I was approached by the Great British Meat Company, an online butchers to see if I might like to try out their service and I have to say my first thought was 'are you nuts? Buying meat online, I've never heard of it'. I then had a chat with my husband and he has been managing catering businesses for twenty odd years and he confirmed to me that yes you can get meat delivered to your door and it is perfectly OK to do so. It can come via a normal courier rather than a refrigerated one as long as the right packaging is used.
I set to work looking at the Great British Meat Company website and found it nice and easy to navigate and find what I wanted to order. You can search by meat type, cut or free type your relevant keyword. I particularly liked the special offers section and I see this week that you can buy 500g of minced beef for £3.50, that is cheaper than the supermarket and of course because you are buying this meat from a butcher the quality is far superior to what you get in your local supermarket.
It was reassuring to me to see that the people who run this site are third generation butchers and have a reputation for their shop dating back to 1953. This means they really know their craft and their values of honesty, quality and service excellence ensure that they only supply the very best meat products which have been cut by hand the day before they are delivered to you. The meat is all 100% British and they can trace the farms it came from, not many meat suppliers can easily say that.
Value for money
I was given £50 to spend on meat and this is what I got for my money -
Medium BBQ pack - (which includes 8 x 4oz beef burgers, 16 x cumberland sausages, 8 x chicken drumsticks and 8 x 4oz pork loin steaks)
1.5kg topside of beef joint - £15.75
5 chicken breast fillets - £10.25
1 pack of back bacon - £4.30
Total £50.30
When you are choosing your meat and comparing it to what you normally buy in the supermarket, you need to be aware to look at the weight of the meat. I normally buy a pack of chicken breasts which includes 3 or 4 (depending how large they are) and weighs about 460g and costs £4.50. It would be easy to think that the Great British Meat Company is more expensive at £2.05 per fillet but they are 227g each and thus you only need 2 of them to equal the weight of the supermarket pack and it works out cheaper at £4.10.
Enjoyable Meat
We have now eaten all the meat that was supplied to us and by far our favourite was the topside joint of roast beef, it was gorgeous (even though I had overcooked it a little). We had friends over to share it with us and they thoroughly enjoyed it too. The 1.5kg joint served 8 of us for dinner and I had enough left for a good portion of bubble & squeak the next day.
We had no grumbles with any of the other products either, the bacon was super large pieces and I have never cooked with chicken drumsticks before but our curry was really good.
Great customer service
I need to be honest and let you know that the first delivery we received was too warm, the meat products were between about 15-18 degrees and of course refrigerated products should be kept at 3-8 degrees in delivery. The Great British Meat Company also advertise that their meat will be maintained at less than 4 degrees during preparation and delivery so something had gone a amiss. I was very impressed with the concern shown by the Great British Meat Company when I advised them. They conducted a full investigation of all aspects of preparation, packing and delivery and when my next delivery arrived a couple of weeks later the temperatures were perfect and we were very happy.
Delivery is free for orders over £50 and £4.95 for those under that threshold. You will receive your meat by courier on next day delivery after it is cut between Tuesday - Friday. You can also pay a premium for Saturday delivery if you desire.
Overall I found our experience with the Great British Meat Company really good and I'd happily shop with them again.
Disclosure: We received the above meat free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.
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