NPM Capital acquired a stake in online supermarket Picnic, in the spring of 2017. Co-founder Joris Beckers explains why his company and NPM are such a good fit and why Picnic is not bothered by the dominant position of Albert Heijn and Jumbo in the Dutch grocery retail industry.
You only came onto the scene in September 2015, but in that short time you’ve already created quite the media buzz. No brick-and-mortar stores, customers use an app to order their groceries, and you supply to consumers directly from your warehouse using electric delivery cars you developed in-house. The gist of many articles is that you’re a pretty disruptive company. What is your take on that?
‘Let me put it this way: we do happen to address one of today’s major challenges, namely the efficient distribution of food. Or, to look at it from a wider perspective: the challenge of making the food distribution supply chain more sustainable. That’s something that all those articles have tended to largely ignore, but it’s an important issue, because the current supply chain is anything but sustainable. A relatively large amount of food goes to waste, consumers drive their cars to the supermarket three times a week; the stores all need lighting, along with heating and cooling systems, and so on. Only manufacturers are actually pulling their weight in terms of improving the sustainability of products.
