Day in the life

From Ranch to Plate

Story by Dina O’Meara
Photography by Jason Molyneaux

The O’Connor family takes “home grown” to a new level when supplying their Canadian Rocky Mountain Resort hotels and restaurants.

What’s a restaurateur to do when quality ingredients aren’t available for signature dishes? Why, grow your own, say Pat and Connie O’Connor, owners of Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts, a small empire of historic lodges and trendy urban restaurants. But when the O’Connors talk about producing their own restaurant supplies, they mean bison, not broccoli, and caribou, not carrots.

It started about 25 years ago when Pat and Connie saw, fell in love with and bought their first mountain lodge. They soon purchased two others and began extensive renovations to the three properties, known today as Buffalo Mountain Lodge in Banff, Deer Lodge in Lake Louise, and Emerald Lake Lodge in Yoho National Park. They have since expanded their holdings to include Cilantro, Divino and The Ranche restaurants in Calgary and have earned international acclaim for their mouth-watering menus in lodge dining rooms and restaurants, largely thanks to their creative use of regional game meats and local produce.

“Pat and I love good food, and knowing where our food comes from is very important to us,” says Connie. Such a commitment has also seen the duo buy a bakery and launch a wine boutique to ensure all aspects of an eating experience at their restaurants reach O’Connor standards.

By the 1990s, wild meats like venison, caribou, elk and buffalo had become a focal point of their trademark Rocky Mountain cuisine. And when they couldn’t find a consistent supply of high-quality local game meat for their kitchens, Pat and Connie turned to their roots in the grasslands of Alberta – and toward son Brad (pictured left).

On the Ranch

The stocky 33-year-old caught the ranching bug as a child exploring the O’Connors’ land with his grandfather, John Blackie O’Connor. In 1996, after graduating with a degree in agriculture from Olds College, he took over the family ranch and began raising elk, buffalo and reindeer.

“When I got into agriculture, we saw the opportunity to get into the elk and bison business; that excited us,” says Brad. “We’d always had problems with supply, consistency of product, and we thought if we could control it, we’d have a premier product.”

Canadian Rocky Mountain Ranch is located on 540 acres of rolling foothills in the southwest corner of Calgary’s expanded city limits. Brad, now a fourth generation rancher, serves as farm operations manager and looks after the broad range of details involved in running the ranch and marketing and selling the products.

Launching the game farm had its initial challenges, but Brad researched similar operations across Alberta and learned to avoid some common mistakes. Unlike cattle ranches, a game farm requires tall fences to keep agile deer and elk in. Also, when building handling pens, the sheer size and speed of the animals has to be taken into account. “Buffalo are extremely strong animals, very fast,” Brad says. “They don’t need much to get up to full speed, they’re agile. Elk are the same; they’re very athletic animals.” 

Of the 600 to 800 animals on the ranch, approximately 100 are bison, 100 caribou, and the rest elk. “Keeping the animals in a calm state, with natural feed as much as possible results in higher quality meat,” Brad says. Bison are great to ranch because they’re hardy, independent and keep their distance, Brad says. Elk are friendlier, which gets to be a problem because they’re still wild and also quite strong, and can injure humans and themselves if they feel threatened. The big bonus with all the game animals is they require less care than cattle because they don’t require special shelters, they graze on native grasses (as well as getting supplementary feed grown on the ranch), and they consume less food during the winter season.

The O’Connors hired livestock health expert Dr. Terry Church to serve as the resident veterinarian; he oversees the health and management of the game animals as well as looking after product development.

The meticulous research and hiring of expert staff like Church has seen the O’Connors’ game venture blossom into a successful business. Today the Canadian Rocky Mountain Ranch ships about 10,000 pounds of elk meat a year to the O’Connors’ restaurants and lodges, and sells another 35,000 pounds to distributors like Bridge Brand and Community Natural Foods in Alberta and Trim Pack in British Columbia.

One offshoot of the game business is production of elk antler velvet, an ingredient believed by some  to boost the immune system and decrease inflammation associated with arthritis. The antlers are clipped and the velvet processed into pills at a facility in northern Alberta. In 2003, Brad started selling the freeze-dried antler velvet directly through his company Quiva.

In the Restaurants

The O’Connors take special measures to educate their chefs about game meat and keep current with the chefs’ and the restaurant’s needs. Brad personally delivers the meat to the restaurants, a technique learned from his mom, the creative force behind the family establishments. Brad and the chefs discuss what products they like best, what they’d like to see more of, and if there are new ways to use the different meats. Communication with the head of each kitchen is vital to the smooth performance of the restaurant, not only to keep the chefs happy, but to be able to use all of the different cuts of meat in the menu, he says.

To familiarize staff members with the meat they are serving in their restaurants, chefs and waiters get to tour the ranch and see exactly how the animals are raised. “They’re the ones selling the food, so we try to get them out at least once a year,” says Brad. “We totally rely on our chefs, and totally trust them,” adds Connie. The result is tantalizing dishes that are savoured by tourists and locals alike such as northern caribou medallions in a black currant and port glaze or slow-smoked elk flat iron steak with sweet corn custard.

While both Pat and Connie take part in taste tests at the restaurants and approving all menus, Connie is the detail person in the duo and makes a point of visiting the various establishments each week to meet with managers and discuss menus, changing requirements and trends in the public. Bison, for example, is growing in popularity at Calgary restaurants The Ranche, Cilantros, and Divinos, she notes, whereas caribou is the favourite with tourists at the mountain lodges.

Promoting their products and educating their own staff is fairly straightforward, but the O’Connors also make efforts to market their products to other restaurants. One of the most successful marketing tools for the game ranch has proved to be education – teaching other chefs about how to cook bison and elk. Several times during the summer months, Brad will don fancy cowboy duffs to welcome guests during one of the ranch’s popular game seminars, where chefs from across Alberta and B.C. are invited to a sumptuous dinner prepared by Canadian Rocky Mountain Resort chefs, and later taught how to work with game meat.

Generational Efforts

Allowing offspring the chance to explore different directions has proven key to the O’Connors’ success as a fourth-generation family business. Pat and Connie never insisted their children work for the family firms; in fact, the couple encouraged them to work for other people, and hone their skills and interests elsewhere. However, all four of Pat and Connie’s children – Brad, Ryan, Larkin, and daughter Courtney – are now involved in one way or another with the company.

“We all have a ball together,” Connie muses. “It’s great, really. Interesting how all have come into their own; they’re all pretty diversified.” A strong commitment to the family and encouragement to constantly grow and change keeps the O’Connors healthy, both at home and at work.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” says Brad. “We all work very well together; from generation to generation (the business) has stayed and grown and changed, and everyone’s had input along the way.”

And that ability to work well together has translated into a unique business approach that allows the O’Connors to have strong control over the quality of product their customers are getting –
from the grains the bison, elk and caribou eat, to how the ranch is run to the culinary expertise used in presenting the final product. It’s no wonder they enjoy what they’re doing.