Shopping at Picnic 🛒

First of all this is not an advertising talk, I’m not asked / paid to write a blog about Picnic.

After weeks of waiting I can finally go shopping at the online supermarket Picnic. Because the service they offer fits well with my daily life, in the context of smart living (which also includes time management). In this blog I will describe everything that happens between registering and your first delivery and the tops / flops.

You will be wondering why I am going to write a blog about an online supermarket. Why does that fit in a smart house? To begin with, it has to do with dealing with time and efficiency. As usual, you always go to the supermarket once a week (or more often) for your daily groceries, by car or by bicycle. This will cost you a few hours a week in time.

In my case, I often go to school during the day, and if I can do my shopping, it’s only by bicycle, so I can’t do big shopping. That gave me the idea of using Picnic.

Funny to mention, there is already a feature request to get Picnic as an integration into Home Assistant. It seems to exist for Homey already.

Step 1 – Register with Picnic

First you have to download the picnic app on your android or iOS phone and register. There is a good chance that you will first be on a waiting list or that you will not be on a waiting list at all because you are outside their delivery area. Picnic is growing fast and is building hard on a nationwide network, but does not want to grow too fast, so that the current service provision is preserved and of quality.

When it’s your turn that varies enormously per city / district. Personally it took 4 weeks before I could place my first order, the advantage is that Picnic gives “waitsofteners” as long as you are on their waiting list. You get these products for free with your first order (if you order within X weeks).

Step 2 – Fill your shopping basket

Hooray the long wait is over and you can finally order! The first screen you get now looks like this:

The picture on the left shows which discount offers apply for this week and if you want to look up a specific product you will see the picture on the right. What I like is the pictures of the different categories.

If you want to add a product to your shopping basket, simply press it. A golden tip: always look at the weight, in the beginning I sometimes ordered too little, because I had not looked at the weight.

Did you know that Picnic uses a separate / different way of warehouse distribution?
For example, products that are similar to each other, such as different flavors of tea or products from the same category, are not adjacent.

This way you prevent someone from picking up the wrong product, smart!

Step 3 – Place your order

When you have put a lot of products in your shopping basket, it is time to order. Make sure that you have at least € 25 in shopping in your basket, but you will get over it if you stock up on food for a whole week. Picnic does not charge shipping costs, but you always pay 35 cents in plastic (bio) bags. (I will come back to that later)

You can then choose a delivery time, note that you must have ordered before 10:00 pm if you want it delivered the next day and it can sometimes happen that a delivery time is already full. You can also add products until 10:00 pm after an order, because yes sometimes you still forget something.

After payment you will see the screen as shown on the right, with the option to add the delivery time directly to your agenda.

Step 4 – Waiting for your order

After your order, order pickers will collect your order in a large warehouse. You will be notified when the delivery person starts driving. You can even see who is coming and which route will be taken.

If a delivery person comes by you can give him / her your old plastic bags and empty bottles, you will then get your 35 cents for the bags and your deposit of the bottles refunded to your banking account.

Price comparison

What about the price in relation to other supermarkets? Well, Picnic is actually doing pretty well there! I recently read an article in the consumer association magazine (association in the Netherlands that defends the interests of consumers), in which Picnic has a price relationship with stores such as lidl and aldi.

What I noticed at Picnic is that there are many A brands and from the cheap segment there are many items from the “Gwoon” brand.

Albert Heijn

With my first order I did several investigations, comparing articles with those of the albert heijn. In all cases, I could only conclude that Picnic was cheaper.

Jumbo

(I will update this soon)

Overall judgment

The title sounds very heavy but here I am summing up my overall findings. I have always been very satisfied with Picnic’s service, the prices are very competitive and comparable to a Jumbo or Lidl in the Netherlands. Picnic was an ideal solution for me anyway 🙂

As a student interaction technology, I have of course already given some tips that could be better in the app, for example the option to search more advanced and sort by price and weight.

For those who would like a little discount (€5,-) on their first order at Pinic, send me an email so that you can receive my personal discount code (I cannot disclose it due to the rules) 🙁