Need Pride Month Snacks for the Office? Try Two Chicks Jerky!

In the summer of 2012, married couple Shannon Ronan and Breelyn MacDonald put their bartending jobs on hold, tossed their backpacks into the back of their Honda Fit, and left their home in San Rafael, California, for the open road. 

“We took five months and hiked and camped and ate our way around the country,” Shannon told The FruitGuys. “We saw tons of national parks and lots of barbecue joints.” 

Shannon and Breelyn visited thirty-five states and fifteen national parks on that five-month adventure. Along the way, they had three constant companions: Each other, their Honda, and an enormous stockpile of homemade beef jerky. 

From Road Trip Snack to Family Business

The jerky was a hit with their fellow hikers, just like it was with their friends and family at home. By the time Shannon and Breelyn trundled back into San Rafael that fall, they knew they wanted to start a jerky business. 

Their gluten-free jerky brand, Two Chicks Jerky, officially launched three years later. 

Now, The FruitGuys is featuring two flavors of their beef jerky—Classic and Habanero—as our Snacks of the Month in June 2024 to celebrate Pride Month. We’ll add Two Chicks Jerky to all of our Thoughtful Snack Boxes and offer it by the case for office Pride Month celebrations. 

“We are extremely proud to be the only women- and LGBT-owned jerky brand in the country,” Shannon told us. “It’s pretty darn cool.”

Jerky Without the ‘Junk’ 

Buying jerky from the supermarket is easy—so what inspired Shannon and Breelyn to make their own? According to Breelyn, it all started when Shannon went down the homesteading rabbit hole. Early forays into pickling and preserving eventually led her to try out homemade jerky. Her recipe was simple, without what she calls “junk”: antibiotics, added nitrites or nitrates (apart from those naturally occurring in sea salt), and hormones. 

“We can make it so much better ourselves because we have control of what goes into it,” Breelyn explained. 

Shannon and Breelyn like to eat whole foods, and Shannon’s jerky recipe follows that philosophy. It calls for honey instead of processed sugar, and the chewy pieces are seasoned with garlic, black pepper, tamari (a gluten-free alternative to soy sauce), and lime. But the star of the show is beef from grass-fed, humanely raised cattle. 

Sourcing Grass-Fed Beef

In the early days, Shannan and Breelyn sourced their beef exclusively from Richards Grassfed Beef (now Richards Regenerative) in Oregon House, California. But as their company grew—thanks largely to a partnership with Zoe’s Meats, which took over distribution of Two Chicks in 2017—their beef demand surpassed Richards’ supply. 

“Once we grew to a certain capacity we had to start sourcing from multiple places,” Shannon said. “But the parameters will never change. Our jerky will always be grass-fed with no junk in it.”

Today, Two Chicks sources grass-fed beef for its gluten-free jerky from cattle ranches in Idaho, Oregon, California, and beyond.

Proudly LGBTQ+-Owned

Two Chicks Jerky has been Certified LGBT-owned since 2021. For Shannon and Breelyn, that certification is a huge point of pride. 

“It’s great to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, especially in the jerky world which is so masculine-oriented. It’s nice to represent,” Shannon said

Not only does the certification set Two Chicks apart (and make their jerky a perfect Pride Month snack), but it also celebrates the co-founder/owners’ love story. 

Two Chicks, True Love

Shannon and Breelyn both grew up in the small town of Nevada City, California, but they didn’t officially meet until 2003. That year, in their early 20s, they both found work at the same restaurant. Their friendship started with soccer games and night swimming adventures, then evolved into a long-distance relationship when Breelyn moved to Florida for a job. 

“We stayed in touch over the phone and our relationship flourished there because we had so much time to just talk,” Breelyn said. “… Then I moved back when she was in San Francisco, and like true lesbians we just moved right in together.”

In 2007, Shannon planned a romantic getaway for the two of them on the banks of the Russian River in Guerneville, California. Funnily enough, she and Breelyn both packed engagement rings—and they proposed to each other at the same time!

“We got married at San Francisco City Hall right before Prop 8 passed,” Breelyn said, referring to a California state constitutional amendment that temporarily banned same-sex marriage.  “… [When we reached out to schedule our ceremony], the next day from 3 to 3:30 p.m. was the only appointment before voting day.”

Luckily, that last-minute wedding led to a happily ever after—jerky included. 

Office Snacks That Give Back

In 2019, Shannon and Breelyn started a Giving Back Initiative at Two Chicks to give back to their community.

“From the very beginning at Two Chicks Jerky, as the only women- and LGBTQ+-owned jerky company in the country, Bree and I wanted to use our business platform to support causes that align with our values of inclusivity and building a more compassionate and equitable world for all,” Shannon told The FruitGuys.

The Giving Back Initiative does just that. Through it, Shannon and Breelyn donate a fluctuating portion of Two Chicks’ online sales proceeds to the nonprofit Looking Out Foundation. 

“We originally rotated the nonprofits we would donate to (past recipients being Bear Yuba Land Trust, Color of Change, the ACLU, and One Tam), but through our love of the music of Brandi Carlile, we discovered the amazing nonprofit the Looking Out Foundation, which was started by the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and her bandmates, Tim and Phil Hanseroth,” Shannon said. 

The Looking Out Foundation spreads its funds across a range of causes Shannon and Breelyn care about, including the arts, community development, women’s rights, education, the environment, healthcare, human and civil rights, and more. 

If you’re looking for Pride Month snacks for the office, you can’t go wrong with a mission-minded, LGBTQ+-owned brand like Two Chicks Jerky.