In a quest to find the best meat delivery service for our family and yours, we decided to put Good Chop vs. Butcher Box to the test. We looked at what each company offers in terms of subscriptions, quality, sourcing standards, variety, price, and more.
In the end, Good Chop wins our vote, but both companies have something great to offer. Here’s what to consider if you’re deciding which of these two great meat delivery services is the best fit for you.
Good Chop
Pros
- Specializes in sourcing meats from American family farms
- Offers two sizes – a medium box and a large box
- All boxes are fully customizable
- Good variety
- Everyday options like ground beef, elevated cuts like filet mignon, and occasional specials, such as round roast shoulder roast
- Offers a small selection of desserts
- Great customer service reviews
Cons
- Good sourcing standards, but not grass-fed meat or organic chicken across the board
- No curated boxes
Butcher Box
Pros
- Butcher Box beef is all grass-fed and grass-finished
- Three curated boxes plus a custom option
- About 25 plus options each week
Cons
- Not great customer service
- Customized box costs more than curated boxes
Subscription Boxes
Good Chop
Butcher Box
If you’re someone who wants complete control over what’s in your box, then Good Chop is a great option for you. Good Chop doesn’t offer any pre-selected or curated options. Instead, they offer two different sizes of custom boxes that you can fill with whatever selections you like.
There’s the medium box, which includes about 14 lbs (approximately 36 portions) of meats, and also the large box, which includes about 28 lbs (approximately 72 portions). This equals out to about six selections for the medium box and twelve selections for the large.
With Good Chop, you also have the option to add more to each box for an additional cost. You can add up to 15 lbs to the medium boxes (which ends up being about the same amount as a larger box) and up to 30 lbs of meat and seafood to the large boxes.
You’ll receive your chosen Good Chop delivery once every four weeks, but it’s easy to pause, change your delivery dates, etc., so that your shipments meet your needs.
Butcher Box offers four different subscription box options. Customers can choose between a box that contains beef and chicken, beef and pork, a mixed box that contains beef, chicken, and pork, or a custom box, where you select what goes inside.
Whether you choose one of the curated boxes or custom boxes, you’ll receive in the ballpark of 9-14 lb of meat and seafood for the basic box, but there’s also a larger option that includes 18-26 lbs. When you sign up for Butcher Box, you can choose if you want deliveries every four, six, or eight weeks.
Menu Winner
We give Good Chop the award here because their subscription boxes are fully customizable, and you can choose a medium or large option depending on how much meat you think you’ll consume during the four weeks between delivery.
Butcher Box also offers a custom box, so to us, this isn’t a make-or-break category between the two meat delivery services. Plus, if you prefer a curated box, Butcher Box will be a better option for you.
Variety Choices
Good Chop
Butcher Box
When you sign up for a meat delivery service, you hope to get better variety and quality than what you can get from your local grocery store. Both Good Chop and Butcher Box offer good variety, but here’s how they compare.
With Good Chop, you get about three dozen choices to fill your box with each month. There’s also a handy tag on each selection to let you know if it’s Angus, USDA Choice, grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, heritage breed pork, wild-caught seafood, etc. This way, you can choose the quality, cuts, and ethics that are important to you.
Good Chop beef selections include ground beef (Angus or grass-fed), ranch steaks, porterhouse, flank steak, burger patties, filet mignon, top sirloin, ribeye, NY strip, tri-tip, sirloin tips, and beef hotdogs.
Good Chop chicken selections include all of the basics, like boneless skinless chicken breast, wings, thighs, and ground chicken. There are also selections like ground turkey, chicken sausage, and bison. For pork, you can choose from boneless pork chops, boneless pork butt, pork loin roast, pork chorizo, ribs, and a charcuterie variety pack.
For seafood, the selections from Good Chop are decent. They have Alaskan Sockeye Salmon, Alaskan Halibut, Pacific Cod, Rockfish, Sablefish, smoked salmon, shrimp, sea scallops, and crab cakes.
Butcher Box offers a decent variety of conventional meat cuts, plus a few extras to keep things interesting. If you’re building your own box, expect there to be about 25+ different cuts to choose from. Obviously, the variety is less in the curated boxes, but you do get a glimpse at what you’ll receive.
Some Butcher Box selections you might be able to choose from include ground beef, stew beef, flat iron steaks, top sirloin steaks, ribeyes, and beef brisket. For chicken, there are boneless chicken breasts, boneless chicken thighs, whole chicken, chicken tenders, chicken wings, and ground chicken.
For pork, there are well-loved cuts and selections such as boneless pork chops, boneless pork butt, pork tenderloin, pork sirloin roast, ground pork, ground breakfast sausage, and ground Italian sausage. For seafood lovers, there’s wild Alaskan salmon, smoked salmon, shrimp, and sea scallops.
Variety Winner
This was a tough one. We think that Butcher Box might have a few more cuts of beef, but we like that Good Chop has selections like chorizo and charcuterie to mix things up a little.
We didn’t mention it, but Good Chop also offers a few desserts, so they’re an all-in-one stop if you’re entertaining and planning a menu. If you’re a seafood lover, you’ll also likely prefer Good Chop because their seafood selection is several tiers above what’s offered by Butcher Box.
Sourcing & Quality
Good Chop
Good Chop & ButcherBox are great ways to get high-quality meat that doesn’t come from the industrial meat packing industry. Generally speaking, the quality matches more with what you might get from a high-end local butcher than your local grocery stores. While the quality of both is great, where and how the meat and seafood are sourced matters, too.
Butcher Box is highly committed to sourcing its meats and seafood in the most sustainable, responsible, and humane way possible. Butcher Box meats are grass-fed beef selections that are always hormone-free. They work with ranchers who offer humanely raised pork, free-range chicken, grass-finished beef, and fisheries with wild-caught fish.
Butcher Box
Butcher Box publishes an annual Social & Environmental Responsibility report that offers a snapshot of its sustainability efforts. One thing to know, which may or may not be important to you, is that Butcher Box sources much of its meat from Australia, so it doesn’t come from domestic farms, and there is a cost and impact associated with transport.
Good Chop carries high-quality American meat and seafood. They source all of their meats from domestic family farms and fisheries off of American coasts.
Good Chop only works with ranchers and farmers who are committed to meat quality, ethics, and sustainability. Their meats are all hormone-free, and there are lots of grass-fed meat options, but they do offer meats that are grain-finished.
Good Chop only offers humanely raised pork and wild-caught fish that are also MSC certified. That said, not all of their meats are held up to exactly the same quality standards.
For example, you might choose between Angus beef or grass-fed beef. While all of the chicken is responsibly raised, hormone-free, and fed a vegetarian diet, not all of it is free-range or organic.
Sourcing & Quality Winner
We really went back and forth on the winner for this one. We want to start by saying that we love that Good Chop works with American family farms, and their seafood quality is top-notch. At the end of the day, we went with Butcher Box because we like that they offer an annual report, and the farmers and ranchers they work with have more consistent standards across the board.
Pricing and Coupons
Good Chop
CURATED BOXES | WEIGHT | PRICE PER MONTH |
Medium | 14 lbs | $149 |
Large | 28 lbs | $269 |
Butcher Box
CURATED BOXES | WEIGHT | PRICE PER MONTH |
Custom Box | 9-14 lbs | $169 |
Mixed Box | 8-11 lbs | $146 |
Beef & Chicken Box | 8-11 lbs | $146 |
Beef & Pork Box | 8-11 lbs | $146 |
Basic Box | 7-7.5 lbs | $99 |
Price is a big factor in choosing the right meat delivery service for your household, and in general, you can expect to pay more than you would with regular grocery shopping. You’re paying a bit extra for both quality and convenience.
Prices for Good Chop are $149 and $269 for the medium and large boxes. The medium includes up to 14 lbs or 36 portions. The large includes double the amount, which makes it a significantly better deal if you either consume that much meat in a month or can afford to purchase that much at once. Having a good-sized freezer also comes in handy if you’re feeding a smaller family.
With these prices, you select from anything on the Good Chop menu to meet your quota, including organic meat.
Butcher Box offers a total of four boxes, with each being offered in two sizes – 9-14 lbs or 18-26 lbs. For the curated boxes, the price is $146 for the smaller box and $269 for the larger box. Butcher Box curated boxes do cost a bit more.
Pricing Winner
Both Good Chop and Bucher Box charge almost exactly the same for their boxes. The only reason we put Good Chop as the winner is that Butcher Box charges a bit more if you want to curate a box of your favorites, where every box is filled by you with Good Chop.
Customer Service
Both Butcher Box and Good Chop offer their customers the option to pause, modify, or cancel their subscriptions. Butcher Box offers more options for how often your box arrives, but it’s super easy to change dates and postpone deliveries with Good Chop.
Something that we noticed with looking at different companies and all the meat delivery reviews we noticed that many of them don’t have great customer reviews in the customer service department. This is true for some of the most popular companies, including Omaha Steaks, Crowd Cow, Wild Fork Foods, etc. Good Chop seems to be an exception to this.
Good Chop has good customer reviews for customer service, along with compliments on the meat quality and the state of the meat when the box arrives.
On the other hand, we’ve seen concerns with Butcher Box and their customer service, and boxes where the dry ice had evaporated, and the meat wasn’t frozen solid as it should be. Others claim that after the first few boxes, the customer service dropped off. We also find it important to note that we personally haven’t experienced these issues with Butcher Box.
Customer Service Winner
In looking at Good Chop vs. Butcher Box for customer service, we personally haven’t had a negative experience with either. But it’s important to look beyond our own experience when recommending one over the other. In this case, Good Chop customer service earns more accolades than Butcher Box.
FAQs
Is Good Chop ethically sourced?
When you have meat delivered from Good Chop, you are guaranteed to receive meat and seafood that’s all ethically, responsibly, and sustainably sourced.
Is ButcherBox truly grass-fed?
Butcher Box meats are grass-finished and fed, and these standards are consistent among all of their offerings.
What is the average cost of ButcherBox?
The average cost of Butcher Box ranges from about $10-$16 per pound, depending on what type of meats and seafood are in your box.
Winner
Good Chop
We honestly like both Good Chop and Butcher Box, but when comparing the two, Good Chop stands out as the winner. We love that their boxes are fully customizable, and the price is right. They also have above-average customer service, and they work with domestic farmers, which is a huge plus in our book.
Choose Good Chop if:
- You prefer American-sourced meats and seafood
- You want a variety of grass-fed, Angus, USDA Prime, organic, and free-range
- You like to pick what’s in your box
- You are okay with a delivery once every four weeks
Choose Butcher Box if:
- You want a company with a long-standing reputation
- You prefer that all meats are grass-fed and grass-finished
- You don’t mind meat that’s imported from Australia
- You prefer curated boxes