Ethan was a teenager when he started a whole-food, animal-based diet for health reasons, avoiding overly processed foods and plant-based oils.
The only thing he missed was his favorite snack — potato chips, which have been fried in vegetable oil in recent decades. However, a few brands, like Sterzing Chips, founded in 1930 in Iowa, never stopped making chips with tallow.
While scrolling TikTok, Ethan discovered a video of someone frying potatoes in beef tallow. It was a lightbulb moment.
Beef tallow is rendered cow fat that can be used in cooking, with a savory flavor and a high amount of saturated fats.
Ethan couldn’t find similar chips for sale anywhere nearby, so he started cooking his own with 100% pure beef tallow, adding only herbs and spices. He quickly went from making chips at home to renting space in a shared kitchen and selling out small-batch drops online every week.
“We were the very first company to create this product,” Ethan said.
Still, the initial process was labor-intensive: Ethan made 100 bags in a 12-hour shift.
At this stage, most small food businesses find a professional manufacturing company to take their recipe and create, package, and distribute the product. However, the Benders couldn’t find anyone to help.
“No one would work with beef tallow — it was too complicated to fill up the fryers with a solid fat,” Elise said.
Ethan’s father, Andrew, helped them see the roadblock as an opportunity: it would be a barrier of entry for competitors. Together, they found a facility, purchased equipment, and spent more than a year learning how to make the chips at a larger scale.
Meanwhile, the siblings started posting on social media about the benefits of beef tallow, increasing Beefy’s Own direct-to-consumer sales. By the end of 2025, sales were up by a factor of 10.
Then, they hit another roadblock: the slow bagging process meant production couldn’t keep up with demand.