Welcome to Life’s a Picnic!
You’ve just stumbled upon the first of a series of articles. By reading these, you’ll discover the story of an international, Amsterdam-based supermarket that’s bringing a breath of fresh air to online grocery shopping!
Picnic: Leading a Grocery Revolution
The world of groceries and food retail is full of inefficiencies, wasted time, money, and resources. In 2015 a major U.K supermarket created nearly 60,000 tons of waste — about 120 million meals. That’s not only unsustainable, it’s rubbish business. The current system of how people buy and sell food is ready for change. The time is ripe to upset the status quo and start a grocery revolution. At Picnic, with an app-only store, a just-in-time supply chain, and a fleet of electric vehicles, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Picnic began as an experiment in 2015 in Amersfoort. We started small and worked closely with locals to understand what people want from an online grocery store. This helped us create a product that customers love and share with their friends. The popularity of our idea was evident and soon we had taken 80% of deliveries from other supermarkets in the area.
Now, Picnic operates across 2 countries, in 47 cities, delivering to over 150,000 households…and those numbers keep growing!
As you’ve guessed, Picnic is a greengrocer, an online retailer, a fully-fledged supermarket. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Within our operation, we have as many processes as possible run on in-house, custom-built tools and systems. This makes us unique. We’re doing things in ways that literally aren’t being done by anyone else.
A Different Attitude
Right from the beginning, we decided to only use electric vehicles in our last mile delivery. Now, our collection of electric Picnic Vehicles (ePVs) is one of the largest electric fleets in Europe. Not only do we think that they’re pretty cool, but they represent something very important. The EU Parliament has predicted that shipping and deliveries will be responsible for 17% of global CO2 emissions by 2050. With our ePVs, we’re trying to change that. Each delivery means fewer emissions, and as our customers no longer need to drive to supermarkets, air pollution is further reduced.
How we deliver is another aspect that sets us apart. Not only do we run a just-in-time, low-emissions supply chain, but we also promote a customer-first approach.
When cities, towns, and villages lost their milkmen to corporate supermarkets, they lost much more than just milk. Picnic is reviving the days of familiar and friendly deliveries. Like those humble milkmen of old, we provide a warm, cosy, or as we say in Dutch — gezellig, doorstep service. We strive to be the best milkman on Earth, and our Runners deliver groceries accompanied by good conversation and first-class assistance.
We’re excited by what we do, how we do it, and we want to share our story. Every two weeks, there will be a new article by a different Picnic character. From whiz-kid mathematicians, developers experimenting on prototypes, skilful mechanics, to the Runners that deliver groceries day-to-day — you’ll hear from the whole breadth of Picnic.
So, whether you’re a customer, a logistics expert, or someone who simply wants to know more now than you did 5 minutes ago — please tune in, and read on.
