Mike Salguero – Founder of ButcherBox on How He Bootstrapped a $550M Brand With a Clear Mission to Transform the Meat Industry

The Casey Adams Show

Listener.com Podcast Network

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on The Casey Adams Show, I sit down with Mike Salguero — Founder and CEO of ButcherBox, the $550M direct-to-consumer brand redefining how meat is sourced, delivered, and consumed. Mike shares the untold story of how he bootstrapped ButcherBox without raising a single dollar of outside capital, scaling it through a series of internet-driven arbitrage opportunities and a deep obsession with product quality. We dive into the company's mission to transform the meat industry for the better — from supporting family farms to championing animal welfare and sustainability. Mike also unpacks his approach to building a profitable business, staying customer-obsessed, and leading with purpose in a noisy market. This episode is a must-listen for founders who believe in building with integrity, vision, and long-term impact.

Connect with Mike Salguero: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikesalguero/

Learn more about ButcherBox: https://www.butcherbox.com/

Chapters:
00:00 The Mission Behind ButcherBox
03:12 The First Arbitrage: Finding Gaps in the Internet
07:41 Why Product Obsession Was the Foundation
10:56 Scaling Without Venture Capital
14:03 Transforming the Meat Industry From the Inside
18:30 Lessons in Building Operational Excellence
22:15 Marketing Through Purpose, Not Promos
25:40 Why Mission-Driven Brands Win Long-Term
28:36 Supporting Farmers and Creating Supply Chain Change
33:02 Staying Profitable While Growing Fast
36:10 Advice for Founders on Focus, Vision, and Longevity

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Casey Adams show. Today I am joined by Mike Salgaro, the founder and CEO of Butcherbox.
0:08.3	Mike, thank you so much for coming to the show today. Thank you for having me.
0:12.0	Of course, man. So I'm super inspired by your story just through entrepreneurship, the multiple
0:18.9	ventures and of course, Butcher Boxing to really dive into this conversation,
0:23.8	there was a LinkedIn post that I came across that you wrote it back in 2022 that I wanted to start here.
0:30.4	And it was all about, you know, the series of arbitrages during the early days of Butcher Box.
0:36.6	And I think it just reminds me and really brings to front and center of like where
0:40.7	arbitrages are today and like what are the unique opportunities.
0:43.5	But for those that may have not, you know, read that post and I'll be sure to link it down
0:47.2	below, I'd love for you to take us to the early days of Butcher Box and really like paint
0:52.6	the picture of what arbitrage did you see in the market
0:55.4	at the time that really, you know, got you excited to pursue this and obviously start this
1:00.3	as your next venture coming off of your last company?
1:04.9	Yeah, it's an interesting question. I haven't really thought about the arbitrage starting
1:09.1	with the market.
1:17.3	With Butcher Box, my wife and I were trying to eat better, eat more consciously,
1:21.4	and felt really guilty about the meat that we were eating. It was like we had read Omnivore's Dilemma, we had watched some movies,
1:26.6	and we were trying to clean up our diet,
1:29.0	eat more organic, less inflammatory, et cetera. And all these diets were saying eat grass-fed
1:33.6	beef. And we couldn't find it. And I just got obsessed with finding grass-fed beef and raising
1:39.9	meat better. I think too often people feel guilty about the meat that they're consuming. And there is a way, there is a path to eating better meat and that is it's a hard path and you need businesses like ours who care deeply about treating the animal well and the farmer, etc. I mean, I suppose you could say it's somewhat of an arbitrage, but it's
2:02.4	like a very small portion of the market. It's like 1 to 2% of the market is claims based meat,
	...

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