to look like itself.

On the cutting floor

Shoots run on the facility's clock

The facility runs around the clock, so we film whenever the cutting happens: early in the morning, sometimes at night. A shift doesn't stop for a nice shot.

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The cutting floor

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Sample content

We shoot more than we publish

Much of the content goes to a test profile first. Only what proves itself moves to the main account.

The product

Marbling you can hear

On video, marbling either gets lost or reads as plain fat. We found another way, through the cut and its sound: the knife going in, the meat opening up on the slice. These videos keep getting big views, because people take in quality with all their senses at once.

Before the shoot

The hard part is the prep

Nobody on the floor has time to learn scripts, and they shouldn't need to. A memorized line gives itself away on camera, and people are convincing when they talk about what they do every day. So the work falls on us before the shoot.

We learn the subject ourselves: grading, breeds, prefectures, how Full Blood differs from Pure Bred, why one farm costs more than another. Then we build topics and work out who to ask about what, so on set each person just talks about what they know.

Content Production
Positioning
Product Research
Team Interviews
Content Testing

Testing

Test first, then publish

Much of the content goes to a test profile first, and only what proves itself moves to the main account. We shoot noticeably more than we publish, on purpose. Guessing what will work costs more than checking.

Why it matters

Owners often think social media is for businesses hunting for customers. In practice, anyone who gets checked out needs it, and the bigger the deal, the closer the buyer looks.

A chef about to put your meat on the menu under their own name will check you. So will a company placing orders worth tens of thousands. Then your account is proof: it either backs up what people have heard about you or contradicts it.

For a strong brand, the second is the most frustrating loss there is. The reputation is there, the product is one of a kind, and the storefront doesn't show it.