ButcherBox launches on Target’s marketplace in subscription-free acquisition play

“One of our main reasons for people leaving ButcherBox wasn’t quality, it wasn’t delivery. It was ultimately that people didn’t want a subscription,” she said.

So to help move more boxes on a one-time basis, ButcherBox is now selling curated boxes of multiple cuts on Target’s marketplace. Boxes are priced from $99 to around $189. Product descriptions emphasize how the products are humanely raised, grass-fed, and free from antibiotics or hormones — plus, they explain that the meat arrives frozen. Some products are built around events, like a Big Game box with bacon, ground beef, chicken wings and sausages. Others are focused on a cuisine, like the Steak Lovers box with 4.75 pounds of choice cuts, or the Kid’s Favorites box of nuggets, meatballs, burgers and hot dogs.

Hatcher said the hope is that being on the Target marketplace, called Target Plus, will help ButcherBox gain the trust of customers who might not otherwise consider ordering meat online.

ButcherBox has worked in partnerships before, including with BJ’s and Instacart. It also currently sells in DoorDash’s DashMarket. But entering the Target marketplace sets up an entirely new channel that could give BucherBox access to a different customer than it already served. Around 40% of people still don’t shop for groceries online, meaning there’s room to grow if the company can reach those customers and entice them.

“It’s up to us to find the right way to be able to sell on different platforms and make sure we’re exposing people who could be interested in benefiting from the ButcherBox brand overall,” Hatcher said.

More broadly, ButcherBox’s moves shows how companies are getting more open to entering marketplaces or other sales channels at a time when costs of customer acquisition are continuing to increase.

Brad Jashinksky, director analyst at Gartner, said DTC brands that once avoided marketplaces are starting to consider them as a way to grow. “As acquisition costs for advertising continue to climb —especially on platforms like Facebook and TikTok — brands are realizing they need to branch out into places like Walmart, Target and other retailers launching marketplaces,” he said.

But the growth opportunity comes with some tradeoffs. When brands join marketplaces, they surrender some ownership of their customer relationship. ButcherBox won’t get a direct email relationship with a Target customer, for instance, Jashinsky said.

There are also behind-the-scenes challenges that can come with introducing a new sales channel. “It’s a huge opportunity but a huge challenge,” Jashinsky said. “When you start selling through other channels, you’re getting away from your usual subscription cadence, and that introduces complexity.”

On the Target side, ButcherBox’s entry comes at a time when the retailer has struggled with some consumer pullback due to its DEI reversals. Placer.ai has found Target’s foot traffic dropped year over year by 9% in February and 6.5% in March. Longtime retail marketer Barry Thomas, who now serves as a senior global thought leader at Kantar, said the company has also underperformed in e-commerce, relative to competitors like Walmart. It doesn’t have the same scale and it lacks a centralized fulfillment solution.

But putting ButcherBox in the marketplace gives Target a new offering for high-income, health-conscious shoppers as it looks to focus its assortment on wellness, Thomas said. “A successful partnership with ButcherBox could serve as a proof point for future collaborations with high-quality, niche brands, signaling to other sellers that Target Plus is evolving into a more curated, elevated platform,” he said.

From a product standpoint, Hatcher said curating the boxes for Target was a new opportunity for ButcherBox’s merchandising team. That includes offering some cuts that aren’t traditionally available online all season and specialty items meant for big events or holidays.

To help spread the word, ButcherBox will be sending Target boxes to reviewers to generate buzz on its products. It will also advertise on its own organic social media and do some initial paid advertising within Target’s online ad ecosystem, Hatcher said. That investment will potentially ramp up once the company has a sense of which Target customers make sense to target.

Hatcher said that, while partnerships can come with risks for brands, there are still potential new avenues for customer acquisition, especially in the context of increasing digital ad prices. “The more we can partner with like-minded brands to launch our product and to introduce it to their customers, and vice versa, the more we can leverage the combined strength of both brands,” she said.