You get everything else delivered right to your doorstep, so why wouldn’t you be looking for the best meat delivery services? No, not meal delivery services. MEAT. Delivered. To you. No more settling for the suspiciously red beef at the grocery store or showing up at the local artisan butcher shop to find all the good cuts have been taken. Only the good stuff. Dropped off right at your door.
A lot of the best meat delivery services (i.e. the only ones we would recommend to you) partner with farms from around the country to ship the highest grade of sustainably-sourced, ethically-produced meat directly to you. You’ll probably pay a little more for online meat delivery, but consider that a convenience fee for skipping the line to get the primo cuts.
Like T-bones, not all online meat delivery companies are created equal. Some retailers specialize in grocery-store essentials, like affordable ground beef and whole chickens, others in premium beef (as in, they know the difference between Angus and A5). There are also a range of seafood options for the pescatarians among us. A few require you to commit to a subscription, while others let you just buy a pound or two a la carte.
Now that you’re not having to run to the grocery store anymore to fill the fridge, just make sure you’re supplement all this meat with a little bit of greens, okay?
Porter Road: For a Mixture of High-Quality Basics and Tasty Extras
Porter Road’s wide selection comes from farms in Kentucky and Tennessee. It includes staples you’d expect, like ground beef and whole chickens, along with extras like lamb racks and kielbasa. Prices on all of these feel remarkably fair—the company’s ground beef is dry-aged but still only costs $8 per pound. Considering the value of something like the company’s “Best Of” box (eight pounds of beef, pork, and loose sausage for $128 with shipping), we think it’s worth eschewing the butcher section at the grocery store. If you want to order à la carte, maybe to grab a whole brisket for fantasy draft day or a July 4th barbecue, Porter Road even throws in free shipping for orders of over $125.
Crowd Cow: For All the Staples
Crowd Cow is an online butcher shop that offers all the basics you might use in a week: ground beef, whole chickens, sausage, salmon, and bacon. Prices are reasonable (a pound of ground beef costs $10), and the website is well-designed and easy to navigate. The company recently raised its minimum order to $99, but any order of more than $149 gets free shipping. If you’re willing to subscribe to get the same order at a regular cadence, you’ll save 5% plus get free shipping, to boot.
Rastelli’s: If You’re Just Trying to Fill Your Freezer
Rastelli’s delivery service operates out of the company’s New Jersey grocery stores but delivers nationwide. The company offers a focused selection of staples, including pretty much anything—from grass-fed beef to seafood—you’d expect from your local butcher shop. Pricing is reasonable, and you can earn rewards to cash in for gift cards on future purchases. It costs a whopping $25 to ship any orders under $100, but only $10 for more expensive orders, and nada for orders over $200—so it pays to bulk up your freezer section in one go.
Anyone who loves beef knows that wagyu is prized for its intense marbling and supreme beef flavor, and wagyu beef is widely considered to be top tier. But some wagyu is better than other wagyu, and only the best of the best ends up in Holy Grail Steak Co.’s inventory. The company partners with farms that take cattle raising seriously, ensuring that the cows never get hormones or antibiotics, but are grown sustainably. The brand’s Japanese Kobe is the real-deal stuff, coming from some of the most sought-after farms in Japan. The only thing missing from its Japanese wagyu is a plane ticket to the country. If you’re not looking for that special meat, Holy Grail Steak Co. carries a wide range of equally delicious steaks and high-end pork.
Umamicart: For Asian-Focused Dishes
Umamicart is a fairly new online grocery delivery service, one that specializes in Asian groceries from snacks to meat to produce. You’ll find select cuts of meats that are reserved for certain Asian dishes, whether it’s Korean barbecue, thinly sliced beef for hot pot, or pre-marinated meats for Vietnamese dishes. Half of the fun of Umamicart is browsing the aisles, er, categories to see what new things you might want to try and cook.
ButcherBox: For Nixing the Trips to the Supermarket
With ButcherBox, you’re going to get regular meat and seafood deliveries whenever you want. The company offers free shipping, as well as curated boxes if pre-determined meals are more your thing. Probably the best part about ButcherBox is the seemingly endless number of customization options you can make with your deliveries, which will essentially replace your regular trips to the grocery store or butcher shop. ButcherBox prides itself on its sustainable sourcing practices, and it only provides humanely raised and harvested meats, so you’ll get wild-caught seafood, free-range turkeys, crate-free pigs, and the like. And if you’re not in the mood to create your own shopping list, ButcherBox offers a curated plan, which includes 8.5 to 11 pounds of meat per delivery.
Vermont Wagyu: For American-Raised Wagyu
Japanese wagyu gets all the praise because of its ultimate beefy flavor and butter-like consistency. But American wagyu is offering something just as good. At Vermont Wagyu, its cows are genetically related to the Japanese cows, except the meat is far more affordable and offers just as much of the flavor. Where Japanese wagyu seemingly melts into a pool of liquid fat, Vermont Wagyu’s steaks still have an excellent chew when you’d rather eat your meat instead of drinking it.
Snake River Farms: Grade-A Steak for Special Occasions
Snake River Farms is not the place to go if you’re looking for pantry staples. (You can certainly get them there, but you’ll pay a premium.) Instead, the real draw of Snake River Farms is its high-quality, fancy stuff. This is where you go if you want to tackle a two-pound, dry-aged, bone-in ribeye steak. Regardless of how much you spend, shipping will cost $10.
Prices across D’artagnan’s wide selection of meats are good, but you’ll always have to pay for FedEx overnight delivery, which can get pricey. It’s the only place we’ve ever seen ready-to-assemble charcuterie boards, though—a handy little time hack for showoff dinner party hosts.
Omaha Steaks: If You Only Trust a Company That Your Grandmother Loved
Odds are that before you read this article, Omaha Steaks was the only online meat-delivery service you had ever heard of. The company, founded over 100 years ago, was one of the first to move its selection online. It shows in the labyrinthine website—there’s so much going on with every page that it’s difficult to find what you actually want. The simplest thing to do is to just look through the available combos, which all ship for free, and pick one that suits you best. Just look at the fine print: some of the combos include frozen potato dishes, desserts, and seasoning packages, which aren’t Omaha’s strengths.
Halal Pastures has a relatively limited selection of staple meats, like basic cuts of chicken and beef, and shipping costs are totaled depending on the weight of your order. Besides all of its offerings being halal, the brand also only sells organic meat. Sadly, Halal Pastures has ditched its free shipping minimum because of rising shipping costs. If you do need halal meat within the continental United States, though, you don’t have many other options.
DeBragga: If You Crave Fancy Dry-Aged Steaks
If your go-to pizza order is a meat-lovers supreme, DeBragga might be the best meat delivery service for you. DeBragga does sell other cuts of meat, but getting any of them would be a little like ordering chicken tenders at Per Se. All of the meats ship from New Jersey for a flat rate.
Pat LaFrieda: For a Taste of New York’s Finest
Name-brand beef might not seem like a thing, but when it comes to some of the best-quality meats around, Pat LaFrieda is a name (maybe the name) to know. The LaFrieda family history goes way back, over a 100 years, and it’s one of the top meat purveyors to some of New York’s greatest restaurants, steakhouses, and bougie family homes. If you’ve ever had a Shake Shack burger, well, that patty comes courtesy of the LaFriedas. Aside from beef, Pat LaFrieda offers a wide selection of proteins including pork, chicken, lamb, veal, and more. Anyone looking to shop for better meats will also be happy to know that the company offers pasture-raised, grass-fed, and organic options to suit their fancy.
Good Chop: Regularly Delivered Customizable Boxes of Meat
Usually when you’re shopping at an online butcher, you’re stuck a pre-curated box of meats. With Good Chop, you assemble your own box—from beef to chicken and pork to seafood—that’ll be delivered to you every four weeks. (Honestly, a meat subscription just might be the best type of subscription box). The brand offers two options: a medium-sized box that can be packed with up to 14 pounds of food (estimated to hold 36 servings), or a larger box that’ll hold up to 28 pounds of food (or an estimated 72 portions). Goop Chop only stocks USDA-organic certified beef and poultry, PQA-certified pork, and MSC-certified seafood, so you know you’re getting some excellent quality products every time, too.
FarmFoods: For Knowing Where Your Animals Were Raised
FarmFoods sounds exactly like what you’re getting: food from farms. Sure, even your typical grocery store fare probably came from a farm—but if you asked the guy behind the deli counter exactly which farm, he sure as hell wouldn’t know. At FarmFoods, each piece of meat comes from a partnering farm where the chickens, cows, and pigs are humanely raised, without antibiotics, steroids, or added hormones. While knowing exactly where your dinner grew up might be the reason vegans go vegan, the carnivores among us will appreciate that the animals lived decent lives before they ended up at your doorstep—and then on your plate.
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