Is this your first time buying beef in quantity? You have two big questions: How much does it cost? How much freezer space do I need?

Wagner’s Meats processes and packages our beef. Our beef average a hanging weight of 800 pounds, which yields a packaged weight of approximately 480 pounds. How much is that? A quarter beef is about 120 pounds. You are probably familiar with the box size of a carton of office paper, with 10 reams in it. A quarter beef would fill about 3 cartons.

The freezer shown here is a quarter beef. The Wagner’s boxes are just a little bit bigger than office paper cartons, and a quarter will fill about two and a half Wagner’s boxes. A quarter is approximately 50 pounds of ground beef, and 70 pounds of other cuts. You have some flexibility in your cuts preferences when the beef is packaged. In this photo, one box of steaks and roasts was unpacked, and the bags of ground beef were unpacked. These unpacked steaks and roasts all could fit on one shelf, if they were packed neatly. The ground beef comes in one-pound bags, and is stacked here two bags deep on the shelf. This is a 30″ freezer.