The reason for me to do a Crowd Cow review is that ordering meat online is becoming popular rapidly. This will affect how we buy meat and use it on the grill in my opinion.
Updated: December, 2024
“I will tell you all there is to know about Crowd Cow and my personal experience.”
You can click on the table of content to jump to the subject you like to know more about.
What is Crowd Cow
Crowd Cow is a meat delivery service that offers fresh meat from several farms ranging from beef, pork, chicken, Turkey, salmon, and the famous Wagyu beef.
Their approach makes it possible for every customer to view where their meat is coming from, how it was raised, and on which farm. This means you know exactly what you are buying.
When you order meat the cow or pig does not get slaughtered until the whole animal is sold. This will ensure your meat is as fresh as possible.
“Crowd Cow provides you with all the information about every farm that the Crowd Cow company works with and after reading a few I can tell you that they provide plenty of information.“
Ready to have a look at the Crowd Cow Website?
How Crowd Cow Works
The Crowd Cow people handpick farmers who applied for the Crowd Cow program and place their meat on the website.
The difference between Crowd Cow and other online meat stores is that you do not have to buy a huge amount, but can order just what you need.
Ordering is very simple and the steps are:
- Go to their website
- See what is available
- Choose what you like
- Place your order
After this, you will get updates on when your meat will be delivered.
You don’t have to wait a long time for your meat to be delivered. Because of the high number of customers, there is no long waiting time. Most of the time your order gets shipped that same week.
If you do not like to order over and over again you can also choose from monthly subscriptions. There are 6 monthly subscription options:
- Farmers market
- Farmers market reserve
- Ground beef share
- Lean protein
- Japanese Wagyu
- Steak lovers
I will tell more about these 6 Crow Cow subscription packages later in the product part of this Crowd Cow review.
The Difference
As I mentioned above, this service is coming as close as possible to ordering fresh meat straight from the source.
Meat sold at regular stores can be slaughtered weeks ago and maybe even in a foreign country. It also can pass through many hands before ending in your local store.
“Crowd Cow is the shortest and fastest path from farm to your freezer. In addition, you do not have to fill your whole freeze at once like with many other services.“
Crowd Cow Products
I could just give you a list of all the meat you can order from Crowd Cow but I like to dig a little deeper and write a little about every sort of meat.
Beef
Crowd Cow beef is not just the same for every cow. There is grass-fed beef and there is grass-fed and grass-finished beef.
There are all kinds of discussions going on -on and -offline about the pros and cons of buying and you have to decide on this one yourself.
Crow cow offers both
Heritage Pork
Crowd Cow heritage pasture-raised pork comes from pigs that live like before we had factory farms.
They roam outside in the fields and forest and are not confined to a small indoor space.
Although this way of farming is very labor-intensive it will produce meat that is so much tastier and generally, it contains more vitamin D and contains also more monounsaturated fats.
Chicken
Crow Cow chicken is nowadays also called free-range, local, cage-free, pasture-raised, bio-dynamic, and a lot more, but not that long ago it was just called chicken.
Let’s be honest, a chicken should live outside on the grass and walk in the sun and fresh air to roam for his food and not be caged and stuffed with hormones and antibiotics.
Here are some facts about pasture-raised chicken.
- 21% less fat
- 30% less saturated fat
- 50% More vitamin A
- 3 times more omega-3
This should already be reason enough to switch to pasture-raised chicken.
Turkey
I bet that once you have tasted a well-cooked naturally raised turkey as I did, you will never eat one of the store-bought frozen turkeys.
Crowd Cow Pasture-raised turkeys roam the field and are not locked away. This will result in a meat quality that is so much better.
The “normal” process of getting a turkey to your local store is using chlorine and other chemicals in the slaughter process to keep it bacteria-free.
The Crowd Cow selected farms use only water. This is more time-consuming but the result is a chemical-free turkey.
Seafood
The available Crow Cow seafood in their store all come from Alaska.
The reason is that nature is still pretty much the way it was hundreds of years ago. The Salmon and Halibut are all wild-caught and not farm-raised as you see in many stores.
Farm-raised means that they either are held in a pond or a big net out in the ocean and are fed pellets comparable to the ones you use in a fish tank at home.
When you order your salmon you can add a cedar plank to grill the fish to perfection.
Crow Cow Subscription
As I wrote in the intro crowd cow subscription boxes are now available on their website.
This means that you don’t have to pick up your order yourself but you can choose from multiple offers that will be shipped to your door.
In general, you can choose your subscription meat package to be delivered to your door on several time schedules. The times are:
- Monthly
- Every 6 weeks
- Every 8 weeks
- Every 12 weeks
The packages that are available at the moment of my writing this crowd cow review are.
Ground beef. No meat package should come without ground beef. This 12 Lbs. package is so versatile to use and can be used in so many dishes. The ground beef in this package contains only 17 – 20% fat. This package also has the option to order just grass-fed or grass-finished.
Steak Lovers. Like the name already gives away this package is loaded with steaks. These are the hand-cut steaks that everybody loves to eat. There is a variety of cuts of steaks in this package.
Farmers market. This comes with a variety of pasture-raised beef, pork, and chicken.
Farmers market reserve. This package contains premium cuts of beef, pork, chicken, and a handpicked item with every delivery.
Lean protein. Eating right does not have to be without good-tasting meat. The cuts in this package are all low in saturated fat and high in Omega-3 fats.
Japanese Wagyu. This meat comes from the leading Wagyu farms in Japan. You can now enjoy the Kagoshima A5 that is served by many chefs in a restaurant with Michelin stars.
Crowd Cow Prices
Without updating this section almost daily it is impossible to give you the current crowd cow meat prices.
At the moment of my writing, the price for twelve 1 lbs. packs of grass-fed beef is 99 dollars. That comes down to a little over $7 per pound. In my opinion not too bad for such high-quality meat.
Pasture-raised chicken is $20 for a 3 lbs. chicken. This is a little under $7 per pound.
Boneless and bone-in pork chops are about 18 dollars per pound.
Crowd Cow Shipping
I had a hard time finding the shipping cost but I found that orders over $99 and the subscription packages have free shipping. The cost for the standard ordering starts at $12, 99 and depends on the location.
The crowd cow service is only available throughout the main USA continent.
After your order is placed you will receive an email or text message with an estimated date of delivery. This makes it easy to track your order.
Coupons
Let’s be honest, we all like a discount. Unfortunately, there is only one discount I could find for ordering high-quality meat on Crowd Cow.
There is a $25 off on your first order.
“It is however also so that when you have ordered an individual or package you will receive emails with crowd cow deals directly in your inbox.“
Crowd Cow Review – My Experience
I have ordered meat from Crowd Cow now several times and have never been disappointed.
One time the delivery was late and some of the meat was not solid frozen anymore.
After contacting the Crowd Cow customer service they sent me a new order right away and added some money to my account for the next order.
I have reviewed a few meat delivery stores here on Better Grills and think that the Crowd Cow stands out because they are not farmers but just the middleman between farm and consumer.
If you have a look at the meat in your local store you can ask yourself a few questions like, where does this meat come from, when was the animal slaughtered, and what did it eat during its life? Is this meat healthy? And many more questions.
In my opinion, that is something, we lost years ago when we stopped buying from local farms and local butcher stores and crowd cow brings that option back.
The prices are higher and to be totally honest sometimes a lot higher, but at least you know what you eat and what you pay for. That is something you don’t know in other stores.
There is also the advantage of ordering online and not having to go to the store and this is a time saver that we all can use.
Crowd Cow Pros and Cons
Every product or program has its Pros and Cons and the Crowd Cow program is no exception to this rule.
Pros:
- One animal slaughtered at a time
- High-Quality meat
Cons:
- No free shipping
- Prices
I hope you enjoyed my Crowd Cow review and found value in it. If you have used the crowd cow company and like to share it on your social network or talk about your experience feel free to leave a comment.
I love to eat grilled, smoked meat but like to stay healthy also and that is why I prefer naturally raised meats to serve my family and friends.
The Crowd Cow story
The story behind the Crowd Cow company started in 2015 when Ethan Lowry and Joe Heitzeberg founded this company. There are several stories about the exact why this happened.
One is that Ethan bought a steak and was wondering where it came from. Talking to his friend Joe he found that many friends bought meat from local farms.
Being entrepreneurs, they decided to find a better way of doing that and that was the start of “crowdfunding a cow”.
This allowed everyone to buy a part of a cow and when the whole cow was sold it was slaughtered and delivered.
Now it is all streamlined through their website and that makes it very easy to use for their customers.
Its mission statement is to allow everyone to discover and enjoy the very best beef from small, independent ranchers and to make this convenient and fun.
Their latest adventure is to start local crowd cow stores in larger cities to bring the meat closer to their customers.
More Choices To Purchase Meat Online
Find a list of all my online butcher shop reviews on this page for the best online meat delivery for BBQ and Grilling.
Happy Grilling
Robert Chill