Overberg
Small Overberg restaurants now order boutique sika venison packs from our Sika Quiet Pasture for their seasonal menus.
A handful of Overberg farm-table chefs asked for manageable, top-quality venison with traceable provenance. Our sika-based boutique packs meet their needs while supporting responsible, low-stress deer farming.
The hills and valleys outside Caledon and Bredasdorp hold a fast-growing farm-table scene. Smaller chef-led kitchens there often struggle to source ethical venison in manageable lots. Large game carcasses are too much for a few covers a night, and supermarket venison rarely carries a true farm story. When local chefs started asking for traceable, small-batch venison, we realised there was space for a different approach in the Overberg.
Our Overberg office had already been fielding questions from two or three local restaurants about venison that reflected the countryside here: gentle slopes, windbreak poplars, and wide old pastures. Any new programme would need to suit the chefs’ small kitchen cool rooms and changing seasonal menus.
We selected sika deer from our quieter Karoo paddocks for a programme called Sika Quiet Pasture, aiming at calm, well-settled animals that do well in small herds. These animals are managed with strict low-stress handling and a diet that keeps the flavour gentle but characteristic. For the chefs, we developed our Farm Table Venison packs: named lots of sika venison, portioned for kitchens serving 10 to 30 covers, with provenance and cold-chain detail supplied by our venison provenance manager.
Each lot is slaughtered at our registered partner abattoir and held in the Karoo Edge cold room, which has solar and battery backup, before refrigerated delivery to the Overberg. Chefs who visit Karoo Edge can book a walk to the sika camps with our farm visits coordinator.
The chefs using Sika Quiet Pasture packs started building dishes around the Karoo Edge camps the sika come from. Feedback mentioned how the smaller, well-aged cuts made it easier to avoid food waste and plan new specials as their covers rose and fell. For us, it meant we could keep our sika herd in good condition year-round, with fewer stressors and more of each day spent grazing quietly.
Animal welfare improved on both ends: on the farm, animals destined for boutique packs are kept in smaller camps away from high-traffic areas, and on the plate, their story is told openly. At times we didn’t have quite enough supply to go around for everyone, so we rotated which restaurants received packs, and made sure to be upfront about our waiting list.
Next season, we plan to increase the notice period for restaurant orders and to offer a few more farm walk slots so chefs can visit when it suits their menu planning. We’d also like to bring our pasture and forage manager in for a spring forage day to show how pasture selection shapes the venison’s flavour.
In future, we’ll formalise the waiting list process and look into a simple WhatsApp update for chefs on upcoming pack availability. Our team also saw the benefit of offering similar packs using fallow or chital venison in regions where sika are less suited. For any questions or to book a farm visit, please send a message through our contact form.
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