Our Story — Biltong from the Cape, Beef from Texas
The whole story, no myth-making:
I love biltong. Texas loves beef. And somehow, biltong is still a stranger here.
That's it. That's the origin story. No garage, no venture capital, no forced fairytale. Just a South African who grew up on the stuff, moved to the best beef state in America, and couldn't believe nobody here had tasted the best thing you can do to beef.
So who's Billi Tong?
Billi Tong is the patriarch we made up — part South African frontier farmer, part Texas rancher, all mustache and conviction. He's the character on the bag, and he isn't real. The Tong part is. I'm Calvern Tong, and my surname is literally half the product.
Biltong has followed me down a very winding road: Cape Town restaurants and the early days of BOS Ice Tea, teaching English in Taiwan, 2,500 hours underwater as a scuba instructor across Southeast Asia, running resorts in Fiji, and the last two years in Austin doing tech sales at Luxury Presence. Through all of it, biltong came with me. The full About Me is here — worth 60 seconds.
A passion project with standards
This isn't a faceless-brand play — it's a passion project with standards I won't bend, and it's the thing pulling me toward the next chapter of life. 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. Zero sugar, nothing you can't pronounce. And every Austin order I hand-deliver myself — everywhere else in the US ships flat-rate — because the part I love is putting great biltong in people's hands. When something's off, you text the guy whose name is on the bag. Half of it, anyway.
Beef worth bragging about
The next standard we're chasing: beef from Texas ranches that raise cattle the sustainable, regenerative way. Pasture-first, land-first — farms that treat the land as part of the herd. The ranch search is on right now. Why regenerative beef makes better biltong →
When we sign our ranch partner, their name goes right here on this page, where it belongs. Raise beef right? Our ranch-partner door is open →
Culture is not your friend
Terence McKenna said that about bigger things — but stand in a gas-station jerky aisle for sixty seconds and tell me he was wrong. Cooked, sugared, shrink-wrapped, ground into shapes nature never asked for. That's not a snack, that's a settlement.
Biltong is the older, stranger, better idea. South Africa worked it out 400 years ago: vinegar, salt, coriander, moving air, patience. A short ingredient list and a refusal to hurry. The full method and history →
Four hundred years, dried for days
- Cut thick. Whole muscle, with the grain. Never ground, never reshaped.
- Cure sharp. Vinegar, salt, toasted coriander, fennel — a cure, not a sugar bath.
- Hang high. Moving air, no ovens. McKenna said nature loves courage; nature apparently also loves waiting.
- Dried for days. Ready when it's ready, boet.
"If it wouldn't pass in the winelands, it doesn't get bagged."
The deal
Zero sugar, always. Grass-fed, always. The family recipe, always. Hand-delivered in Austin by me, shipped flat-rate everywhere else in the US — by the person whose name is on the bag.
Taste what Texas was missing →
Meet the founder · Biltong vs jerky, explained · Feed your office · hello@btbiltong.com
Slangin' beef, Cape to Texas · Austin, TX · Est. 2026 · Find the others.