Beef cheek meat is a head meat, printed once a week on USDA's variety meat report, and for three years it has priced above the Choice cutout per pound. The latest print, November 6, 2026, was $3.96 a pound for trimmed cow cheek meat, frozen. The same week the 85s averaged $2.97 and the Choice cutout $3.63. A cut that comes off the head now costs more than the box it came with.
What USDA prints
Cheek meat is not on the boxed beef report. It sits on the weekly variety meat report, FOB and frozen, in dollars per hundredweight, and the line that matters is cows: it has printed 312 times since December 2017, most weeks since 2023, and a typical print is two or three loads. A steer and heifer line prints a few times a year, and an export line some weeks.
The same report carries pork cheek meat under the same name. That line printed $0.75 a pound on October 30, 2026, a fifth of the beef price. A search for "cheek meat price" can land on either, so read the species before the number.
What "trimmed" hides
USDA prints one word, trimmed. The trade does not. Packer lists quote cheek meat by its trim, from 70 percent chemical lean up to 95, and the gap between those two is a big difference in price and in labor. A 95CL cheek has had the fat worked off it; a 70CL cheek has not, and the buyer pays someone to finish it. Two quotes for "cheek meat" can be for different amounts of work. The CL90 article explains how chemical lean is measured.
The animal matters too. The weekly print is cows, out of the cow kill. Imported cheek meat is sold as steer when a buyer asks for it and usually arrives mixed, cow, bull and steer in the same lot. A domestic cow print is the benchmark either way, because it is the only one that prints.
Eight years, one direction
| Year | Median print, cows, trimmed |
|---|---|
| 2018 | $1.63/lb |
| 2019 | $1.75/lb |
| 2020 | $1.52/lb (9 prints) |
| 2021 | $2.71/lb (10 prints) |
| 2022 | $2.29/lb |
| 2023 | $2.38/lb |
| 2024 | $3.09/lb |
| 2025 | $3.54/lb |
| 2026 (to Nov 6) | $4.18/lb |
The high was $4.89 a pound on July 17, 2026. The low, $0.94 on April 4, 2020, is from the spring the plants closed, in a stretch of two years when the line printed less than once a month.
Against the box
Cheek meat is a lean, hard-working muscle, so the lean trim is its natural comparison, and the cutout is the test of whether a head meat can out-price the carcass.
| Last 12 months, weekly medians | $/lb | Cheek printed higher |
|---|---|---|
| 90s | $4.31 | 22% of weeks |
| Shoulder clod, Choice | $4.07 | 61% of weeks |
| Cow cheek meat, trimmed | $3.99 | |
| 85s | $3.79 | 76% of weeks |
| Choice cutout, per pound | $3.76 | 78% of weeks |
Against the cutout the ratio tells the longer story: 0.73 in 2020, 0.93 in 2022, 0.81 in 2023, then 1.00 in 2024, 1.03 in 2025 and 1.09 this year. The crossing happened in 2024 and has held.
The season is the back half of the year
Across the years, the print runs about 6 percent under its year's median from January through May and 6 to 9 percent over it from August through November, with October the dearest month. The data shows the pattern. It does not say why, so this page does not either.
Who is buying
In our trade the buyer is mostly foodservice, and the trim spread is where that kitchen's labor gets priced: pay for the 95 and skip the knife work, or buy the 70 and do it. The cheek is the dish on those menus, not an ingredient, and a dish does not swap to a clod when its cut gets dear.