At the start of a new year, it is a time for many companies to look back. The past year may have been dramatic for most companies, but other companies scored like never before. The online supermarket Picnic did good business and achieved a great deal. In Eindhoven alone, a front door was opened 115.727 times to deliver the groceries. On average 350 kilograms of goods were delivered per customer, which resulted in a saving of 28 hours of shopping in the supermarket. The past year was a year that more people cooked at home because the catering industry was closed. Steak and Lebanese bread were suddenly 4 times more popular compared to 2019. Milk, cucumber and bananas still appear in the top three of most ordered items. A striking detail, since March customers have bought twice as much furniture cleaner.
Just 5 years ago, Picnic started with 4 cars in Amersfoort. Meanwhile, more than 1500 electric cars are on the road to serve online customers. With this, 8.486.913 kilometers were driven last year to deliver the groceries emission-free. Because Picnic uses electric cars, this saved 2.050.490 kilograms of CO2 in the air. That is the same as the emissions of 11.200 return flights to Paris. Since October last year, the trolleys have also been used to collect return parcels for DHL.
Picnic was founded in 2015 by entrepreneurs Joris Beckers, Frederik Nieuwenhuys, Michiel Muller and Bas Verheijen. Gerard Scheij also came on board later. In September 2015, Picnic in Amersfoort started with four delivery cars. There are now more than 1500 cars driving around in about 120 Dutch towns. With hundreds of thousands of customers and a monthly expansion to new cities, Picnic was named the fastest growing company in the Netherlands in 2019. They do not deliver criss-cross through the city, but drive through the streets every day according to a smart route. For example, they can take groceries for the entire neighborhood with them in one go, keep delivery free and save a lot of trips to the supermarket.
Also read: Delivery times for online groceries are scarce for Christmas
