Food & Drink

The 5 Best Online Meat Delivery Services of 2025

WDC NEWS 6 STAFF 14 hours ago

34 7 minutes read

Credit: Porter Road

Pros

There’s a huge assortment of beef, pork, and chicken, with a simple shipping policy and easy-to-use website.

Ordering high-quality meats from Porter Road is simple. The website makes it easy to sort the dozens of options by protein type as well as cooking time and method. Want a beef cut to leave on the smoker all day? Try chuck roast. Looking for pork that cooks in a skillet in 30 minutes or less? A bavette could be for you. There’s also chicken, a selection of sausages, and a few seafood items (which are hidden away in the market section alongside seasonings and sauces).

Most of Porter Road’s products come fresh, and shipping costs are very simple. Orders over $125 ship for a flat rate — $0, $25, or $55, depending on how close you are to the company’s home base in Kentucky. Subscriptions are available for delivery every two, four, or eight weeks, with four different assortments to choose from.

All the individual choices Porter Road offers can get a little overwhelming, and we honestly wish there were a few more subscription options and curated boxes available. The Butcher’s Choice and Best of Porter Road are a nice taste of everything, but you might be better off building your own bundle once you figure out your own favorites. (You can “customize” the subscription boxes, but only by adding extra items, not by removing anything.)

Ships: Fresh and frozen | Delivery area: 48 contiguous states

Best Meat Delivery Service for Beef

Crowd Cow

Credit: Crowd Cow

Crowd Cow carries chicken, pork, seafood, and even sides and desserts, but as the name suggests, it specializes in beef. You can choose from grass-fed, pasture-raised, and a staggering seven different sources for Wagyu. That includes Australian and American versions of the prized heavily marbled beef, along with steaks from five separate regions of Japan. If you want to taste real-deal A5-certified Kobe beef, Crowd Cow is the place to get it.

Everything from Crowd Cow ships frozen, which is great for quality control and makes shipping less complicated: All orders over $149 ship free within the contiguous US. Just keep in mind that you’ll need a day or two for things to defrost before cooking; plan accordingly as you order. There’s also a subscription program that’s fully customizable, allowing you to choose whatever items you want every two, three, four, six, or eight weeks.

The main issue with Crowd Cow is that it’s pricey. Fancy steaks shipped over from Japan simply aren’t cheap. There’s a single 12-ounce striploin that goes for over $200! Even the base-level meats are sustainably raised and still pretty costly; you’ll definitely want to hit that minimum to get free shipping and save a few bucks.

Ships: Frozen | Delivery area: 48 contiguous states

Credit: Pasturebird

Pasturebird is justifiably proud of its pasture-raised chickens — so much so that you can visit the farm they come from in Georgia. The birds have room to run around and forage for insects and seeds, which makes them smaller, leaner, and more flavorful than what you’ll often find at the supermarket.

Prices are also surprisingly low, especially if you order enough to hit the $149 free-shipping minimum. You can set up recurring deliveries to get a 10 percent discount and free bonus items, to boot. Pasturebird is a great choice for chicken, but it sells only chicken. You can choose from wings, drumsticks, thighs, breasts, or whole birds, and that’s it.

Ships: Frozen | Delivery area: 48 contiguous states

Credit: Campo Grande

Jamón Ibérico is one of Spain’s most famous culinary exports, often called the world’s best ham. Part of the reason it’s the best is the breed of pig it comes from: Ibérico hogs, native to Spain, have heavily marbled meat, with tasty fat spread throughout instead of just around the edges. (This is the same reason Wagyu beef is better than the standard stuff.)

Campo Grande specializes in Ibérico pork, in both cured and fresh form. You can create a custom one-time shipment or subscription by choosing from 28 different cuts, sausages, and charcuterie items — even pork pastrami — alongside traditional jamón. There are also a handful of beef and quail options, but pork is absolutely the focus here. If you don’t want to pick out items yourself, we recommend the BBQ Grill Master Box, which has an assortment of pork chops, ribs, and steaks made for outdoor grilling and smoking.

This is high-quality pork, and it’s also high-priced pork. Campo Grande is expensive to start with, and it has a higher minimum for free shipping than other retailers, at $248. The most economical option might be to make one huge chest freezer–filling order, as you get free bonus ribs and pork shoulder if you hit $500 and $1,000, respectively.

Ships: Frozen | Delivery area: All states

Credit: Meat N’ Bone

Despite the name, Meat N’ Bone dazzles us most with its global selection of seafood. You can find huge prawns from Africa, farmed sole from Spain, wild trout from Idaho, and dozens more. For lovers of homemade sushi and sashimi, there’s authentic otoro tuna along with other fish suitable for enjoying raw.

But Meat N’ Bone carries plenty of other meats, including Wagyu beef from the US and Japan, heritage pork, chicken, and duck, and game meats like bison, elk, and wild boar. You can even make the ultimate investment in charcuterie: a $1,600 whole Ibérico ham.

Meat N’ Bone is based in Miami and offers free delivery throughout South and Central Florida. However, that location makes shipping more complicated for the rest of the country. The brand will send orders anywhere in the US (including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) via two-day air, but that gets very expensive from Miami to, say, California. The minimum order for free shipping varies from $150 within the Southeast to $300 out west.

Ships: Frozen | Delivery area: All states and Puerto Rico

Factors to Consider

Shipping

Whether it’s going fresh or frozen, meat needs to be packed with plenty of ice and insulation, and it needs to ship quickly enough to stay cold the whole time. Like meal delivery services, meat delivery services go through a lot of trouble to ensure deliveries go smoothly, and you’ll rarely run into problems with items arriving spoiled. Meat typically ships via overnight or two-day methods, which are quite expensive.

Most online meat delivery services offer free or at least discounted shipping above a certain order minimum, and it’s often worthwhile to tack on some extra items to hit that number and save some money. If you do have to pay for shipping, the rate will depend on the locations of the retailer and recipient, and you may not be able to see the exact cost until the very end of the checkout process.

If you’re sending meat as a gift, tell the giftee to expect it! Yes, it might ruin the surprise, but that’s better than finding a forgotten box of rotten steaks a week after it was dropped off.

Sourcing

It’s easy to find meat at any grocery store; what online meat delivery services sell is usually something special. Sustainable agricultural practices are often a focus, with grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chicken, and other meats raised in a way to reduce carbon emissions and treat the animals as well as possible.

Things get more complicated with seafood, where the exact species, location, and method used for fishing all affect sustainability. Check the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, and look for the same details in the retailer’s product listing.

Many online meat delivery services import special items from particular regions around the world. Things like Ibérico ham and Japanese A5 Wagyu beef have to be produced under strict regulations that ensure quality but also make prices higher. It’s often difficult to find these products elsewhere.

Subscriptions

Most online meat retailers offer you the option to make a single order or to create a recurring subscription. If you sign up in advance to get a box on a regular schedule (monthly is most common, but there are other frequencies available), you’ll often get a price discount, free shipping, or complementary gift items. A subscription can mean the same assortment of items in every shipment, though some retailers let you customize your meats at least somewhat, if not build each box entirely from scratch. Subscriptions often renew automatically, and it’s a good idea to make yourself a calendar reminder to cancel a month or so before your final delivery.

Frequently Asked Questions

How should I store meat once it arrives?

You should unpack and store your delivery as soon as possible. Items will usually ship vacuum-packed individually or in small groups, and there’s no reason to open the packages until you’re ready to cook them. If it’s already frozen, it can go straight into the freezer and should keep for weeks to months depending on the item. If you plan to cook frozen items soon, put them in the refrigerator to thaw overnight; this is slower but safer than letting something thaw unevenly on the counter.

If meat ships fresh, you can generally keep it in the refrigerator for two to three days, or put it in the freezer for longer-term storage. Just check the retailer’s instructions for your specific items — some things shouldn’t be re-frozen after thawing, and some can’t be frozen at all.

What should I do if my order arrives thawed?

When your delivery arrives, there should still be chunks of dry ice or at least partially frozen ice packs in the box. If the meat feels anything other than refrigerator-cold (or if meat that shipped frozen has thawed out completely), you should not risk eating it. Take a photo of the box and its contents, and get in touch with customer service as soon as possible. Most retailers have quality guarantees that will replace affected items for free.

What should I do with dry ice?

Many meat shipments use dry ice to keep everything frozen. This is very different from frozen water at 32°F; it’s solid carbon dioxide and hovers around -109°F. You should never handle dry ice with your bare hands, as it can cause frostbite. The best way to dispose of dry ice is to dump it into an empty kitchen sink or other large open vessel in a ventilated area and just let it sit for a few hours until it sublimates away into the air. You should never seal dry ice in any kind of airtight container (including the refrigerator or freezer) or throw it in the trash.

Our Expertise

Jason Horn is a senior writer at Food & Wine who’s been writing about food and drinks for nearly 20 years. Toward the beginning of his career, he helped a friend raise and slaughter a pair of pigs (named Lunch and Dinner, natch), and turned them into homemade pancetta and hot dogs. It was a valuable experience both personally and professionally, but it’s one he doesn’t plan to repeat.

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The 5 Best Online Meat Delivery Services of 2025

Best Meat Delivery Service for Beef

Crowd Cow