Savory Butcher Review: My Unsponsored, Honest Review + Coupon Code

Curious about The Savory Butcher? Here is our review after our first experience using this new and easy way to order high quality meat in bulk at the best prices!

The Savory Butcher

Like many of you, I was left very frustrated and a couple of hundred dollars poorer when Zaycon Fresh went under last year. 

I loved Zaycon – the meat was good quality, it was cheap, and I loved knowing I could get it a few times a year and be good to go. 

So when they went bankrupt, I started researching different ways to buy meat in milk like that – and I even shared some of the research in this post – The Best Ways to Buy Meat in Bulk to Save a Bundle. 

When I heard rumblings about a new company that was developing called The Savory Butcher, I knew I had to keep a close eye on it. 

Of course, I was still skeptical – because it seemed to have a similar business model to Zaycon. But I dreamed of ordering my meat in bulk for good prices again. 

I saw my friends in Utah get deliveries of it and rave about the meat, so I was excited to hear that Denver would be one of the test areas soon. 

Just a few weeks ago, we picked up our first order. Now that we’ve gone through the pickup, processing, and now, eating, process of trying their products, I think we can give a pretty good analysis so you can decide if it’s something that YOU want to try out. 

Please be aware that while I am an affiliate for The Savory Butcher now, I bought this meat with my own money. When my friend did a Facebook Live for me, they did give us an additional box of chicken breasts, in addition to the one we already purchased. Therefore, I hope that you can take my thoughts and opinions seriously.

What is the Savory Butcher? 

It’s basically a food co-op on wheels. The Savory Butcher has contracted with different farms across the country to buy various cuts of meat in bulk in order to get the highest quality for the cheapest prices. They are all from American-based farms with the strictest of guidelines for their meat.

They offer everything from untrimmed chicken breasts to organic chicken to steaks and grass fed beef. 

You typically have to buy in a larger amount (around 40 pounds), but you can typically split it pretty easily with other people. They also offer sampler boxes, which I’ll talk about more later on this post. I was THRILLED when I heard about this!

The Savory Butcher requires a certain level of their truck to be filled before they can come to an area, and when you place your order, you put in a $10 deposit. This is what I like WAY more than Zaycon. With Zaycon, you had to pay everything up front, and that’s where everyone lost so much money when they went under. With The Savory Butcher, you just pay a $10 deposit until they have verified they can actually come, and then you are charged 1-2 weeks before it arrives (after the meat has been purchased). 

Everything is delivereyd fresh and never frozen!

Where Does the Savory Butcher Deliver?

Currently, The Savory Butcher is only available in select markets. It has come to Washington and Oregon, Utah, Arizona, and Colorado, however, they are looking to expand nationwide. If you are interested in them coming to your area, you can enter your information here. 

What Meats Does the Savory Butcher offer? 

They offer such a huge variety. Here is a list of everything they offer (as currently listed on their website). The availability may depend on the time of year and location. 

• Fresh Trimmed Chicken Breasts
• Fresh Hardwood Smoked Bacon
• Fresh 93/7 Ground Beef
• Fresh Uncured Smoked Bacon
• Fresh 81/9 Ground Beef
• Fresh Organic Chicken Breasts
• 100% grassfed/finished beef box
• Boneless applewood smoked ham
• Fresh Trimmed Boneless, skinless chicken thighs.
• Bone-in steak box
• Ribeye steak box
• NY Strip Box
• Savory Sampler Mixed Box

So obviously, there are a lot of things available! Personally, we were SO happy when we saw that they had trimmed chicken breasts. It cost about 20 cents more per pound than the untrimmed, but it was so worth it. Forrest always dreaded our Zaycon pickups because he would spend hours trimming and preparing the chicken breasts to be frozen. 

I am REALLY excited to see that they are offering boxes – especially the Savory Sampler Box. One of the biggest issues people have had with companies like this is that they have to buy in such large quantities. This box contains about 20-25 pounds of meat for $99. When you compare this to something like Butcher Box, it’s a pretty great price, and it comes with a variety of the items above. 

If you are unsure you want to buy a huge box of chicken or ground beef, this can be a good way to try out the product first. 

How Much Does it Cost?

This just varies depending on what you want, and sometimes the prices will change depending on the time of year and availability from the farms. 

From our recent order, here is what we ordered and the prices:

• 81/19 Ground Beef – $131.60 for 40 pounds ($3.29/lb)
• Fresh Trimmed Chicken Breasts – $87.60 for 40 pounds ($2.19/lb)
• Fresh Hardwood Smoked Bacon – $62.85 for 15 pounds ($4.19/lb)

You can always go to their website and enter your location to see current pricing details. For the quality of the meat you receive, I think the prices are unbeatable. 

One thing you have to factor in is the cost of your time. You do have to go and pick up the meat from a truck (our closest location was about 15 minutes away. Not bad!), and then you have to prep it for the freezer. The chicken is definitely the hardest to prepare. You just need to keep in mind that it is not freezer ready!

My Experience

Ordering

I placed my order about a month before pickup. The checkout process was a breeze! All I had to do was select my meats, the pickup location, and pay my $10 deposit per meat order. 

Pickup

I actually didn’t end up picking up my meat. My friend, Caitlyn, was so nice and offered to go get it for us because we were leaving town that day, and I was totally overwhelmed. 

She said it was really easy to pick up the meat. Here is a little video that she did on Facebook for me. 

Preparation

Because we were leaving town just hours after the chicken arrived, we didn’t have a TON of time to prepare it. 

Typically we would have used our vacuum sealer because it does help prevent freezer burn, but we just didn’t have time, so we loaded our meats into Ziploc Freezer Bags. Not as good, but it got the job done in the time we had available!

The meats came in these big boxes: 

The chicken breasts are in big blue bags – I think each box had a couple of blue bags. They were easy to separate, which was nice. 

Fortunately, we had gotten the trimmed chicken. As I mentioned earlier, untrimmed chicken would always take SO long to prepare, so this really cut down on the preparation time. Still, this took the longest to put into bags. 

The ground beef comes in four long tubes:

This was definitely the easiest to prep. All we did was cut them into one pound chubs and put them in plastic freezer bags. 

My friend, Hilary, smashes hers out into flatter pieces so it’s easier to stack in the freezer. I’m going to try that next time!

The bacon came in plastic, and the strips were easy to separate. We separated them into about 10-15 pieces per bag, since that’s about how much we would cook normally at a time. 

I saw people in a Savory Butcher Facebook group show a really great way to store the bacon. You get some parchment paper, place about 15 pieces of bacon in it, roll up the parchment paper, and then place in a bag. People say that it is a lot easier to store and then separate the bacon this way. 

It took us about an hour to get everything prepped and ready for the freezer. 

Quality of Meat

So this is probably what you are most curious about – how did we like the meat!

First off, from the get-go , you could tell it was high quality. The chicken breasts are jumbo-sized – much larger than I usually can find at the store. My family of four can be fed from just one!

We got the trimmed chicken breasts, and while there were some remnants of fat throughout the box, they were pretty tidy-ly trimmed – which was nice. They were very plump and clearly high quality meat. I really haven’t ever bought chicken at the store thatl ooked this good – especially not for the price. 

I really loved the flavor of the chicken and how it cooked up. I mean some BBQ chicken in my Instant Pot with it earlier this week, and it turned out perfectly. Nice and juicy – everyone loved it. I had zero complaints of stringiness (which sometimes happened with Zaycon), and it didn’t get dried out at all. 

We had the ground beef in some spaghetti last week, and it turned out great. The flavor was good, and even though it was 81/9, I didn’t feel like there was TONS of grease, which was nice. I typically prefer 81/9 ground beef over 93/7….it just tastes better!

Finally, the bacon. I had high hopes for this because EVERYONE raved about it. Honestly, I wasn’t super impressed with the taste. 

It was thick cut and cooked up really nicely. Which was definitely a plus. There is no doubt that it’s high-quality bacon, and the price is about what I would pay for the bottom of the barrel bacon at my local grocery store. And it’s definitely MUCH better than that. 

But there was just something about the taste I didn’t love – next time I think I will get uncured and see if I like it more. I also didn’t feel like the bacon was as fatty as I normally like bacon to taste. Ha!

However, also keep in mind that I am pregnant, so my taste buds are a little off. 

Savory Butcher Coupon Code

For first time orders, you can get $5 off when you go directly through the link below!

CLICK HERE TO GET $5 off your first Savory Butcher Order