The milk float, a home-delivery service that evolved from horse-drawn carriages to early electric vehicles, belongs firmly in the past. Or does it? Amsterdam-based e-groceries company Picnic had revived the milkman concept, but with a modern flourish. Bloomberg reports about it.
Picnic has a milkman-concept to deliver groceries to homes using light electric vehicles (flexible due to its slim design), focusing on less food waste and fewer food miles traveled. Picnic buys and delivers locally, with its vans going no faster than 50 kilometers per hour. Started in 2015, Picnic today has a fleet of 1.000 light electric vans (Goupil) on to the streets.
Joris Beckers, the company’s co-founder, said in an interview with Bloomberg: “Our aim is to create a sustainable infrastructure for food delivery. We are disrupting and significantly improving the e-commerce experience.”
Picnic will build a robotized fulfillment center in Utrecht (NL), to process around 150.000 orders every week. Picnic says it has a 5% market share in the most mature cities in which it operates. Last year was a record for Picnic, which added almost 300.000 new customers in the Netherlands and Germany.
Source: Bloomberg