Butcher Box Review: Monthly Subscription of Grass Fed Beef
Monthly subscription boxes quickly became a craze within the last couple years, with product subscriptions ranging from dog toys and crazy socks to STEM and coding activities for kids. Butcher Box jumped onto this train back in 2015 as a successfully funded Kickstarter, raising over $200K from more than 1,000 backers. Their service is simple: pick a curated box (or create a custom box) filled with various frozen meats and have them delivered to your door. However, shipping meat to your door isn’t exactly a new service; Omaha Steaks has been delivering steaks for over 100 years. And, conversely, fellow newcomers Crowd Cow offer something completely unique – crowd funded beef delivered to your doorstep. So, what sets Butcher Box apart from the other guys in the industry? Let’s walk through a full Butcher Box review, including picking out your order, delivery, price, and quality.
How Butcher Box Works
Butcher Box is amazingly simple to get started – simply pull up their website and pick the best sized box for you and your family. There are four general packages to chose from, including:
Curated Box
- Classic Box: 8-11 lbs of meat for $129/month
- Big Box: 16-22 lbs of meat for $238/month
Custom Box
- Classic Box: 12-16 lbs of meat for $149/month
- Big Box: 20-26 lbs of meat for $270/month
Once you decide which size is the best fit for you, simply place an order just like any other website. This will be delivered on a monthly basis, however you can cancel at any time.
Butcher Box Review
Upon opening the box, you will find a black bag/cooler (the insulated bags you can use for keeping groceries cool) with Butcher Box’s logo stamped on it and a few paper materials about your order. Inside the bag, you will find the holy grail of meat kept frozen by multiple pieces of dry ice. Obligatory danger warning: do not touch dry ice!
For the purpose of this review, we received a Custom Classic box, which consisted of the following (sizes are not exact):
- 2lb center cut pork chops
- 2.5lb St Louis Style Spareribs
- 2.85lb organic chicken breasts
- 2lb ground beef
- 2 10oz NY Strips
- 2 12oz beef top sirloin steaks
- 1 package of bacon (not pictured, because I prematurely ate it. I’m only a little ashamed)
Butcher Box Quality
Overall, I was very pleased with the quality of meat. The company seems to have found a perfect fit between Crowd Cow (amazing quality and taste, but really pricey) and Omaha Steaks (still up there in price, but lower quality than Butcher Box). Moreover, utilizing sous vide cooking can turn these cuts of meat into something extraordinary. Just take a look at a few of the pictures I took from cooking up my first box:
Sirloin Steak
Boneless Pork Chops
Final Thoughts on Butcher Box
Price is obviously the next part for discussion. You can likely pick these items up at a local grocery store at a lower cost, but its ultimately the convenience you’re paying for. If you live in an area with ample selection of high quality, grass-fed, and organic meat, and you don’t mind going out for groceries every week or so, Butcher Box might not be for you. If you hate grocery shopping like me and do not live in a city with butchers on every block, you won’t be disappointed with this service.
Can you Sous Vide in the package that Butcher Box sends it in. Minus the label.?
can the meat come in sepreate packages
I tried this service for 6 months. At first it seemed great, but as the months past, the variety got worse and worse. Twice the order came with open packaging alone the seams. I decided to cancel the subscription when our last order can with only “party chicken wings and ground meat”. I never once received tri-tip or pork loin. Nor did I receive any chicken with the skin on it. Even though I requested it. For the money it just wasn’t worth it. We found a local Butcher who carries Grass Fed and finished meats. Plus a much better variety.