In this episode of The Empowering Neurologist, Dr. David Perlmutter interviews Mike Salguero, founder and CEO of ButcherBox, a subscription service delivering 100% grass‑fed beef, organic chicken, and heritage pork. Salguero explains how a personal quest for healthier food during his wife’s pregnancy led him to purchase a quarter share of a cow, share meat with friends, and eventually recognize a market need for convenient, high‑quality grass‑fed meat. After a year of logistics work, he launched a Kickstarter in September 2015, raising $215,000 against a $25,000 goal. The company expanded from beef to include chicken and pork after customer feedback about portion sizes. Salguero describes the sourcing network—U.S. collectives in California and Wisconsin and international farms in Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand—to ensure 100% grass‑fed, antibiotic‑ and hormone‑free meat. He highlights that only about 2% of U.S. beef is truly grass‑fed, contrasting it with the 98% feedlot system that uses corn, antibiotics, and hormones, and outlines the nutritional, animal‑welfare, and environmental benefits of grass‑fed meat. Pricing is positioned at under $6 per meal, with a typical box costing $129 for roughly 25 meals, offered monthly or bi‑monthly. Salguero shares the company’s mission to make clean, grass‑fed meat accessible nationwide, noting that 40‑50% of customers struggle to find such products in grocery stores and that the service now provides over 10,000 meals per day. He discusses the diverse customer base—from heavy meat eaters to occasional consumers—and future goals of expanding across the U.S., Canada, and beyond, while emphasizing the need for consumer education about grass‑fed meat’s importance.
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Hello everyone, I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Welcome again to The Empowering Neurologist. You know, one recurrent theme on the program has always been nutrition. Nutrition is really very important, seems to be underrated, but we emphasize nutrition, especially the types of food that we eat in terms of their quality. You know, there's a big argument that goes on with reference to meat. Is it good or bad? And I've always come down on the side of, you know, we've got to be real careful where we source our meat from, that typically factory-farmed beef might not necessarily be the best choice, always opting for grass-fed beef and pasture-raised chicken. That said, ButcherBox is an organization that actually delivers these high-quality meats to you, and I thought it It would be interesting to interview the founder and CEO of ButcherBox, Mike Salguero. He is in fact the CEO of this organization, and this is the first delivery service that is dedicated to providing 100% natural grass-fed beef, organic chicken, and heritage pork to its consumers and customers. The idea of ButcherBox came to Salguero when his wife was pregnant with their first child, and they wanted to eat the healthiest food that they could find He, I think, had difficulty finding 100% grass-fed beef, so he launched ButcherBox way back in September 2015. And now this nationwide program delivers organic meats directly to consumers' doors through a simple monthly prescription plan. All of the products that ButcherBox produces and ships are humanely raised, free of antibiotics, hormones, and GMOs— all the right boxes got ticked that we think are important. And the real mission of the company is to make these organic meats available to everyone. Since taking a graduate class titled Buying a Small Business at Babson College in 2009, Salguero was hooked by the entrepreneurial spirit, and obviously that helped him move forward with the creation of ButcherBox. He was previously a CEO of another organization, Customer Made, Which was an online global marketplace for consumers. He's dedicated to being healthy. He is a CrossFit enthusiast. He obviously knows how to eat right. He received his master's in business administration and entrepreneurship from Babson College and also a bachelor of science, a great combination, from Boston University. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and his 3 daughters. We're going to learn what went into and what continues to go into making sure that people have access to very, very high-quality beef and how this all came about and what the future looks like for ButcherBox. So let's jump right in.
So Mike, it's great to talk to you. And I wanted to start off, if we could, with ButcherBox, which is now a thing. That's gained a lot of popularity. Everybody's talking about your company and with good reason. Walk us through how this all got started and the perceived need that you then decided you would fill.
Yeah, sure. Great to be here. My wife and I were trying to clean up our diet. My wife was pregnant with our first child, so we started looking at things like the Dirty Dozen, Whole30. We did elimination diets. Pretty much all those— everything we looked at was recommending that we try a diet of grass-fed beef. We started looking for grass-fed beef, and it turned out in our area, which is Boston, Massachusetts, it was pretty hard to find. We ended up working with a farmer and buying a quarter share of meat. A quarter share of meat is about a trash bag or 2 trash bags full of meat.
You bought a quarter of a cow.
Sorry, that's what I meant, a quarter of a cow, yeah, a quarter share. Yeah, not very convenient, especially when you live in a small apartment in Boston, to have 2 big trash bags full of meat. So what I ended up doing was I handed out a whole bunch of steaks to my friends. And 6 months later, I decided to get another shipment, and this time I got more because I had other friends who were like, give me some if you get that again. And the final time I did it, I actually got a whole cow and split it up amongst a whole bunch of friends. And sold these shares to other people. In that process, one of the guys was like, yeah, it would be great if I could just get this delivered to my house instead of having to pick up a big trash bag full of meat. I was like, ah, that's pretty interesting. I'm going to go explore that. It took a long time to put the pieces together. It's very hard to find 100% grass-fed beef, certainly at large quantities, and then doing frozen fulfillment and shipping to the customer. All that stuff needed to be figured out from the ground up. Basically, I spent about 9 months to a year trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. Then we launched a Kickstarter campaign in September of 2015. We went out to raise $25,000 to do pre-orders of 25,000, and we ended up doing about 215,000. Right away, we were like, oh, wow. We struck a nerve.
You bet.
Yeah, clearly people want this. Clearly people are excited about being able to get grass-fed beef to their door. We also got a lot of feedback from customers that the amount of beef that we would be sending them was too much, so we moved from just beef into chicken and pork because what we found was people had the same issues across all types of proteins, not being able to find a clean source of meat. That's what we represent for thousands of families every day. The most recent stat is on any given day, over 10,000 meals
One of the things I've always asked is, where do we get this stuff? Dr. Perlmutter, you're talking about grass-fed beef, and we'll talk in a little bit about why it's so important, but where do you get it? Truthfully, there are certainly a lot of places in America that are food deserts where you can't get exactly what it is that you are talking about. What an amazing thing that you're doing. As you know, I've gotten a couple of boxes as well. I've had a couple of boxes.
Yeah.
It's breathtaking. It's just— it's really wonderful, and I commend you for it. We're going to show a little video right now, and I wonder if you can just talk to us while it shows about where this is coming from, the importance of grass-fed, what the cows are treated like, the cattle, etc.
Yeah, sure. I guess a little bit of background. Every cow starts off the same way. It goes from cow-calf, which is about the first 6 months. To another year where it's just eating grass in an open wide pasture. And then that's where things change. So 98% of the beef consumed in the United States is from a cow that then went to a feedlot and was fed a diet of corn and grains and other things that are pretty foreign to a typical cow's diet. And then 2% are the ones that are grass-fed, where they just live on grass for the rest of their life. And that's what grass-fed, grass-finished, or 100% grass-fed means. It never went to a feedlot. It was never fed a diet of corn or grains. It was just fed grass. And it turns out in this country, it's pretty hard to find really great quality 100% grass-fed beef. We work with a number of collectives, a collective in California, a collective in Wisconsin, to pull some of this product. And then we've also looked abroad as well. So we have meat sources in Uruguay, meat sources in Australia. New Zealand. What we do is we want to scour the earth to find the best possible product for our customer because we believe that this product needs to be brought to the masses. As you were saying before with food deserts, a lot of people don't have access to this product. We found that 40% to 50% of our customer likely goes into the grocery store and can't buy grass-fed meat. There's a real opportunity for us to deliver something directly to that person's door They might be a listener of yours, has always been convinced I should eat grass-fed beef, but I don't know where to get it. That's the solution that we provide for lots of people.
Well, that's why you're on the program today, because I really want people to understand that this is now available. Tell me about affordable.
Yeah, right. Our meat is priced at less than $6 a meal. Essentially, a box shows up at your door. You can choose whether you get it every month or every other month. It's $129, which is the normal price, and it's about 25 meals per box. If you choose a box that has chicken and pork, it's usually more than if you just choose all beef. Beef is traditionally a more expensive product. The idea we want to do is just provide a lot of value for the customer. We want you, the customer, to choose us rather than going to a butcher or going to the grocery store and trying to figure out what these labels mean and what the right product is. We just want to take— buying meat and buying your protein off of your list of things that are keeping you up at night or keeping you stressed out.
Maybe so. Why grass-fed? Why is it so darn important?
Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of dietary benefits which you have talked about extensively. It's also much better for the cow. I mean, what we like to talk about is you have 98% that go to this feedlot and they're oftentimes given antibiotics and hormones to grow really fast. Essentially, if you're following some sort of diet, paleo diet or ketogenic diet or lots of other diets where you're avoiding grain, why would you then go eat some meat from something that was fed this foreign substance that their body can't handle? Grass-fed is better for the cow, better for the environment, and better for you, the person eating it. There are countries certainly in Europe, certainly in Australia, in parts of Asia, Where grass-fed is really the only thing that they eat. They don't really eat corn-fed, this industrial corn-fed cattle that we do in the US, and we're out to change that.
Well, people think this idea of grass-fed is something relatively new. I mean, it's truly how people have been eating for about 3 million years. Right, right. That's what we've always done. There's no alchemy. I've often told consumers that there's nothing magic happening when you feed a cow garbage and expect it to make something, spin it into gold. That when, you know, cows are fed glyphosate-sprayed corn and soy and who knows what else, that this changes their bodies. When we eat that meat, it's not good for us. It has higher levels of omega-6. It's pro-inflammatory. Not to mention— but I love when people say not to mention, then they mention something— not to mention, which I'll mention, the antibiotics that continue to be used despite some recent federal guidelines. So You're doing an amazing job, and how's the future looking for you?
Yeah, so I mean, the thing that keeps driving me is the fact that— the stat that 40 to 50% of our customers can't get this product. Our vision is grass-fed beef everywhere. Our vision is to be able to provide clean meat to thousands and thousands of families across the United States, and then eventually Canada, and who knows from there. There's a lot of education that's needed. Guys like you are doing a great job, but a lot of education for the customer to understand why grass-fed matters. Then it's really just helping people to access the product. A lot of people are convinced but don't know where to go, and ButcherBox can be that source.
Sometimes I am challenged, and I think it's a good thing, by people saying, well, there's literature. and books written, The China Study by Dr. Campbell, for example, that say we shouldn't eat meat. Right. I think to be fair, do I agree with Dr. Campbell? Yeah, I do. I think that the meat that people ate that were then part of the research that he quoted was not going to be good for you, and I would absolutely avoid it. By and large, eating meat is not a good thing to do because of the quality and the threat that it represents to our health, but this is really getting back to giving the human body what it has been eating for a long, long time. That said, 2 things I want to say to you. First of all, congratulations on some amazing success. I mean, it's a real case study in entrepreneurship that you really go to the top of the class. Thank you. Also, thank you, because I think personally I'm grateful for what you're doing, but thank you for what you're doing in terms of everybody and their access to a food that's really good for them. You're doing a really great thing, so kudos to you.
Yeah, I appreciate that. We deal with lots of different customers. We have some customers who are super heavy meat eaters who eat a lot of it, and then we have people who might be eating meat 2 or 3 times a week, and they want to make sure that it's the highest quality possible. Our service runs the gamut, and we serve all types of audiences, which has really been exciting to build.
Terrific. I hope I get to run into you at some of these Paleo FXs or who knows where, but I really appreciate your time, and I'm certain that our viewers are going to be really interested in what you're doing, so thank you.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
Okay, we'll talk soon.
Okay.
Well, I think you'll agree it's an interesting story of entrepreneurship and also being focused on filling a very, very important need. Again, we are often asked about resources. Where do you get organic grass-fed beef, for example, if it's not available in your local grocery store? And now we see the emergence of a really wonderful online available subscription service nationwide, ButcherBox, to deliver this right to your door. So we have information here. There's a link to get to ButcherBox and learn more about it. And really very cool that a guy like this is making Making a difference, making the right kind of food available for everyone. So I hope you enjoyed the program today. I think it was really enlightening. Thanks for joining us. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Thank you.
