But it was another 10 years or so before the business acquired a name -- Niman-Schell. Orville Schell was a writer and a member of a local commune whom Niman had met during a battle against the building of a four-lane highway and a sewage-treatment plant in Bolinas. They became friends and began working together on the farm. One day in December 1976, they were castrating pigs when a riderless horse trotted by. A moment later, a neighbor appeared and asked Niman whether Amy had been out riding that day. Niman looked at the horse. "I guess so," he said. It turned out she had been thrown and badly injured. She died a week later.
"It was the darkest time of my life," Niman says. "Depressed is not the right word. I was in pain." The daily demands of the farm saved him, as did the support of his circle of friends in Bolinas. But the effects lingered. "Losing a loved one, you regret not saying certain things, and things you did," he says. "It changes your life."
Niman threw himself into making their farm a success. In the beginning, he and Schell focused on pigs, feeding them out-of-date Nancy's Organic Yogurt and used barley from the Anchor Brewing Company. They sold the pork to friends and neighbors, who raved about it. Then, in 1977, an opportunity arose to purchase a 200-acre ranch in Bolinas. They bought it, taking on a $300,000 variable-rate mortgage in the process. Because the ranch was better suited for cows than pigs, they shifted their focus to raising calves from birth and selling them to other ranches.
And that might have been the end of the story, were it not for a precipitous drop in beef prices in the early 1980s. Already struggling to cover their monthly mortgage payments -- their interest rate had risen to 18 percent -- Niman and Schell realized that it made more financial sense to keep the calves to slaughter and sell the grass-fed beef to local grocery stores. Though more expensive than supermarket cuts, it was delicious. Word got around and, after an article about the meat appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, three top Bay Area restaurants started serving it. In a highly unusual move, they also put on their menus the name of the ranch it came from. Before long, Niman-Schell beef had a cult following in the region.
At the time, Niman didn't know enough to appreciate what the restaurants had just done for him. What he did know was that Niman-Schell Ranch was not even close to being a viable business. "We supported it by working outside," Niman says. "I was making $10 an hour in a construction crew." How long the business would have lasted is anybody's guess, but it was saved by a stroke of fortune. In 1984, the National Park Service decided to designate the ranch for inclusion in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It paid Niman and Schell $1.3 million for the land while granting them the right to live on it and farm it during their lifetimes and also allowing them to lease an additional 800 acres in the bargain. The windfall allowed Niman to quit his construction job and devote all his time to the business. A couple of years later, he and Schell persuaded Susie Tompkins Buell, a neighbor and co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, to lend them $500,000. With that loan and the money from the government, they were able to cover the ranch's ongoing losses for the next decade, as its reputation and its sales continued to grow.
And that became the pattern. Niman used his company to make the case for the humane treatment of animals, demonstrating that the meat really tasted better -- much better -- if you raised animals in the traditional manner, took good care of them, and did not pump them up with antibiotics and hormones to make them grow bigger, get to market sooner, and generate cash faster. He succeeded so well in making his case that he had to put together an extensive network of ranchers who raised cattle the same way and could help Niman Ranch keep up with demand. What Niman couldn't seem to figure out was how to make this business self-sustaining -- at least not on the scale at which he was trying to operate. But then, he didn't need to as long as he could get by with other people's money.
By 1997, however, that resource was running out, and the business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Right about then, Niman received a call from a Silicon Valley executive named Mike McConnell. McConnell had noticed the Niman-Schell name on the menu of a high-end Palo Alto restaurant and was calling to see if Niman had a job for his godson, who wanted to work on a ranch. "Bill said, 'Well, I don't really need people, but I've got a business opportunity,' " McConnell says. "He wanted to expand." Schell, on the other hand, decided to devote all his time to journalism. McConnell was looking for a new project, preferably one that would allow him to do some good in the world. He had already made a lot of money. He anted up $500,000 and became Niman's partner. A few months later, they were joined by Rob Hurlbut, a former Nestlé executive who also had seen the Niman-Schell name on a menu and contacted Niman seeking advice about a seafood business he wanted to start. Niman persuaded him to join Niman Ranch instead. The three of them ran Niman Ranch for the next nine years.
