Hawke's Bay

Stripped Jerky is a hobby turned business. In 2002 I took off to the USA on my first big overseas adventure. I spent the winter in a small town called Telluride (CO), where I landed myself a job mixing drinks in the lobby bar of a 5 star hotel. The best thing about Telluride was it had an average of 300 sunny days a year and an uncanny habit of getting dumped on almost every night by the freshest, softest powder (snow) known to wo/man. Ride all day, work all night that was the life and I loved it!

​Soon after moving to the US of A? I found another love. Jerky! This delicious, nutritious, stomach filling taste bud dancing ‘portable power pack’ was the most epic snack/lunch/ dinner when you were lost on a mountain or doing a double shift spinning ‘Bostons’ for the rich and famous. I tried all kinds of jerky. Beef, venison, moose, elk, even turkey jerky was good! Of course the best stuff always came from the little guy doing it the all natural way.

When I moved home after many years away I went looking for that jerky fix and what I found was NZ had very little on offer, particularly in natural jerky. I guess this was my light bulb moment when I started making my own.

A few years later, with a bunch of great recipes under my belt I decided I wanted to take my jerky to the market and that’s when I started Stripped Jerky. Keeping it all natural was the name of the game from the get go and why not? I had been making it this way for years!

Going on four years now we've graduated from the farmers market to being available in your local store wherever you are in this fine land. We're still using NZ beef (it's Wagyu now!!!!) and still keeping it natural just the way you like it. It really is the ultimate portable power snack perfect for the outdoors, sports and enjoying with a cold beer.

Products like jerky are fast becoming an everyday item for Kiwi’s particularly for people conscious about what they are eating. High protein, low fat and low sugar are the key selling points behind jerky and that combined with Stripped Jerky’s ethos of excluding artificial flavour, colours and preservatives makes us one of if not the best offering out there!

We hope you enjoy our jerky as much as we do.

– Mike Gray