A little venture into selling farm-fresh meat at the Keller’s Farmer Market has turned into two brick-and-mortar locations for Stephen Kirkland’s Z Bar Cattle Co.
Kirkland and his family raise cattle in Sunset, a rural area off Hwy. 287 northwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Anywhere between 400 and 700 Angus cows are on the farm. That led to them opening the Keller store in 2019. A second location in Argyle opened in September 2022. Kirkland started in the cattle business in 2008 after graduating from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. By 2014, he set up a shop selling a variety of meats at the Keller Farmers Market.
“There was a big demand for protein and knowing the source of your protein,” he said. “We had all the infrastructure, and we had the capability. Most people that raise cattle know very little about the beef industry in terms of meat science, myself included. I knew cattle, and I knew people wanted to know what the source of the beef was.”
Kirkland noted the farm does not use antibiotics or add hormones to the cattle to produce the beef.
