It is located adjacent to the heart of the shoulder clod, under the seven or paddle bone (shoulder blade or scapula). This cut of steak is from the shoulder of a beef animal. In 2012, sales of flat iron steak brought in approximately $80 million USD. The NCBA started promoting flat iron steak in 2001 and in the early 2000s Applebee's put it on the menu, and the Kroger grocery store chain started carrying the cut in 2006. Calkins and Johnson found that, while cutting out the tissue did result in a thin cut of beef, it plumped up well when cooked.

Removing this tissue was seen to be too much effort for value for meat processors to bother with, as it wasn't felt that enough meat would be recovered to make it worth the while. The research teams at both schools found that the top blade of the chuck, specifically the infraspinatus muscle, contained tender meat, but there was a large seam of tough connective tissue down the middle that had to be removed. Calkins and Johnson focused on the cheaper parts of beef, the chuck and the round, to see if a desirable steak could be produced from either of these.

Dwain Johnson at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and Chris Calkins at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln were given grants to help mitigate these issues.

The origin of flat iron steak began with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Beef Checkoff program in 1998, as an effort to reduce waste and promote beef, which was selling at a 25-50% discount in 1996 as compared to 1993. Flat iron steak (US), butlers' steak (UK), feather blade steak (UK) or oyster blade steak (Australia and New Zealand) is a cut of steak cut with the grain from the chuck, or shoulder of the animal.