Crowd Cow Review: Quality Meats That Deliver

Sometimes, it can be hard to find top-quality proteins at the grocery store, and sadly, old-school butcher shops are quickly becoming a thing of the past. And even if your grocery store carries top-notch meats, sometimes they’re out of what you want. Ordering your meat online can solve some of these problems, and that’s where Crowd Cow’s delivery service comes in.

Ordering online comes with a lot of perks. It’s convenient one-stop shopping and you can browse many options without leaving the house.  Crowd Cow works by either à la carte ordering—what you want, when you want it—or via subscription box. I opted for the latter because I am a big believer in the magic of a well-stocked pantry and freezer. Plus, I’ve got twin teenage boys, and it seems like they eat more food every day. We don’t eat meat every night, but I still look for the best quality that falls within our budget. 

With a Crowd Cow subscription, you’ll get a monthly delivery with contents of your choice (or a pre-selected assortment), with enough meat to last a month or longer, depending on how frequently you eat meat. If you need to skip or cancel shipments, you can do so easily. Here’s what I thought of the service overall.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Huge selection of meat, chicken, pork, and seafood
• Range of organic, grass-fed, wild-caught, and free-range proteins 
• Both customizable and pre-set subscription options

Cons

• More expensive than grocery store options
• Not as many chicken items
  

What Is Crowd Cow?

Crowd Cow is an online meat delivery service that prides itself on its partnerships with various ethical providers, whether from land or sea. The company carefully selects the producers and tastes all the products before selling them to customers. The emphasis is on sustainably-raised and great tasting meat and seafood. 

Crowd Cow brings together a variety of farmers and producers who supply meats and selections such as chicken, pork, steak, ground beef, bacon, and even a whole chicken for roasting. If you love lamb and bison, Crowd Cow offers both, along with salmon, sea bass, lobster, shrimp, and scallops.

How Does It Work?

Signing up for Crowd Cow is simple, and you don’t need to join its membership to order, which is great for those who might want to try out some of the products before committing. When you do commit to a membership, you save 5% on every item, and shipping is free once you spend more than $149 (which is easy to do with its subscription boxes). Those points accumulate fast, too, which is nice; after the first order, I already had 500 “moolah” points. I can redeem them in my next delivery (they give you suggestions to choose from) or let them accrue.  

Notably, Crowd Cow lets you see everything available up front, which is not the case for other meat delivery services: It’s not necessary to create an account or submit payment information before browsing. You can then choose from a pre-selected subscription box or customize your subscription box. Shipments arrive monthly or at other intervals that you can indicate (bi-monthly, etc.), and Crowd Cow ships to the lower 48 states (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii). 

You can select a specific box if you like, but ultimately you get the final say over what meat you receive. Crowd Cow will build your monthly box based on your preferences and its inventory and then send you an email text message so you can review and adjust the contents if needed.

Pricing

If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, you can order any item à la carte. The least expensive item starts at $6.99 per pound (ground pork from Pederson’s Natural Farms) and goes up to (and beyond) $500 for a box of various wagyu beef selections. 

When you start your order, you can choose from Best of Crowd Cow ($149), Best of Beef ($149), Best of Japanese Wagyu ($149), or a custom box with the price of your choice. For my trial, I opted for the custom subscription box because I wanted more pork and chicken than the “Best of” box was offering; it leans heavily on beef. I capped the spend at $149, which gave me plenty to choose from. Free shipping kicks in after $149. 

Here’s what I ordered:

• 12-ounce grass-fed New York strip steak
• 1 pound (two 8-ounce) Kurobata bone-in pork chops (Berkshire pork) 
• 12-ounce package of thick-cut bacon from humanely raised pork
• 8-ounce grass-fed filet mignon 
• 3 pounds of organic free-range boneless skinless chicken breasts 
• Two 12-ounce filets of Norwegian salmon 
• 1 pound of grass-fed ground beef (80-20) 

Also, because it was my first order, the company threw in three 1-pound packages of Mishima reserve ground Wagyu. 

Packaging

Shipping was fast–everything arrived the next day–and all the meat arrived frozen and intact in a large cardboard box. Everything was carefully packaged, and most of the packaging was either recyclable or compostable, including the insulation (but not the cooler packs; those are reusable). A friendly handwritten note from the company, thanking me for the purchase, accompanied my delivery.

Taste

I seasoned half the items in the box minimally and grilled it all up on a warm spring night. We cooked up a pound of chicken, the strip steak, two enormous bone-in pork chops, and made sliders from a pound of 80-20 ground beef. I rubbed the chicken down with some za’atar, and the pork was brushed with Dijon mustard, rosemary, and salt and pepper. The ground beef sliders were treated with salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, and soy sauce, and the strip steak was finished with a signature dash of fish sauce right off the grill. 

The chicken and pork were incredibly tender and moist, which is saying something for meats that tend to dry out quickly on the high heat of a grill. The four teenage boys devoured everything, and the kids kept coming back, wanting more slices of pork and steak. I think we had one burger left over and half of a boneless, skinless chicken breast (which became the basis of my lunch the next day). Everything tasted great, and the quality was evident, making me more enthusiastic about preparing and eating meat in the future.

Later in the week, the bacon became an accompaniment to breakfast (the slices were so thick!), and I cooked the Norwegian salmon via sheet pan with some potatoes, keeping it simple on a weeknight. Everyone loved the salmon, including my cats, who seemed to go a bit extra crazy for it. Everything was fresh and beautifully presented. 

Who Should Use Crowd Cow? 

Meat delivery services are excellent for anyone who wants to have good quality meat in their freezer—and the capacity to store a month’s worth of it—with the total convenience of delivery. It makes it very easy to cook dinner without going to the grocery store. And it’s also another way to support sustainable farming efforts and know that everything you’re ordering has been carefully vetted.

Crowd Cow isn’t ideal for anyone who doesn’t consume a lot of meat. In my house, we eat a lot of vegetarian meals, so a monthly box might be too much. But that being said, when we eat meat, I’d prefer it to be high quality, and Crowd Cow fits the bill. I’d keep ordering from them as long as they were flexible with my delivery dates, and so far, Crowd Cow seems to be accommodating.

Final Thoughts

I was skeptical at first when I placed my order as I wasn’t sure if we ate enough meat on a regular basis to warrant such an expense, but like anything you order online, there’s a strong and compelling convenience factor. Abstractly, I understood that the quality would be better, but when we cooked up a feast and had very little left over, that was evidence enough. And as a busy mom with even busier kids, I get into a rut with cooking. Having an assortment of excellent protein choices on hand re-energized my weeknight cooking game.

FAQs

Is Crowd Cow Meat Shipped Frozen?

Yes, it’s shipped frozen in dry ice. You don’t need to be home to receive the delivery, but be prepared to transfer the meat to your freezer as soon as possible after opening the box. 

Does Crowd Cow Sell Wagyu Beef?

Yes, this company sells wagyu beef. Crowd Cow offers five varieties (Kagoshima, Shinshu, Miyazaki, Olive, and Hokkaido) from half a dozen farms. Crowd Cow’s selection is extensive, featuring everything from tenderloin cubes and ground beef to brisket, chuck eye, ribeye, filet mignon, and Denver steak, among other cuts. 

How Much Is a Crowd Cow Membership?

Crowd Cow doesn’t charge for its memberships; the membership box is $149 per month, and you can customize the contents to your liking. Members get two times the point value of what they spend, a free protein in every box over $149, and other perks.