Today’s abundance of food delivery services ensure that you can get anything from Chinese food to chocolate cake without ever having to leave your apartment. Now, even your trips to Trader Joe’s might be eliminated with the launch of Quinciple, a service that delivers groceries to your door and makes shopping accessible at your fingertips.

Quinciple is essentially a subscription grocery box service. You pay a monthly fee and at the beginning of the month, a box filled with an array of food is delivered to your door. Claiming to deliver “the freshest, most seasonal ingredients,” Quinciple’s foragers personalize each box to include a wide variety of produce that can easily fit together into cohesive meals. Each box typically contains a protein such as meat or fish, a grain-based item such as bread, pasta or rice, a dairy item, a fruit and six to eight different kinds of vegetables. They also include suggested recipes and a product card that explains more about the products and producers that Quinciple sources.

Tori De Leone, an employee at Quinciple and NYU graduate, said that the company’s main goal is to make people aware of local and fresh ingredients that they can incorporate into their food.

“Our goal is to bring the farm to the people, quite literally,” De Leone said. “We’re seeking to increase the availability of responsibly raised produce to people that may not have the time to seek it themselves, or may not live in locations where this produce is available often. We also want to educate our subscribers about how the local food system works, and how they can incorporate rare, interesting and sustainable products into their day to day.”

Quinciple just opened their newest location in lower Manhattan, making it easily available to students around campus. John Dory started Quinciple in 2013, when he saw a need for well-sourced, curated groceries that could be delivered to people’s doors. It was then handed down to David and Michael Robinov, a father and son team, who have begun the process of merging it with their small-batch food online marketplace, Farm To People.

So how is Quinciple a better grocery-shopping alternative than going out and buying it on your own? The convenience of not having to go out and wait in lines is one of the biggest factors, but using Quinciple also has health and environmental benefits, such as less food waste. According to Leone, investing in Quinciple also means supporting local grocers and farmers as opposed to paying a large commercial chain.

“Even though Trader Joe’s is a “healthy” alternative to more conventional grocery shopping, there is a critical lack of transparency about their products,” she said. “With Quinciple, subscribers are truly supporting the small farmers that we so desperately need in the region. They know where their money is going, how the food has been handled and raised, and are voting with their dollars and their stomachs to keep supporting the kind of food system that we all want.”

Leone supports Quinciple because of her experience grocery shopping as a student. Not only was buying produce expensive, it was also time-consuming. Therefore, she sees Quinciple as a way to enjoy food without additional hassle.

“It creates a great opportunity to learn how to cook, store, and combine great healthy ingredients for those students who may not have friends or family to teach them,” Leone said. “Obviously following the recipes is fairly easy, but we also aim to explain what ingredients go well together and why so that our subscribers can do a little bit more playing with their food than traditional meal kits allow.”

You can start ordering now at https://www.quinciple.com/.

Email Ankita Bhanot at [email protected].