A package of grocery ground beef can contain meat from dozens of animals, and most of what’s in the case was packed weeks before you bought it.

It costs more than commodity grocery meat, because it isn’t commodity grocery meat. One animal, one farm you can point to, cut by a butcher whose name is printed on the label.

The fairer comparison isn’t the grocery store – it’s buying a half beef, which runs $2,000-$2,500, arrives all at once, needs a chest freezer you’d have to own, and gives you whatever cuts the animal happens to have. We buy the whole animal so you don’t have to. You pick the cuts you actually want, a few packages at a time, with no subscription, no minimum, and free local delivery on orders over $150.

The opposite. Each cut is vacuum-sealed and frozen at its peak — that’s the freshest it will ever be. Store-case “fresh” meat has often been in transit for weeks. Thaw overnight in the fridge and it cooks like it was cut yesterday.

A normal kitchen freezer handles any order here easily. Either Sampler Box takes about the space of two gallons of milk.

Vacuum-sealed and kept frozen: a year or more, and the seal is what keeps freezer burn off it.

Yes — every cut is processed at a state-inspected butcher and carries an official inspection label, just like the store.

Because that’s who cut it — and we wouldn’t hide that if we could. Raber Packing in West Peoria is a family-run, Illinois state-inspected butcher shop that’s been a Peoria-area institution for generations, with their own smokehouse for our bacon, ham, and sausage. The Raber label is the official inspection label from the facility that processed it: proof of exactly where your meat was cut, by name and address.

Because the animal has them, and someone should use them. Buying a whole animal means getting all of it, not just the popular cuts, so we list the lot rather than quietly throwing it out. If you render your own tallow, or you’ve been hunting for a proper smoked hock for a pot of beans, this is where they come from.

Both, right now. One half beef and two hogs came back from the butcher together, so the shop is stocked with steaks, roasts, ground beef, chops, bacon, ham and sausage at the same time. Lamb is the one still to come – join the waiting list and you’ll hear when it does.

Within about 20 miles of Bradford — Kewanee, Princeton, Henry, Toulon, Wyoming, Lacon, and nearby. Somewhere else? Join the waiting list and we’ll head your way once enough neighbors sign up.

No shipping — we hand-deliver, and only within Illinois. That’s part of why it’s good.