Harry & David Ultimate Meat & Cheese Gift Box Review

Check the Harry & David Ultimate Meat & Cheese Gift Box on Amazon

⭐ 4.5 · 185 ratings · $143.98 · 6 lb 5 oz · Ships gift-ready · Shelf-stable

Key features

🥩 Four meats — hickory-smoked summer sausage (5 oz), two Thuringer sausages (5 oz each) and Busseto Milano Italia dry salami (6 oz)

🧀 Five cheeses — garlic jack (8 oz), pepper jack (8 oz), Sicilian jack (8 oz), gouda (6 oz), sharp white cheddar (4 oz)

🥨 Three crackers plus 10 oz of sesame sticks

🍯 Pepper and onion relish (10 oz) and honey dill mustard (9 oz)

⚖️ 6 lb 5 oz total — the best rate of the four sizes

🌡️ Shelf-stable, so no cold-pack delivery window to plan around

⚠️ Contains milk, wheat, and sesame

Check the current price and size options →

Quick verdict: the most expensive box on this listing is also the cheapest per pound, by a wide margin. If you are buying anywhere in this range at all, buy this one or the Grand — and never the Supreme.

Harry & David has been doing this since 1934, and the name is legible on a desk at an office. That matters when the gift is going somewhere you will never see. What follows is the part the listing will not tell you.

Four sizes, and the order is not what you would guess

This is one listing with four boxes behind a dropdown. Here is what each one costs by weight.

The biggest box is the best rate, and it is not close. Buying the Deluxe costs you nearly ten dollars more per pound than buying the Ultimate.

The Supreme is the one to avoid

Look at the middle two rows. Going from the Grand to the Supreme costs twenty dollars and buys you two ounces of extra food.

The next twenty dollars, from Supreme to Ultimate, buys 2 lb 4 oz. Same money, thirty-six times the food.

So if the Supreme is where your budget lands, move in one direction or the other. Down to the Grand saves twenty dollars for almost exactly the same box. Up to the Ultimate spends twenty and nearly doubles it.

What only the Ultimate has

Two things do not appear on any smaller box. The Busseto Milano dry salami is the only cured Italian meat in the range — every other tier is summer sausage and Thuringer. And the 10 oz of sesame sticks, plus the roasted vegetable corn crackers, give you four things to put cheese on instead of two.

It also carries the biggest condiments: 10 oz of pepper and onion relish and 9 oz of honey dill mustard, against 5 oz and 1.4 oz on the Grand. Those are what stop a board from being a pile of meat and cheese.

Shelf-stable is the underrated feature

No cold pack, no delivery window someone has to be home for. In December, that is worth more than an extra wheel of gouda. A refrigerated gift that sits on a porch for six hours is not a gift; it is a problem you mailed to someone.

It also means you can send it to an office, which is where a lot of these end up.

The honest part

Best rate on the ladder still means $22.81 a pound, and a lot of that weight is summer sausage and jack cheese. You are paying for the assembly, the box, and the name. That is a reasonable thing to pay for when the gift is going to someone you want to impress — but it is what you are paying for.

Six pounds is also genuinely a lot. Sent to a household of two, most of it will still be in the cupboard in February.

And at 185 ratings, the listing has thinner feedback than its price suggests. Read the recent ones yourself before committing.

Who it’s for

An office, a big family, or a party. Anywhere eight or more people will pick at it, and where nobody has to be home to sign for a cold box.

Skip it if

You are sending to one or two people, or the recipient does not eat pork. Take the Grand at $103.98, which is the second-best rate and still four pounds.

The bottom line

Buy the Ultimate or the Grand. Skip the Supreme, which costs twenty dollars more than the Grand for two ounces. That single fact is worth more than anything else on this page, and Amazon will not show it to you.

Harry & David Ultimate Meat & Cheese Gift Box on Amazon →
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Prices and availability were accurate at the time of writing and can change.

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