Cal Ripken, Roseda Foods partner for gourmet burgers
Baseball Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken and Monkton, Md., Roseda Beef have teamed up to offer Ripken Gourmet Burgers. The burgers debuted last week, in time for the Memorial Day weekend, and were initially available in 30 Giant Food stores in Maryland, Washington D.C. And Northern Virginia, with plans to double the number of locations soon.
Ripken said that the Ripken Baseball Complex, home to the Aberdeen IronBirds minor-league baseball team, has been serving Roseda burgers for more than a year with great success, reports the Washington Post. Giant will be the exclusive carrier of the all-natural, dry-aged burgers.
Roseda Black Angus Farm, which was started in 1996 by Ed A. Burchell with the purchase of six heifers from a ranch in Kansas, has grown into a $12 million business. Burchell first started selling his beef to neighbors and grocery stores in 1999.
The 350-acre farm in Monkton is home to 150 Angus bulls. Roseda, which is named after Burchell and his wife, Rosemary, annually processes 2,500 head of hormone-free cattle, Burchell said.
“Obviously with the Giant account, that’s going to grow,” he said.
In 2010, Burchell partnered with Bill Ruppersberger of Geo. G. Ruppersberger & Sons Inc. to form Old Line Custom Meat Co., a 17,000-square-foot meat processing company on Monroe Street in Baltimore.
The beef from Roseda’s cattle is processed and dry-aged for 14 days at the Baltimore facility. The dry-aging process adds taste and tenderness, Burchell said.
“Cal’s reputation obviously speaks for itself,” Burchell said. “The last thing I would want to do, having been born and raised in Baltimore my whole life, is try to interface a product with (Ripken) that somehow didn’t meet his standards of excellence.”
Source: Washington Post
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