by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Dutch e-groceries company Picnic is celebrating its first five years. Maybe they don’t make a profit yet; Picnic chooses to grow fast. But, those first five years brought disruptive and inspiring lessons about creating ‘rust, reinheid en regelmaat’. Or as Picnic states: milkman 2.0.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claims grocery delivery cuts carbon emissions by 43% compared to traditional shopping. Grist did a fact-check. Grist spoke with experts. They said that on average, ordering online often reduces the carbon footprint of grocery shopping. The word average is key. This finding doesn’t scale down to the individual level neatly, and the way …
Dutch cartel watchdog Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) will, due to the corona crisis, monitor competition in the Netherlands less strictly. ACM director Martijn Snoep explains: “For example, supermarkets want to know if they can keep each other informed. We are faced with those kinds of questions”. This offers opportunities for groundbreaking cooperation in …
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.
Dutch e-groceries company Picnic raised € 250 million in a new investment round. The company is going to build a high-tech robotized full-filing center in Utrecht (NL), with a floor area of 40,000 square meters. With this step, Picnic is taking a new step in further growth. 150,000 orders can be processed on a weekly …
At a conference in Brussels, Thomas Stroo, the head of logistics at delivery startup HelloFresh, highlighted the company’s success in creating a lean and centralized supply chain that can be micro-controlled from the farmer to the consumer’s kitchen. HelloFresh delivers over 80 million meals each month. In the Benelux region, HelloFresh runs 600 refrigerated delivery vans.
Digital technology advancement has been changing grocery retailing customers’ behavior and expectations. Enabled by digital technologies and pleased by the digital disruptors, customers are expecting convenient online shopping and fast delivery. To retain their loyalty, retailers are forced to provide better services through digital transformation.
The growth of online groceries presents great challenges. Financial director Ton van Veen of Dutch retailer Jumbo: “This is a substantial loss-making business model. Everyone knows that”. Van Veen states that the logistical process behind grocery delivery is costing too much.
The growth of e-commerce has increased demand for warehouse space, but one real estate sector is really heating up. Cold storage distribution centers are in high demand thanks to new food delivery services. The sector is still small now, but growing rapidly.
The Kroger Co. has a long history in retail grocery operations. Today, Kroger is a $115 billion company operating in 35 states in the US. Kroger owns 38 manufacturing facilities that produce about 40 percent of the private-label brands sold in Kroger stores.