Oak Barn Beef in West Point, Nebraska: The Story Behind the Beef Box

Some business stories begin with a product. Oak Barn Beef’s begins with the distance between a working farm and the family deciding what to put on the dinner table.

In a March 2022 profile for Nebraska Farmer, Curt Arens traced the West Point business to Hannah Klitz’s interest in helping consumers understand where beef comes from. Her work as a Nebraska Beef ambassador and her time in the University of Nebraska’s Engler Entrepreneurship program helped shape that interest. She and Eric Klitz began by selling beef shares, then moved toward individual cuts, bundles and subscription boxes. The profile described them as the people running the company together.

The story is specific about how the work changed. A retired hog barn on Eric’s parents’ farm became freezer, storage and shipping space. A perishable product had to move through processing, packing and delivery. The report describes the couple learning the logistics as demand grew, not simply adding a new sales channel and assuming the details would work themselves out.

Arens reported a sharp jump in orders during the early pandemic period: what had once been a busy day of five boxes had become a day of roughly 175, and subscribers increased from seven to nearly 100. Those figures belong to that March 2022 report; they are a historical snapshot, not a statement about later or present-day volume. The article also described customer communication as part of the business: the founders wanted buyers to understand the farm-to-table path, and used email, social media and other digital tools to explain it.

For a buyer, that explanation connects the cut in the box to choices made much earlier in the process. It gives another owner a prompt to ask which part of their work customers cannot see until someone takes time to explain it.

The useful idea for another owner is not simply to sell beef online. It is that a product may need a clear explanation and an operating path that can carry the promise all the way to the customer. A good offer can be hard to see if people do not understand where it comes from, and a successful order can strain a team if shipping, storage and ownership are fuzzy.