I’m still tossing up the idea of going vegetarian – despite the health benefits and value benefits, and the fact that I’ve done it successfully for a year and a half before, logistically it would be quite difficult. Unfortunately I am part of a family that, while they tolerate my other eco-friendly activities, if I forced them to go even partially vegetarian they would openly mutiny.
All the more reason then, that if I’m going to eat meat, I’ll make damn sure I’m doing it for cheap. Meat is just one of those products that seems to go up and up uncontrollably, to the point where I feel like I’m going to have a conniption as I throw that bundle in my basket.
Recently I discovered what I think is a brilliant way to score extra dollars off your weekly meat bundle. (When I say ‘brilliant’, what I mean is, 99% of humanity are probably doing it already and I’m just a little slow to catch up.)
The dawn of the social media era, while it has undoubtedly stolen our souls, and concentrated thousands of man-hours on trivia, has at least had the benefit of providing us with easy access to butcher specials. Facebook campaigns for butchers are in general very active and often very price driven to boot. Many butchers don’t even bother with a web page, preferring instead to spray out their daily specials through social media channels.
All I need to do was to ‘Like’ 3 or 4 local butchers’ Facebook pages. From there, it’s simply a matter of checking your Facebook feed and take note of what’s available. (Make sure you list them as ‘see first’ in your news feed so you can get to them rapidly.) You might even create an Excel spreadsheet or ‘meat sheet’ listing the available products and prices; although if you have gone to this extent you are a certain type of woebegone individual who I can only pray for.
It is worth keeping these specials in mind as you prepare your weekend shopping list. I pass about 3 butchers on my way home, so it’s easy to manage a slight detour to pick up some cheap meat.
While they can be a little hard to read, semi-regular scrutiny can provide one with some real market insights. In the same way that Benjamin Graham advises patience when investing in the stock market, so too should you exercise patience when buying meat, as some butcher-specific frenzy will no doubt weekly send some butcher into a depraved price spiral.
And there is a ‘green’ argument, of sorts, although you are more than welcome to take me to task on it. Since you are reading the purchase list of butchers who have more-than-often over-ordered on their own meat and are now trying to flog it off for a discount, you are in fact preventing this meat from going to waste. While it might not be the same as cutting out meat from your diet altogether, in terms of environmental impact, it is still a way to cut out meat over-consumption in ways that would force additional future bloodshed.
