When Patrick Montgomery returned to civilian life after serving as a U.S. Army Ranger, he was determined to become veterinarian. Instead, Montgomery ended up becoming a first generation rancher and making the “Best Hot Dog in the World” from the premium Wagyu beef produced by his Kansas City Cattle Co. Using the momentum of his success, he launched “Valor Provisions” in 2023, a direct-to-consumer marketplace for other U.S. veteran ranchers to sell their products.
Montgomery left the Army in 2014, after serving in two tours in Afghanistan as a member of the 1st Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He spent the last six months of his service assisting in the veterinary office on post at Fort Riley. This stint inspired him to pursue a degree in animal science from the University of Missouri. However, he soon came to the realization that animal medicine was not his calling and switched to a business major.
Still wanting to work with animals and inspired by an entrepreneurship course, Montgomery started dreaming of starting his own business. “One of the things that I noticed while I was there was just this huge disconnect between the people that produce the food in this country and the people that actually consume the food in this country,” Montgomery said on the Black Rifle Coffee Podcast in 2022. “I saw an opportunity there.”
While still working on his degree, he met fellow veteran and U.S. Ranger, Josh Eilers, owner of Ranger Cattle in Austin, Texas, who had began raising American Wagyu beef. Montgomery would go on to intern at the ranch as he was putting together his business plan.
Montgomery got K.C. Cattle Company off the ground in 2016 when he bought his full-blooded Wagyu cow and her calf, and brought them back to his ranch near Weston, Missouri. The business was far from an overnight success. As Montgomery recalls of the ventures early days, “I was literally slinging steaks out of the back of a pickup truck and selling a couple of local restaurants, but we didn’t really have a viable business yet.”
The company did enjoy some sporadic bursts in business as news outlets started sniffing out the rare American Wagyu beef suppliers. However, the surge in orders was never maintained and the business continued to struggle until a huge stroke of luck in 2019 when Food & Wine magazine declared KC Cattle Co.’s hot dogs the best in the world.
As Montgomery recounted on the Black Rifle Coffee Podcast, he was helping a neighbor put up fencing when his phone starting blowing up with sales notifications. At the time, the company was used to fielding about 30 orders a week; in about five minutes, it had received more than 1,000.
After filling as many orders as it could (Montgomery said he had only about 30 packs of hot dogs in stock at the time — and 1.5 employees), KC Cattle Co. ended up with a lot of backorders and offered refunds to those unwilling to wait the extra time. That event — which the company now refers to as “The Hot Dog Extravaganza” — really set the stage for the company’s eventual success. Customers attracted to the website by the hot dogs ended up buying other cuts of meat, and KC Cattle Co. began to grow.
Montgomery’s business has always kept a particular focus on boosting U.S. veterans. He chose to employ a staff composed of nearly all veterans, partly in tribute to his his brother-in-law, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Katzenberger, a fellow member of the U.S. Rangers who was killed in combat in Afghanistan in June 2011. Montgomery and Katzenberger had always talked about one day starting a business together, albeit a private contracting company and not his current enterprise.
When Katzenberger passed, Montgomery made the trip back to the Kansas City area “to bring him home” to Katzenberger’s wife, and Montgomery’s sister Colleen. Montgomery is not a fan of the phrase “things happen for a reason,” when it comes to the loss of young soldiers’s lives, but he recognizes there is a lesson to be found in that loss. “They give you perspective on just how fortunate you are to be on this planet, and specifically within this country, and enjoy the freedoms that we do,” he said. “It’s just being thankful for everything.”
His desire to support U.S. military veterans is the motivation behind Valor Provisions, launched in 2024. The online marketplace brings together protein producers from across the country which are all military veterans. The website explains that the mission is “to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America’s hardworking farmers and veterans, providing a marketplace that honors their dedication and the quality of their work.”
Patrick sees a parallel between military service and ag production — with one percent of the population providing a vital service for the other ninety-nine. “And there’s such a disconnect between them,” he says.
Looking forward, Montgomery hopes to establish a path for American farms and ranches that provides both economic sustainability and a reliable source of nutritious food, he told AgDaily in recent interview. “We can spend the entirety of our GDP on defense, but if you can’t feed your populace or your Army because America doesn’t produce whole food groups, we lose every time.”
Learn more about Valor Provisions HERE and K.C. Cattle Company HERE (Sources: AgDaily, Drovers, Forbes, Black Rifle Coffee Podcast)
