Blog

Oct 26, 2024

Best Meat Delivery Services for 2024 - CNET

Article updated on October 19, 2024 at 2:10 PM PDT Not feeling like your grocery store has the quality meat you're looking for? Try these delivery services and skip the trip. CNET’s expert staff

Article updated on October 19, 2024 at 2:10 PM PDT

Not feeling like your grocery store has the quality meat you're looking for? Try these delivery services and skip the trip.

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

What to consider

Subscription or a la carte

Prefer to pick your meats each month or be surprised?

Types of meat

Online butchers in 2024 sell far more than just steak.

Fresh or frozen

Some services send frozen meat while others serve it up fresh.

Cost and value

We did the math and some services can save you money versus the supermarket.

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

What to consider

Subscription or a la carte

Prefer to pick your meats each month or be surprised?

Types of meat

Online butchers in 2024 sell far more than just steak.

Fresh or frozen

Some services send frozen meat while others serve it up fresh.

Cost and value

We did the math and some services can save you money versus the supermarket.

Getting your meat delivered through grocery services or going to the store to pick out your cuts still may not offer the quality of meat you'd like. This is where it may be worth trying out meat delivery services offering fresh, butcher-quality meat delivered right to your doorstep. This is our comprehensive guide to the best delivery services for meat, starting with Rastelli's for its wide selection. It may even make a good gift for the holiday season.

Having your grass-fed beef and organic chicken delivered might sound like a pricey luxury, but some meat delivery services offer value in addition to convenience. Lugging 10 pounds of chicken wings or a pork shoulder home for your next barbecue is no fun, but the right meat delivery service will shoulder that gruntwork for you.

Buying meat online is also key if you're looking for specialty cuts of lamb, venison, bison, duck or other poultry. Your local supermarket may not carry those niche offerings, and if they do, it's likely sold at premium prices.

From premium meat -- Wagyu and Kobe beef and Berkshire pork -- to more budget-friendly cuts such as flank and skirt steak, there is almost no end to your options when you order quickly shipped meats via online meat subscriptions and delivery services. There are also options to add chicken, lamb, sausages and seafood to your cart.

Below you'll find all the best meat delivery services and subscriptions for 2024, as tested by CNET.

Rastelli's started out as a small butcher shop in New Jersey serving its local community, but it's always put a premium on the best meat possible and is driven by a love of good food. Today it ships beef, poultry and seafood across the US from farms that produce responsibly raised meats free of antibiotics, steroids and hormones. It also sources wild-caught and sustainably raised seafood like Faroe Island salmon.

Prices vary depending on which butcher box you choose, and there are many options, including organic chicken wings, steak craft burgers, hardwood smoked bacon or grass-fed filet mignon. You can buy any curated box as a one-off meat delivery service purchase but will save if you subscribe.

Rastelli's gives a good amount of information on each product but it's not exhaustive, for better or worse. You can read about where the market sources most of its meats here, but the information is a bit general. If you're extremely meticulous about knowing the exact farm and farming practices associated with your meat, there are other delivery services that go a little further.

Butcher Box is a meat subscription service that offers a few types of meat but puts an emphasis on its 100% grass-fed and pasture-raised Australian beef. Grass-fed beef is said to be higher in antioxidants, vitamins and healthy fatty acids since it's pastured and its meat products are not raised on feedlots. Some say grass-fed has a purer beefy taste too. Australian beef is some of the most highly regulated in the world.

The company also offers heritage breed pork from pigs with plentiful outdoor access and an all-vegetarian diet from forage and feed, and free-range, organic chicken that's humanely raised, with no antibiotics or added hormones. It makes a point of mentioning that it works with "the best possible meat processing facilities" and believes in fair labor practices too.

When you sign up with this online butcher, you can choose from all beef, beef and chicken, beef and pork, a mixed box or create a custom box. In any case, you select from two different box sizes depending on how many people you're feeding (or how big your freezer is). Prices vary, but plans start at $146 per month. If you like complete control, the Custom Box is $169 per month and allows you to take your pick of over 20 different cuts like ground beef, top sirloin steaks, strip steaks, chuck roast, pork tenderloin, boneless pork chops, chicken breasts and drumsticks. All of the meat is vacuum-packed and frozen, and shipping is free.

Butcher Box starts at $146 per month. I compared this to what it would cost to buy meat from the grocery store and this is a little over $30 more. As a bonus, the company is usually running some sort of promotion, like free bacon for the life of your subscription or a huge surplus of free meat in your first shipment.

Based in Nashville, Porter Road offers a variety of cuts of prime beef, pork, lamb and chicken, sourced from Kentucky and Tennessee. Its beef is pasture-raised, grass-fed and grain-finished, but the company uses no added hormones or antibiotics and the animals are free to roam and graze.

Most of the company's meat is shipped fresh, but depending on the cut, some pieces will be frozen. You can order a la carte from more traditional options like pork chops, NY strip steaks, filet mignon, ribeye and ground beef, to less common cuts like Denver steak, lamb T-bones and andouille sausage, or choose from several butcher box options, like the all beef, pork and beef, or a "best of" assortment that arrives every two, four or eight weeks. You can add items to your meat delivery subscription too. ("Put a bird on it" if you'd like to have chicken next week.)

The Basics Box is $75 but specialty selections include the Breakfast Box and a Grilling Heroes Box ($110) with dry-aged steaks, dry-aged burger patties and bratwurst sausage links, with 6 pounds of meat.

Snake River Farms meat delivery service (and its partner, Double R Ranch) offer something truly special: not only dry-aged, USDA Prime beef, but American Wagyu (Kobe-style) beef, known for its rich marbling, tender texture and fantastic flavor. All Snake River Farm cows are raised sustainably and humanely in the Northwest, and it offers heritage breed Kurobuta Berkshire pork from pigs raised on small family farms in Idaho and the Midwest.

In addition to its exclusive (and accordingly expensive), chef-approved cuts of rare steak, it touts several sustainable ranching practices, from rotational grazing that promotes healthy rangelands to composting cattle waste and using beef tallow for fuel. Even the shipping foam in each butcher box can be dissolved and used as plant food, composted or used as a fire starter. In addition, the meat products company is a founding member of Beef Counts, which helps provide food to families in need.

But you're here for the Wagyu. While the company doesn't offer recurring meat delivery service subscriptions, you can buy all sorts of individual cuts like American Wagyu black grade cap and ribeye (prices vary), not to mention Wagyu burgers and hot dogs. Plus, Snake River has Kurobuta pork bacon and baby back ribs if it's pork you're after. Most Wagyu products are offered in both Gold Grade (the highest quality — and price — available), and Black Grade (still special but slightly less devastating to the wallet). As with most other meat delivery services, your cuts will come vacuum-sealed and frozen. Shipping costs vary, depending on how quickly you'd like to chow down.

Crowd Cow aims to "create an alternative to the current meat commodity system" by connecting consumers to quality meat from a carefully curated selection of small farms and independent ranches around the world. The specific offerings range from grass-fed beef and both Japanese and American Wagyu to pork, chicken and American-raised lamb (bison is a recent addition). There's even a grocery store selection of sustainable seafood for those craving surf and turf. You have the option to search by specific cut or type of meat or by the actual farm itself. Customers can purchase items a la carte, including organic, free-range chicken, bone-in pork chops or grass-fed ground beef. You can set your order to reoccurring and it'll ship monthly and then modify it whenever you like. No matter what meat box or seafood selection you choose, your haul arrives frozen and packaged in 100% recyclable and compostable materials. And it includes information on which farm it came from, making this a perfect option for those seeking transparency in addition to delicious meat.

If you're looking for the very best in beef and have a few extra pennies to spend on the good stuff, let us introduce you to Holy Grail Streak Co. The newcomer to the high-end meat delivery game sells the best American-raised Wagyu with a deep portfolio of top A5-grade Japanese Wagyu producers on the planet. This includes ultra-rare Hokkaido snow beef and beloved Kobe beef. On the website, you can sift through "collections" such as Japanese Wagyu, American Wagyu, USDA Prime Black Angus, Akaushi, steak flights and Wagyu burgers.

Holy Grail does sport an impressive menu, but it ain't cheap. Your best meat box bet here is buying in bulk versus purchasing in smaller quantities, which is much pricier. You can order one-time boxes or custom orders for yourself or choose from carefully curated beef boxes to send as a gift or care package. Enjoy free ground shipping when you spend more than $199 (not hard to do).

This online seller partners with farms and butchers from around the country to sell directly to you via a wide-ranging online marketplace of meats, wild-caught seafood, chicken and poultry. It has one of the best selections of any meat delivery service on the list and cuts go way beyond strip steak and chicken breast. Based on the name and branding, I was expecting more transparency as to where each one comes from, but most product pages simply say "from multiple farms" and don't provide much information beyond that. That said, if it's a large variety including hard-to-find cuts of meat you're looking for, this is probably the place to go.

Despite the fuzziness around the producers, most of the beef from Farm Foods is grass-fed or grass-finished including tenderloin and specialty cuts like osso bucco or brisket. But it's not just beef on the menu. The massive market also carries plenty of poultry products including chicken, duck, turkey and game birds. For pork, Farm Foods has lots to choose from and it all comes from heritage breeds. Everything from bacon to sausage, and ribs. There's even a small seafood section if you want to add a little surf to your turf. Shipping on any order over $125 is free.

Online grocery provider Thrive Market is also a one-stop shop, in a somewhat more traditional sense: The grocery store sells all manner of organic, 100% non-GMO, fair-trade products at wholesale prices, so you can buy various brands of things like paper towels, marinades and snacks, along with bundled boxes of meat and seafood.

To shop from the site, you must pay a $60 annual membership fee (which nets you guaranteed savings and free gifts, plus sponsors a free membership for a low-income family), but you can sign up for a 30-day free trial to test it out first. The company guarantees you'll make back your membership in savings every year, but if not, will give you store credit for the difference.

The company's meat delivery options are many and include 100% grass-fed, free-range beef from small and midsize, family-run ranches and farms, pasture-raised chicken with organic options and wild-caught seafood. You can bundle and save with Thrive's Paleo Box with as much as 20 servings of mixed meat and seafood for $136.

Omaha Steaks bills itself as "America's Original Butcher" and has certainly been in the carnivore-feeding business for a long time. Keeping up with the growing preference for grass-fed beef, both grain- and grass-fed are now offered (both options start with grass-fed but the signature beef is grain-finished).

Omaha is solid but it's not where I'd turn for super high-end cuts. The company doesn't advertise organic meat as many others do, nor provide much specific information about how and where the animals are raised. But the range of items available is somewhat staggering. From various cuts of beef (steak galore, including massive ling cuts as big as 48 ounces) and some harder-to-find cuts of bison, veal and lamb. Omaha also stocks plenty of pork, chicken and seafood as well as charcuterie, full meal kits, a la carte side dishes and desserts and even dog treats.

You can find some pretty good value with this online butcher, especially if you're willing to buy in bulk. While Omaha doesn't offer subscriptions by name, there are plenty of gift boxes that will net you a whole lot of meat for an approachable price. There are also rotating discounts on some of Omaha's best sellers. Shipping prices vary based on order total and how fast you want your stuff, but you can find some "free shipping" deals and combos on the site. There's also a Steaklover Reward Points program for committed carnivores.

If you want a meat subscription service that sends monthly packages of mixed beef, chicken pork and fish, Butcher Box, Porter Road. Crowd Cow or Omaha Steaks of curated sends so you don't have to think about it. Other services allow for one-time or recurring sends but you'll end up getting the exact same meat every time.

Butcher Box offers packages of mixed meat and seafood.

Different meat delivery services specialize in different cuts of meat. You can find high-end beef including Japanese Wagyu and USDA Prime beef at premium online butchers Holy Grail and Snake River Farms or basic cuts from services like Crowd Cow and Omaha Steaks. Some services also offer wild salmon and other seafood options. Thrive Market has a full inventory of groceries to knock out more than just your meat order.

Thrive Market delivers far more than meat.

Most services send meat flash-frozen to be defrosted or popped in the freezer for later. Porter Road and Omaha Steaks have the option for fresh, not frozen meat delivery if you prefer.

Omaha Steaks has bundles that rival supermarket prices.

Most meat subscriptions offer quality meat including grass-fed beef, organic chicken and wild fish. Because of that, it might be a step up in cost from your local supermarket. But depending on the type of meat you order, certain meat delivery services might actually save you money. If you order in bulk or scan the deals or sale sections of various online butchers, you can save even more with a meat delivery service.

As with meal kit subscriptions and grocery delivery services, companies that deliver meat and online butcher subscriptions have proliferated in the past several years. These services make it easy to use with express shipping and easy online markets to buy your favorite types of meat. Some specialize in grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic or Wagyu beef, while others focus on a wider range of fine meats and poultry, chicken cuts, sausage, cured meats or less common meats (such as wild boar and venison) that may not be sold at your neighborhood butcher.

Crowd Cow, Wild Fork Foods, Butcher Box and Amazon Fresh have the lowest prices of any meat delivery services we've tried.

If you want access to more types of high-quality meat and specific cuts, ordering meat online is a clear choice. Also, if you're looking for meat raised with higher standards, including humanely raised pork, grass-fed beef and organic chicken, you'll have a much better chance to find the exact cuts you want. Trust us, if one online meat shop doesn't have it, another will.

Many of the top meat delivery services function as monthly subscription boxes, so you can set up several months' worth of premium cuts to be shipped to you. Think grass-fed beef, dry-aged beef, heritage pork, boneless pork chop, flank steak, sirloin steak, strip steak, cured meat, New York strip, freshly ground meat, lean cuts, humanely raised poultry, wild salmon and other fresh seafood.