Dutch grocery delivery service Picnic slowly expands

Picnic, the Dutch grocery delivery service which caused quite a stir when it launched this summer, is slowly expanding its service. It started in Amersfoort, the second largest city of the province of Utrecht, but now it also delivers in the neighboring municipality of Leusden. For next year, further expansion is planned.

Picnic started officially in Amersfoort, two months ago. After being in the making for the past three years, the grocery delivery service started locally, in the center of the Netherlands. The company delivers all kinds of fast-moving consumer goods for free. This unique selling point differs them from Albert.nl, the country’s biggest grocery delivery service and owned by Albert Heijn.

When it launched, Picnic received lots of press coverage, alhough it wasn’t the first grocery delivery service claiming to offer something new. Just as in other countries, the Netherlands is a market where it’s hard to make real money with delivering groceries to consumers. Albert Heijn does a steady job with its service Albert.nl, but other companies were always struggling to find a profitable business model. For now, Picnic seems to be an exception and maybe it could compete with Albert.nl on the long term.

Now it’s slowly expanding to other cities. As of today, people from Leusden, a medium-sized city with almost 30,000 inhabitants, are able to order their groceries online via the Picnic app. And according to its founder, Picnic will expand to more cities next year. Utrecht, Almere and Apeldoorn are among the cities the grocery delivery service is looking at, Nieuws.nl writes.

Picnic currently has 5,000 consumers who use the app and 17 electric vehicles for all deliveries. For a city the size of Utrecht the company needs between 40 and 60 delivery cars, but after finding a new car supplier in Italy the roll-out shouldn’t be a problem, Picnic said.