Meat Subscription Club

By Mike Thayer

I love to cook and grill (and bake too thanks to Cindy!), I have a well stocked pantry, I’ve got a freezer full of goodies, which is mostly meat for grilling.

One thing I don’t love however, is grocery shopping. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I hate it, but it’s time consumption that doesn’t feel all that productive.

So a few months back, I tried one of those meal club kit outfits, getting a week’s worth of groceries delivered to your door.  The outfit I tried was EveryPlate.com, they provided high quality ingredients, timely delivery, the cost was BELOW what I paid for similar items at my local grocery store, the recipes were easy to follow and the most important thing – the food tasted really good!  My only problem was not enough recipes to my liking and you can only eat so many carrots and Yukon Gold potatoes (limited sides).

I like EveryPlate and may go back to them after they’ve added some more recipes and variety to their menu, but now that I travel a lot more than I used to, I also have to consider switching from a refrigerated product meal/grocery outfit – like EveryPlate is – to one that is frozen based.

Enter ButcherBox

This is a meat club, a box of meat shipped to your door once a month.  It’s not a box of groceries, it’s just MEAT, which is right up my alley!  You can order just beef, just chicken, just pork, or just seafood, you can custom order, mix and match, go with the deal of the month or just go with their pre-set options which is what I did.  I went with a monthly mix of beef, chicken and pork.  Bonus, is they do provide a number of recipes you can use to help you enjoy those fine cuts of meat and right now if you sign up, you can take advantage of free ground beef with your monthly orders!  There’s no obligation you can subscribe to the ‘meat club’ for as long as you like, you can cancel at anytime.  Another Bonus, you can add meats to your order.  Want a side of bacon?  Add it to your box, my next box for example, will include a slab of bacon and a package of all beef hotdogs for just $9 more.

Here’s what I got with my first order:  Boneless skinless chicken breasts; 85/15 ground beef (2 pounds free promo! A total of 4 pounds); NY Strip steaks; Sirloin Cap Roast, pork chops and bacon!   All told, about 15 pounds of meat for $133.  That breaks down to $8.86 a pound.  Given the price of beef these days that’s not a bad price.

In comparison, pricing things out at my local grocer, Dillon’s (a.k.a., Kroger), buying those same cuts of meat at regular price would have saved me some money, that 15 pounds of meat breaking down to $7.26 a pound.  At a savings of $1.60 a pound, I have to reconsider the convenience factor and the ‘free’ ground beef from ButcherBox becomes a “so what?”  I’m still paying more for meat.

ButcherBox is interesting and I’ll be ordering a second box to sample, but the savings just isn’t there like I thought it might be.  To continue to subscribe to this meat provider would be purely from a convenience standpoint.  It may be worth looking into another similar service.  I do like the convenience factor, but when considering the higher price, buying local becomes that much more important to me.  I haven’t sampled the meat yet, so I’m giving ButcherBox 3 out of 5 Bachelor on the Cheap stars.  The price isn’t worth a repeat buy, it’s NOT worth the free ground beef.

$pend Wisely My Friends…

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