Quinciple makes it easy to escape your own food shopping ruts. Photo: BB
Brooklyn, it seems, has had it with waiting in line at the grocery store, and at the farmer’s market too.
Over the past few months a number of new services that deliver ingredients and instructions for chef-designed meals have popped up–we tested out Chefday and Blue Apron, which offer pre-prepped and portioned ingredients, down to the salt and pepper, and What’s for Supp, which will deliver the ingredients for one of their restaurant-inspired recipes to your door with just a few hours notice.
This week Quinciple and Good Eggs, two new services that that deliver healthy, local food to your door, will both launch in Brooklyn.
Quinciple is the brainchild of Kate Galassi, who spent several years foraging for local restaurants like the Spotted Pig, Allswell and Roebling Tea Room. Her concept is simple: You sign up and for $50 each week (Brooklyn boxes are $37.90, Manhattan are $50 with delivery) you get a box full of goodies that is a delight to cook from and like Christmas morning to open. One recent box consisted of chicken thighs, Naragansett ricotta, Orwasher’s craft ale bread, Sfoglini nettle radiators (a Bronx-made pasta), purple daikon and green meat radishes, sunchokes, spinach, baby artichokes, parsley, cara cara oranges, pink lady apples, brown butter potato chips, eggs, fresh nettles and a lemon.
Opening your weekly Quinciple box is a little like Christmas morning. Photo: BB
You also get recipes. Not every single ingredient for each recipe will be in the box (Quinciple assumes you have olive oil, salt and pepper and the occasional onion or quart of stock) and they’re meant to inspire as much as to direct your meals. You can skip a delivery at any time with no charge.
Galassi said she knew she had hit upon the right balance when a friend who is an avid and experienced cook raved about the same box that convinced another friend to cook mushrooms for the first time ever. “No two cooks are alike,” she says. Quinciple delivers via cargo tricycle in Manhattan (which they plan on doing in Brooklyn, too, eventually). Starting on Wednesday, April 10, Brooklynites can sign-up on Quinciple’s website to pick up a box on Thursday, April 18, at either Vine Wine in Williamsburg, or Lot 2 in Park Slope. More pick-up spots will be added within the month.
Good Eggs also goes live in Brooklyn this week. The service, which has been up and running in San Francisco since last year, connects shoppers and eaters with local growers and producers. For small businesses, it’s a great web platform to connect to new customers without having to build and maintain a site. For shoppers, it’s a one stop site for all your local staples and treats, with the option of delivery–though many of the vendors currently available are only offering pick-up at the moment. More delivery options and food businesses will be added over the next few weeks and months.
The choices on Good Eggs range from organic baby food, to CSA shares from Fishkill Farms and CSF shares from Gabe the Fish Babe, to pies, tarts and other treats from Pie Corps. One of the best things about Good Eggs is that you’re never locked in for more than a week unless you choose to be. You can buy your four-month CSA share, or you can pick items like apples, carrots and local dairy a la carte. You may never have to endure the post-work grocery slog again.
