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Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks were the flagship product of the Bonnee Frozen Products Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which also produced frozen tamales and cubed steaks. Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks consisted of “finely chopped beef, molded, frozen, sliced and buttered.” They were sold in packages which each contained four frozen 2-ounce beef patties and four frozen pats of 94-score butter.



Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks cost 58 cents a pound in 1956, which at that time was 10 cents a pound more than smoked ham. The beef steak patties were slim, so they could be cooked to perfection in about two minutes, using an iron skillet on a gas stove. Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks co-sponsored the St. Louis Hop television show (the St. Louis version of Philadelphia’s "American Bandstand"). The dance contest winners were provided with the products of the show's sponsors, Bonne Belle Cosmetics, Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks, and Pepsi-Cola.

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks were originated by businessman Sam Brown (1913 - 1996), President of Bonnee Frozen Products Co., and produced from the mid-1940's to the early 1960's at the company plant on Olive Street Road in St. Louis, Missouri. Sam Brown had conceived the idea while working as a traveling salesman. He had observed that the food quality in small town restaurants was hit-or-miss and concluded that restaurant owners would welcome a meat course which had consistently-high quality and was nationally distributed. Starting with $125 of borrowed capital, within ten years Sam Brown had a multi-million dollar business, manufacturing and distributing Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks to grocery stores, restaurants, and commissaries in 38 states in the United States and in eight foreign countries.

