Red Plains announces layoffs, new plan

Red Plains Grand Butchery in Comanche has announced an employee layoff and a new business model a year after opening its doors.

Butchery owner Trey Clinkenbeard confirmed the layoffs in a text message with The Comanche Times on Monday. He did not mention the number of employee layoffs. Clinkenbeard denied that the butchery was closing, contrary to what some social media posts were suggesting.

“Red Plains will remain in business but will pivot (the business model),” Clinkenbeard said. “Simply put, we are closing our kill floor operations and shifting our focus to four areas. Unfortunately, we had a layoff that was unavoidable.”

Those four areas are the smoke room, steak cutting/co packing, shipping and the new “Homerun Hero,” company.

1. Smoke Room

“The smoke room operations include making products for ourself, wholesale distribution and other clients in a white label capacity.”

2. Steak Cutting

“Steak cutting is the idea of taking box meat from a high speed kill operation and breaking it down further into retail ready/case ready products to the clients specifications. We will be doing similar things for our direct to consumer business and Delbert’s.”

3. Shipping Operation

“Our shipping operation will move to the plant so that the Dr. Pepper building can be sold off or leased out. We will continue to operate our direct to consumer website and shift our focus to things like the ‘Wurst Dad Ever’ promotion we had recently.”

4. Homerun Hero

“Homerun Hero is a sporting goods company that I am in the process of creating. It is based around a device that is designed to hold a ball tee within a ball bucket to make carrying coaches gear more convenient. We have a patent on the device. The company will center around improving coaches lives so they can be the best versions of themselves when coaching so that they can have the most positive impact on the kids as possible.”

Red Plains Grand Butchery held its groundbreaking in March 2022 and opened for business in June 2023 with 25 employees, making it one of the largest private employers in the city at the time.