Best Meat Delivery Services for Memorial Day Weekend

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. And it 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 drumsticks, steak craft burgers, hardwood smoked bacon or grass-fed filet mignon tips. You can buy any box as a one-off meat delivery service purchase but will save 5% 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.

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 $60 (or $4.69 per serving), but specialty selections like the Breakfast Box are also available — the Grill Heroes Box contains dry-aged steaks, dry-aged burger patties and bratwurst sausage links for $95, with 6 pounds of meat total, or $6.56 per serving. It’s also put together a Stay at Home meat box bundle at $90 with dry-aged ground beef, ground pork, Italian sausage and breakfast sausage (11 pounds of meat total, or $3.07 per serving).

ButcherBox 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 $99 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. 

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.

If you fancy the fancy stuff, I’m talking tender and flavorful ribeyes, Pre is where you’ll find it. A 10-pack of impossibly tender 10-ounce grass-fed ribeyes can be had for $160. That’s a lot of quality beef for a good price and likely cheaper than you’ll find the same steaks at Whole Foods or another specialty shop. 

Pre stocks other cuts including tender filet mignons, sirloins and ground beef along with variety boxes and bundles with some of each.  

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, filet mignon 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, like this 24-pack of burgers — half Wagyu and half carrot-fed — 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 (definitely not hard to do).

This online seller partners with farms and butchers from around the country to sell directly to you via an expansive 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 — cuts go way beyond steak and chicken breasts. 

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 FarmFoods’ beef 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, FarmFoods has lots to choose from and it all comes from heritage breeds. Everything from thick-cut pork belly and 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 $99 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 — and 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 $149.

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); read more about how each option compares. 

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 “king 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 and variety packs that will net you a whole lot of meat for an approachable price. There are also rotating sales with lots of tasty 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.