Some Home Depot hot dogs now made with wagyu, the fanciest beef on the market

What do Swift & Sons, the swanky Fulton Market steakhouse, and Fixin’ Franks, the surprisingly great hot dog stand located inside select Home Depot locations, have in common?

Both serve the finest kind of beef from a new Michigan-based wagyu producer called Vander Farmers.

Until recently, Mario and Marjolein vanderHulst were dairy farmers. They grew up in neighboring villages outside of Amsterdam, where their families also raised cows. “On both sides, we are dairy farmers,” Mario vanderHulst said. “My brother is milking cows. My cousins are milking cows. We live it and breathe it.”

In 2001, the couple moved to the United States, settling in Sturgis, Michigan, to start their own dairy farm. It might have stayed that way had Marjolein been able to get a specific Christmas present back in 2016. “She wanted to get this big tomahawk wagyu steak for me, but the company was out of stock until the spring,” Mario vanderHulst said. “I thought that maybe we could try to make it ourselves.”

Wagyu, regarded as the finest type of beef for its rich flavor and intense marbling of fat, refers to a breed of cattle originating in Japan. Different regions and cities in Japan pride themselves on their particular wagyu-raising methods — with Kobe beef, made in the Hyogo prefecture and its capital city, Kobe, among the most prized. Only in the past few decades did American farmers begin to produce wagyu in larger quantities, although the less-regulated U.S. market typically crossbreeds its wagyu for bigger yields and meatier cuts.

The vanderHulsts opted to cross Japanese Black cattle, the most common variety of wagyu, and Holstein dairy cows originating from their own native Netherlands. The resulting F1 cattle are 50% wagyu and 50% Holstein.

Mario was adamant from the beginning about treating the cows well. “This is not a big feedlot style of production,” Mario said. “We give them a sophisticated wagyu diet to shoot up tenderness and marbling. We know a couple of wagyu gurus that help us to create the right rations.”

[ Column: In Chicago, even Home Depot hot dogs are worth savoring ]

While the vanderHulsts were impressed by the beef from their cows, they were still focused on the dairy. Mario credits James Gray for helping them take the full wagyu plunge. Gray, a veteran of the Chicago restaurant scene, runs a consulting firm called Calibrate Coaching. “We met at a wedding at my Michigan property, Farrand Hall,” Gray said. “They told me, ‘We have these wagyu cows, could there be something to it?’ ”

With Gray’s help, the vanderHulsts created the brand Vander Farmers in June, with the idea of selling the wagyu to Chicago restaurants. It went better than expected. “We started sending our beef out, just to see if there was a need for our product,” Mario vanderHulst said. “Within 24 hours, we had chefs asking to put it on their menu. This is how it all started.”

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You can find Vander Farmers’ wagyu clearly listed on the menus at both Swift & Sons and El Che. Flour Power, a pasta shop in West Town, is also a frequent customer.

But the cheapest way to try the Vander Farmers’ wagyu is to head to Fixin’ Franks. As I discovered last year, the hot dog stand inside a handful of Home Depots uses top-quality sausages. Now Fixin’ Franks also serves wagyu steak dogs made with meat from Vander Farmers, which you can score for $8.

Right now, the couple is just trying to keep up with demand. They are negotiating with a couple of other restaurants while working with Dominique Leach from Lexington Betty Smokehouse to create a brand of wagyu steak dogs for retail. Hopefully, that project will be ready by the end of the year.

“This started as a hobby, but now it’s becoming a business model for us,” Mario vanderHulst said.

You can find the Vander Farmers’ wagyu steak dogs at Fixin’ Franks in these Home Depot locations: 2570 N. Elston Ave.; 8650 W. Dempster St.; 901 Civic Center Drive, Niles; 3500 N. Kimball Ave.; 2201 Oakton St., Evanston; 6211 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago; 350 E. Kensington Road, Mt. Prospect.

nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com

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