What started as a desire to help a few homesick Somali friends turned into Ryan Fee’s nationwide camel milk business.
Fee is based in Colorado, but Camel Culture Milk comes from dairy farms in southwestern Missouri and has about 10 halal stores in Kansas City’s historic northeast neighborhood, including Baraka Halal Market and Tawakal Halal Store. It can be found on market shelves.
It all started in 2015 when Fee and his wife, Lauren, were living in Seattle and volunteering with the refugee resettlement program.
“We got to know many of these Somali families really well and learned a lot about their culture and life in their homeland,” he said. shared the story of [it]And one of the things they miss the most, we hear from every Somali family we interact with, is that they miss camels and camel milk. “
This made Fee and his wife think about what they would miss if they had to resettle in Somalia or elsewhere.
“When many immigrants and refugees came to the United States, we found that the United States did not treat them the way many other countries around the world treat Westerners,” he said. “In parts of the world, we see things that are very Western, like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coca-Cola products. So we were like, ‘Man, these people are here.’ I think I got the feeling that I must be missing the feeling of being at home.
“Everything seems foreign. They don’t know where they are and nothing feels or tastes like home.”
Fee started researching and networking and found a camel dairy in Colorado that shipped to Seattle. He wanted a way to bring some peace of mind to his neighbors in Somalia, so he asked Somali business owners if they would be interested in selling in his shop, which carries other products from East Africa. rice field.
“He was like, ‘Well, you won’t believe it until you actually see the camel milk and make sure it’s real,'” Fee recalled the conversation. I was.
So he shipped some out of Colorado for taste testing.
“They were ecstatic,” he continued. “Nobody in the store could believe that camel milk was there.”
Fee said the milk was such a hit that it sold out within 48 hours of hitting the shelves. So they kept ordering more.
“After about three months of doing that, it’s like, ‘Well, it seems to be picking up momentum,'” he said. I have or 4. As a way to bless our neighbors in Somalia, we can also set up a LLC to start a business and turn it into a hobby business, so in 2016 we launched a camel milk company. I did.”
While doing market research for a commercial real estate firm, he was able to find time to sell the milk within the Seattle community, eventually stocking it on the shelves of nearly every Somali-owned shop and restaurant. He said that he had placed a
Do you have camel milk?
In late 2016, Fee began talking about expanding to other cities with large Somali refugee populations.
“I knew there were about 500,000 Somalis in the United States,” he explained. “So we started connecting with other communities and places in the Midwest, like Kansas City, Minneapolis, Sioux Falls.”
They began shipping to other Somali-owned halal markets in these communities, and in 2018, Fee and his family sold the camel dairy farm where they worked at the time and the communities they serve. To be closer, I decided to move to Colorado.
“Seattle was one of the few western Somali communities in North America,” he said. “Most of them were like Colorado and the East.”
But the same year they moved out, he said, they grew out of a farm in Colorado. Located roughly halfway between Joplin and Springfield, the farm is run by an Amish-his Mennonite community.
“It’s actually the largest camel dairy in the United States,” he noted. “So we bought milk from them and started doing the same thing, shipping all over the country to these different halal markets owned by Somalia. Over the years, it started to grow even bigger.”
From camel farm to table
Fee says Miller’s farm has more than 200 dromedaries (a type of animal with a hump), and his Camel Culture company owns about 20 of them.
“We wanted to invest in camels and eventually in the farm that we’re working on,” he added. not only for the sake of it, but also offered us a little price reduction going forward.”
He said he makes it a point to go and visit the farm, which has just built a new facility, and meet with the owner and his team two or three times a year.
“It’s a really, really cool place to just go and visit,” he said. “It’s so beautiful to see lush green meadows with rolling hills like those in southwestern Missouri, and these wild giants roaming about. Kids love it.”
On the farm, he said, milking camels is different than milking cows. First, fee sharing, no need to sit. Second, a camel must have a calf to unload milk, and there are few opportunities to do so.
“Milk drops for about 90 seconds,” he explained. “So it takes 90 seconds to capture the milk before it is essentially cut off from the camel. So it has to be done very quickly. , means that the calf is always with the mother. So the calf can drink milk all day, and then the calf stays in the stall with the mother or mother for 90 seconds while it is breastfeeding from the mother. increase.”
That’s part of why camel’s milk is more expensive than cow’s milk, he continued. is $156, or $26 per liter.
“In contrast to cows, you’re feeding two mouths instead of one,” he said. You don’t have to have calves with cows.”
In addition, camels produce less milk than cows.
“A camel produces about 6 to 8 liters of water a day and a cow about 8 to 10 gallons of water,” he added.
“Desert Superfood”
When Fee started selling camel milk, he quickly learned that there were other customers who were happy to buy their products, not just those who had missed their homeland.
Fee says camel milk has less lactose and casein (which is easier to digest), less saturated fat, 10 times more iron, and 5 times more vitamin C than cow’s milk. Plus, it’s rich in protein, probiotics. , and other vitamins and minerals. Worldwide, it is often compared to nutritious breast milk.
“It’s the second closest thing to breast milk,” he added. “Its health benefits are amazing. … It’s an all-purpose natural superfood.”
Milk is rapidly pasteurized according to camel culture sites, making it not only safe to drink but also nutritious.
In the midst of the pandemic, he said 2021 was the best year yet for the company.
“I think people started to realize the health benefits of camel milk and realized that this product, maybe this milk, could protect me from everything that was going on in the world.” It was really cool to see how people clung to this idea that a product could actually give you life. Because there is such a negative connotation to what comes.
More than just milk
At the beginning of the pandemic, Fee wasn’t sure how his business would be affected, so he turned to other companies to reach out to more refugees and migrants from outside Somalia, such as Morocco, Yemen and Syria. Launched several products.
“All these places in camel culture – think like North Africa, the Horn of Africa, or the Middle East – whether people are persecuted, famine or drought or war, People have to flee. When they come to America, a foreign land, their home,” he explained. “So how can we continue to provide our products and bless people in these other communities, not just Somalia?”
So, at the end of 2020, the company rebranded to Camel Culture to reflect its move beyond just milk. Later, it started selling camel milk powder from the United Arab Emirates, dates from Tunisia, and camel milk soap from Oman.
The milk arm of the business is all self-financing, Fee said, but Camel Culture is starting to look for investors to expand its product line (though the monsoons in northern Australia are a bit behind).
“All of our funding and investments are currently on hold,” he said. “But as far as milk is concerned, we’ve been bootstrapping from the beginning. We bought the first box, sold it, and used the money to buy the next box. So it’s great to see it grow.”
This article originally appeared on Startland News, a member of the KC Media Collective.