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How did you drive logistical innovatoin from a technical perspective?
“It’s easy to dream about a customer proposition, but if you can’t build a viable businessmodel and technology platform around it, you have nothing.” That’s why Picnic developed its own software to plan routes and streamline operational processes. “We started with a small team, few cars, and launched only in one single city. We started to scale just after we understood all the ins-and-outs of the customer and logistical aspects and were convinced that we could scale without problems by ten times or more.” New ideas are always tested first as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on small scale to validate customer demand and logistical feasibility, then as Minimum Scalable Product (MSP) on medium scale to validate the ability to scale, and the as Maximum Impact Product (MIP) to create biggest customer impact.
What were the biggest challenges in scaling?
“Every phase has its own challenges. In the early days we focussed on proof of demand (for example do customers like what we offer), then we focussed on proof of scale (can our business scale with demand), and finally on proof of efficiency (is our business profitable at scale). For every phase we had to find the ‘scalable core’: What works well enough at small scale such that it can efficiently grow tenfold.”
Why did Picnic choose to design its own delivery vehicles?
“We tried existing electric delivery vans, but they didn’t meet our needs. They weren’t efficient enough, and loading and unloading took too much time. So we decided to design our own vehicle, allowing side-loading and unloading. That saves minutes per delivery and those minutes add up when you’re making thousands of deliveries a day.”