It was challenging to adjust our tight budget to "meat needs". Prior to Covid, I had 3 local (within 5 miles) supermarkets I would check on the best mark-down days and times. Could never plan meals, depended a lot on what was on sale. During Covid there was very little meat available and you were limited to 5 pounds (total) at a time. We started shopping at a restaurant supply house (open to the public), we had to buy large quantities (primal cuts) and I had to learn to butcher it down, but the price was good and it was available. Sadly, we haven't found a good local replacement to that -- but they have locations in many states!
https://www.chefstore.com/
I kept having to repeat to myself things about "different economies". But the truth is, once my husband wasn't doing his "secret" expensive junk/fast food eating, that saved close to $20 a day and made it much easier to budget. But goodness, is hard for me to spend $100 on a slab of meat even knowing how many meals and how much I'm saving!
Covid taught us a lot about what we needed in terms of emergency preparedness. I've always had "pantry supplies" to get by on in a tight budget month, but now that I can't have carbs and he doesn't eat them, storing rice, pasta, grains, etc. doesn't work too well for us, nor do many prepared foods. Frozen meat and vegies is what we need to have on hand.
He eats a lot of eggs in various forms. We buy local farm eggs and have not been hit by shortages or high prices. We were paying more than going rate here, but still less than the stores. With egg prices dropping, we will be maybe paying slightly more. But again, we moved here to be close to our suppliers.
Right now we mostly depend on sales. When something is good price, we buy it! So I currently have a leg of lamb, a turkey, and a ham all in the "large" category. With Turkey, I think pre-ground is $5/pound?? you can get a turkey on sale (true you have to grind it yourself) for less than a dollar per pound. Cooking an empty turkey without all the Thanksgiving sides is pretty darn easy. We do have a second refrigerator in the garage since we bought a new one for the house, but will be buying a "dead body" freezer, the big sort! We will be buying "shares" of animals from responsible local producers, so typically half an animal at a time. This will not be cheaper, but the quality and treatment of the animals is greater. We have two local butcher shops, the one is higher end producers, the other more general and the prices are pretty darn close to Kroger's for things like ground beef. I want us to get a backup power generator before I have a huge freezer full of thousands of dollars of meat.