Calvern Tong — Founder, Billi Tong's Biltong
I grew up on biltong, then landed in the most beef-proud corner of America and couldn't buy a decent bag anywhere. So I started making the introduction.
My name is half the product
My surname is Tong. As in bil-tong. Some people inherit a family business — I got handed half the word, and a family recipe to go with it. I grew up in South Africa, where biltong isn't a snack, it's infrastructure: in the car on every road trip, on the table at every rugby match, in every kid's fist at every braai. You don't discover biltong there. You're raised on it.
The long way to Austin
I cut my teeth in the Cape Town restaurant scene and had a hand in building BOS Ice Tea, the rooibos brand that went from Cape Town to the world. Then I got restless. I taught English in Taiwan, logged 2,500 hours underwater as a scuba instructor and guide across Southeast Asia, and ran resorts in Fiji — before landing in Austin, where I've spent the last two years in tech sales at Luxury Presence.
Different continents, different jobs, one constant: biltong came with me everywhere. Customs officials had questions. I always had an answer — usually still chewing it. At some point a lifelong habit quietly turned into the plan.
What I won’t bend on
The recipe is my family's, from the Cape winelands — vinegar, salt, toasted coriander, fennel, and a stubbornness that's also inherited. Grass-fed beef. Air-dried for days, never cooked — 0g sugar, protein-packed. Nothing on the label a grandpa wouldn't recognise. If it wouldn't pass in the winelands, it doesn't get bagged.
And every Austin order I hand-deliver myself — everywhere else ships flat-rate across the US. The part I love isn't the logistics; it's putting genuinely good biltong in someone's hand and watching the "oh" land.
Where this is going
Billi Tong's is a passion project with a one-way door on it — the thing pulling me out of the sales pipeline and into the next chapter of life. A real product, made properly, that I'd like to see in hands all across the States. Start in Austin, do it right, then go everywhere. Come along.
And we're building it on beef raised right. Right now I'm out looking for a Texas ranch partner that raises cattle the sustainable, regenerative way — pasture-first, land-first. When we sign, their name goes on the site, where it belongs. Raise beef right? Come build with us →
Everything I write here — how biltong is made, why it isn't jerky, how to store it — comes from actually living this for years, on more continents than most biltong brands have flavours.
Find me
LinkedIn Calvern Tong · Instagram @billitongsbiltong · hello@btbiltong.com · Austin, TX