Founder Mike Salguero started ButcherBox, a meat and seafood delivery subscription service, as a hobby. He himself struggled to find high-quality grass-fed beef, so he set out to help others source meat as well.
But Mike jokes that he sort of failed at keeping it a side hustle. His hobby business turned into a full-fledged subscription service that’s disrupting the meat industry. Last year, ButcherBox brought in more than $550 million in revenue and is on track to do more than $600 million in 2022.
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Those are staggering numbers, considering ButcherBox hasn’t taken any outside investment to date. Mike says self-funding has given ButcherBox the ability to think more long-term — like 25 or even 100 years — about how they can change what consumers eat and how farmers raise animals.
“If we’re actually set on disrupting meat, that’s a big undertaking and that is not something that can happen overnight,” Mike says. “It’s gonna require patience. It’s gonna require a long-term time horizon. And I’ve yet to meet an investor who has the appetite for that type of hold.”
But because ButcherBox didn’t take outside funding, it had to be profitable from the very beginning. Here’s how Mike and his team did it.