The Parking Lot Steak Scam You Should Avoid At All Costs

Scroll on social media long enough and you might come across posts on your community pages advertising meat — typically steaks, but also chicken and seafood — sold out of the back of trucks that have posted up in parking lots. Or maybe you were at the mall and witnessed one in the flesh (pun intended), with the super-hot deal of dozens of meat pieces for an outrageously low price. Were you tempted? Did your Spidey-senses perk up? Or maybe you were intrigued in spite of the warning alarms going off in your head. Well, we're here to tell you these are unequivocally meat scams, and they should be avoided at all costs — even low, low costs.

The fact is, good meat, such as Kobe beef, carries a higher price tag for a reason. The steaks being sold out of the back of trucks are often terrible quality — gristly and tough to chew, sliced so thinly or hacked at so violently that there's either hardly anything there, or there's no telling what the actual cut of steak is. And you might think, oh, it just needs the kiss of a grill — but when steaks look this bad, they're bound to taste awful, too.

Meat quality aside, there's also the business aspect. Most of these steak vendors don't offer refunds, and they can be incredibly difficult to track down after they've closed up shop and moved on. So once you realize how bad the meat is, you have very little recourse for getting your money back.

While you won't find great steaks for knock-down, truck-sale prices, that's actually a good thing, since it means you also won't be stuck with pounds of basically inedible beef. You can start by paying attention to sales at your supermarkets with reputable meat counters (Whole Foods even butchers to order for free); scan the advertisements that come in the mail or check them online weekly to see if your favorite cut will be on sale. It also doesn't hurt to go in and peruse the pre-packaged steaks, because oftentimes stores will mark down pieces nearing their sell-by date (Aldi is one chain supermarket that does this fairly often).

If you're chasing that bulk-buy high you get from grabbing dozens of cuts of beef at once, consider the cost-effectiveness of purchasing steak from Sam's Club or Costco. But perhaps the smartest way to get lots of meat for a decent price is to buy an entire beef strip loin and butcher your own steaks at home (it is super easy — and might we add, satisfying? — to do, we promise you!). You'll spend significantly less per pound investing in a whole strip loin, and you get to decide how thick you want your steaks, how much fat you want on them, and more. Just make sure you have the space in your freezer.