Wondering where the best — and cheapest — place is to buy meat in 2024? You might want to look online. Most people get their beef, chicken, pork and fish from the grocery store, but online meat delivery services and butchers-by-mail have become a popular alternative.
ButcherBox is one of our favorite meat box subscriptions (read our full review here). It’s simple and convenient and the company sources high-quality and humanely raised meat and delivers them to your door. But could a ButcherBox meat subscription actually be cheaper than buying meat at the market?
To find out, I did the math to see how much a shipment of ButcherBox’s premium meats would cost if you were to buy the same — or very similar — cuts at a midrange grocery store like Wegmans.
After crunching the numbers for three months of deliveries, I found that ButcherBox offers significant savings versus the same organic and grass-fed meats when bought from a brick-and-mortar market. If you include the cost of ButcherBox’s promotional gift (3 pounds of organic chicken in every box for a year), ButcherBox is a full 15% cheaper.
ButcherBox beef is grass-fed and much of it comes from Australia, where production standards are high.
ButcherBox
ButcherBox is a meat subscription that sends quality meats in custom or curated packages, and I do stress quality.
ButcherBox’s beef is grass-fed and humanely raised and much of it comes from Australia, which famously has higher beef production standards than those in the US. Chicken and poultry from ButcherBox are also certified humanely raised (GAP 3 or 4). If you’re confused about poultry labels, that’s because they’re confusing. Here’s a helpful guide to what chicken labels really mean.
ButcherBox offers exceptional quality at better prices than your typical midrange grocery store.
Tyler Lizenby/CNET
You might be thinking this is a no-brainer, and have your mouse fired up ready to check out as a new ButcherBox subscriber; and that very well may be a smart money move.
But it’s important to consider that ButcherBox specializes in high-quality meats and, in some cases, premium cuts. If you already buy organic poultry, wild-caught salmon and seafood and don’t mind splurging on a grass-fed ribeye steak, ButcherBox is clearly a better deal than shopping at a midrange or high-end grocery store.
Plus, you don’t have to lug the meats home with you. Your haul of beef, pork chicken and fish shows up at your door, ready to be thawed or frozen for later.
Keep in mind…
If you don’t already buy premium meat, you might end up spending more