Frequently Asked Questions

Step 1: Select Products

Click on your favourite products and select the quantity you wish to order. Note that selected items have variations that you can choose from.

Step 2: Click the ‘Add to Cart' button to add selected items to your shopping cart. Click the ‘View Cart’ button to add, change or remove items.

Step 3: On the ‘Shopping Cart’ page choose ‘Home Delivery’ option for delivery in Randburg and surrounding areas. OR Click ‘Pick-Up Point’ for Pretoria, Edenvale and areas that fall outside our home delivery areas.

Step 4: Proceed to ‘Checkout’ and fill in your personal details. Note that you do NOT have to create an account to be able to place an order. Continue to ‘Shipping’ and check that yourdetails are correct.

Step 5: Select payment option. Manual EFT, Snapscan and Payflex payment option are available. Should you select Manual EFT or Snapscan , the banking details or Snapscan Code will be sent to you via email.

Step 6: Delivery of your order. Willem or Piet will personally delivery your order to your home or selected pick-up point. Homedeliveries for Randburg and surrounding areas will take place on a Friday or Saturday. Deliveries for Pretoria and Edenvale will take place on a Saturday only. Please pay attention to our next delivery dates when placing an order.

Orders close on a Monday morning at 8:00 AM for delivery the coming Friday or Saturday. An order can be placed at any time BUT should it be place dafter 8:00 AM on a Monday morning your order will only be delivered the following week. The reason for this is that we send the orders through to the various farms for processing early on a Monday morning, once the orders are sent we cannot add to them. A route plan with an estimated delivery time will be sent to you via email on the Thursday before delivery.

Your area code does not fall within our home delivery area; you therefore need to choose one of our pick-up points at checkout:

·       Edenvale Longmeadow Engen Pick up Point Saturday/Sunday             

·       Midrand Virgin Active Parking Carlswald New Road Pick up point - Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Centurion Cresent Shopping Centre Lenchen Ave - Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Centurion Mall@Redds Shell Garage Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Engen Erasmusrand Saturday Pick up point

·       PTA Glenfair Centre – Lynwood Weekend Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Hazeldean Square parking close to KFC – Silverlakes Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Midlands Estate Gate – MT Cliff Gate Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Midstream Estate – Hutton Gate Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Moreleta Park – Moreleta Square Shopping Centre Saturday Pick up Point

·       PTA Irene Farm Villages Main Gate

Please contact us regarding this via email at info@meatthefarmer.co.za. It may be that your area code has not been loaded on our checkout page. We will rectify this and advise the way forward.

Home or office deliveries are done in Randburg and surrounding areas on a Friday or Saturday. The day of delivery will depend on where you are located and what you have ordered. We have various drop-off points in Pretoria where we meet our customers on a Saturday morning weekly. The drop-off points can be viewed under 'Delivery Areas'.

Your order would then be taken back to our premises in Randburg and frozen for you to collect at a pre-arranged time.

No, all of our products are transported in temperature controlled refrigerated vehicles.

Free delivery is applicable to orders above R1495. A standard rate ofR85 will be charged for orders under R1495 to your home/office in Randburg & surrounds and R75 to one of our various drop-off points in Pretoria.

The delivery fee partially covers some costs involved in getting transported from the various farms throughout South Africa to Gauteng. There are still costs involved in getting the products transported to the various pick-up points for your collection.

As it is a priority for us to bring you the freshest products possible we have to work with specific delivery and closing dates. We do not keep any stock on hand and orders are only sent through to the various farms and processed once they have been confirmed. We do not keep any frozen stock on hand to redistribute either.

We do not make use of a third party delivery service as we would like to keep our delivery fees as low as possible. All deliveries are done by Willem or Piet or both of them. This also ensures that your products reach you in the intended state and on time.

All of our products are delivered fresh with exception to some value added chicken & venison products. It may happen that a certain farm delivers the product earlier than intended; we therefore may freeze certain items to ensure maximum freshness and quality preservation.

In short yes and no. A great amount of effort, planning, pride and dedication goes into getting these amazing products to your door in Gauteng. Raising grass fed, free range livestock takes a lot of hard work and it more labour intensive in terms of following the stipulated quality control protocols and regulations. The turnaround time of getting these animals ready for the market is much slower than the alternative feedlot animals. This results in slower profit margins for the farmers themselves, hence the slight increase in price compared to the alternative. Our products come from various regions of our country, from the Eastern & Northern Free State, Eastern Cape as well as Natal to name a few. Great care goes into transporting these products to Gauteng to be delivered to our customers, at the same time maintaining the integrity of every item.

Should you take into consideration the above factors, our prices are right on par if not more affordable for the quality that you receive. It is part of our business ethics to try our very best to keep our prices as low as possible as we feel that healthier alternatives should be as affordable as possible.

The question is posed: "Instead of asking why healthy food is so expensive, ask yourself why unhealthy food is so cheap"

To ensure farmers are motivated to produce for 52 weeks of the year and not market all animals at once in a year, we need to be able to give them price surety. The price is set for as long as possible, the price is not raised when the markets turn the other way. Free range /grass-fed animal stake time to mature and to keep the market fed it needs to be stretched a bit further.  Without any other product to compare it to price wise, we try and create both producer and customer comfort that it is available at a certain price for 4-6 months of the year. Market prices for livestock is extremely volatile and it will create uncertainty if we were to change it on a weekly basis.

The following payment options are available:

·       Manual EFT (bank details are sent via email after an order is placed)

·       Snapscan (code is sent via email after an order is placed)

·       Payflex

Note: No cash or credit card payments will be accepted

Once an order has been placed and payment confirmed the order is set to be processed and cannot be reverted if the orders have already been sent through to the various farms. The reason for this is that the farms have already started processing your order and it would not be fair to them should an order be cancelled last minute. Should orders not have been sent through to the specific farms yet an order can possibly be reverted and payment refunded but an admin fee of R100 will apply.

Every effort is made to get exactly what you have ordered to you on time. Although we pride ourselves in the fact that we double check every order it may happen (very rarely) that a human error has been made. It is the customers' responsibility to check their order upon arrival and make sure that everything is correct, should it not be, we should be notified within 48 hours after delivery and we will rectify what might have gone wrong.

All products are handled and transported at carefully regulated temperatures to ensure that the products maintain their freshness and integrity. Once a delivery has been made, the responsibility falls to the customer to ensure that the products are refrigerated/frozen immediately and stored correctly. We do not take any responsibility for products that may have been damaged or gone off due to negligence from the customers' side after delivery has taken place.

Due to the complex nature of our products it may happen that some items could not be made available by the specific farmer for a specific delivery week. It may happen that a farmer might have a shortage of a certain item; we will only know this once we have received the items. Should this happen your account will be credited or we will make every effort to get the item to you on our next available delivery date. Should you prefer we will refund the specific amount to your account.

At Langside Meats we refer to our animals as Veld Reared, meaning they graze on natural veld with very limited supplementation;  Salt and Phosphate in the summer and Molasses, Urea, Phosphate and Salt in the winter. NO GRAINS OR STARCH IS FED TOOUR ANIMALS.  The animals have 6 Hectares each per year to graze on per annum, equivalent to 12 rugby fields.  We encourage animals to graze in herds like they were intended to when they were grazing in open plains with predators before industrialisation.

Cattle is a ruminant, meaning it has four stomachs that is designed to digests rough plant materials.  By adding a high energy diet with little roughage, the animals stomach needs to become more acidic to quicker digest the food as more quantities are consumed in stronger concentrations.  The body of the animal then needs to level the PH in the stomach so the flesh becomes more alkaline.  This then negatively effects health properties like omega 3 and CLA and changes the normal composition of the meat.

·    Less overall fat and unhealthy fat

·    Lower levels ofdietary cholesterol

·    Higher levels ofheart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids

·    More CLA(conjugated linoleic acid)

·    More heart disease-fightingantioxidant vitamins, like vitamin E

In short, yes. It takes an animal longer to round off on a natural diet, so animals are older.  This is not negative as the superior taste and health benefits out way the more bity texture.  Animals on natural veld and open spaces tend to develop more muscles and reserve energy inside the muscle, which is named marbling. We do dry aging to help tenderise the meat. The flavour outweighs texture by miles.

Dry age is a process where the beef is hanged on the bone in a controlled environment.  We hang our beef for at least 21 days, the moisture evaporates and enzymes break down the tissue at a slow pace to promote flavour and tenderness.  It is not a rotting process as the internal temperature is kept below 4 degrees Celsius; this encourages positive bacteria to do wonders.  The flavour profile definitely has a “nutty” taste to it, but not moldy at all.

As we do not use any preservatives in our beef and the animals are totally produced on wide open natural veld, the beef has a much more prominent natural taste, it also depends on the season, what food is available for the cattle and when they are slaughtered.  We work with nature and unlike feedlots where animals are fed a consistent diet, our cattle get to choose what they eat. There will be a prominent beef smell and a strong aroma when the packet is open, once you get used to it, you will learn to love it. That is the way real beef smells and in our modern society with factory farms, most people have lost the privilege of having untampered meat on their table. The richer fat and more omega 3 contributes to the natural smell and it is nothing to be worried about.

In our area, we are very fortunate to have cold and dry winters, so parasites die off in the winter.  We do not have to use any routine antibiotics and only dip our cattle three times a year.  When an animal does get sick and is treated with antibiotics, we take that animal out of the production system. Therefore our beef is 100% free of antibiotic.

Every packet of meat is traceable to the source, where it grazed, when it was slaughtered and how old the animal was.

We do not farm with a specific breed, but rather with well adapted animals.  Mostly we refer to our cattle as Beefmaster types.  The ideal animal is1/3 Indicus (Brahman or Boran cattle that is adapted to harsh climate and is hardy to resist disease) and 2/3 Taurus (mostly European breeds like Angus, Sussex and Hereford that have great meat to bone ratio and helps with tenderness and marbling).  So, in essence we farm with “cattle”.

From various farms in the Free State, mainly the Northern and Eastern Free State.

No these lambs have not gone through the formal process of being certified. The lambs roam on natural pasture from birth but may receive supplement feed where necessary to ensure that the animals are kept in the best condition they can possibly be.     

Unfortunately not, we only sell our lambs in the form of a whole lamb. You can however have a look at our ‘Cooking With Lamb’ boxes should you not wish to order a whole lamb.

Yes you may, as long as the two halves are delivered to the same address.

Yes

None whatsoever.

Not at all.

Yes, the chickens are free to roam outside during the day and go to sleep in their open houses when the sun goes down.

No products of animal origin including fish meal are included in the free range chicken feed.

The chickens are fed a vegetarian diet of grains and pulses only.

Yes absolutely, they chickens only get slaughtered after an order is confirmed, fresher chicken would be hard to find!

No, however the pork is certified with the Pork 360 farmed assured mark.

Our pork is sourced from the North West and produced on a welfare friendly farm. We have teamed up with a small family-run butchery in the Free State where all of the processing and packaging of our products are done.

No, they do not.