Brookline’s Pantry Meal Kits Now Delivered by Instacart

It makes it possible to have locally-produced, pre-portioned recipe kits delivered to your door in an hour.

Pantry Stores

Pantry is a brick-and-mortar store for pre-portioned meal kits in Brookline. / Photo via Facebook

When it opened in Washington Square earlier this year, Pantry positioned itself as an alternative to the typical grocery store shopping experience. The bright shop is a brick-and-mortar destination for meal kits, similar to those popularized by deliver services like Blue Apron, Plated, the Purple Carrot, and Just Add Cooking, and others. But browsing Pantry’s stations, organized by recipe—rather that a typical store’s aisles, grouped by ingredients—can still be a chore, which is why the local company just signed on with personal grocery shopping company Instacart.

“We’re dedicated to saving our customers’ time,” said Vishwa Chandra, vice president of Instacart’s retail accounts. His company, which launched in San Francisco, connects customers with personal shoppers, who cross off the items on grocery lists via a smartphone app, and deliver them directly with personal vehicles. It competes with services like Peapod by Stop & Shop, circumventing the need for warehouse storage and box trucks.

“A partnership with Pantry provides our customers with the duel convenience of both meal planning and home delivery while providing flexibility that we know customers demand,” Vishwa Chandra said.

Pantry offers a rotating selection of recipes developed by Boston University Gastronomy graduate and cofounder Amanda Mayo, pre-portioned for two, four, or more diners, along with recipe cards, videos, and kitchen essentials. It already delivers its services through the apps Caviar, Doordash, Seamless, and GrubHub, said cofounder and CEO Dennis Lasko. But the Instacart partnership makes more sense.

“Instacart is really grocery-focused,” Lasko said. “Other services are prepared meals focused, so we think people on Instacart are looking for what we provide.”

While the idea behind Pantry is to give its customers a local retail store, Lasko knows not everyone can or wants to make time to shop—even though he says picking up all the ingredients for tonight’s dinner can be done in less than five minutes, because of how Pantry is organized. The Instacart partnership provides the convenience of at-home delivery, but takes it a step further by eliminating the need to get a subscription or make a commitment to a meal kit company. And since Pantry is local, orders can be made and received in under an hour.

Pantry delivery through Instacart is currently available in Brookline, Back Bay, the South End, and Fenway. All orders placed through December 21 are automatically entered to win a Pantry dinner for six.

1622 Beacon St., Brookline; 617-487-5209 or pantrystores.com.