Senior Buyer Fruit & Vegetables

Picnic is built on a simple promise: groceries ordered through an app, at a fair price, delivered to the door. In fresh produce, it recently raised the bar: premium quality as a competitive edge. The Senior Buyer Fruit & Vegetables translates that ambition into what lands in the app every day, setting and upholding the quality standard across the category.

About Picnic

Picnic launched in the Netherlands in 2015 with a pilot of twelve Electric Picnic Vehicles in Amersfoort. Two years later, that number had already grown to a hundred, and expansion has continued ever since, making Picnic one of Europe’s fastest-growing online grocers. Today, thousands of recognizable red vehicles operate across the Netherlands, France, and Germany, delivering daily groceries to millions of customers. Backed by investors including Edeka and the Gates Foundation, Picnic has raised close to two billion euros to fund its continued growth. Much of what makes the model work is built in-house, from the software powering its fully automated fulfillment centers to its all-electric delivery fleet.

The organization now employs more than fifteen thousand people from over eighty nationalities. Beneath its scale, it still runs with the mindset of the startup it once was. The hierarchy remains flat, and people are trusted with real responsibility from day one. The office culture is energetic, with many employees working on site at its Amsterdam office, drawn by the lively atmosphere (and several office dogs) and a constant drive to keep improving every day.

Vacancy: Senior Buyer Fruit & Vegetables

Expectations around fresh produce quality are rising, while price is becoming less decisive in how people choose their groceries. Customers are increasingly unwilling to compromise on quality. This creates a clear opportunity for Picnic to put quality at the centre of its fresh produce offering. It currently carries a range of around four hundred fresh produce articles, with much of the assortment still to reach the standard it is aiming for. That improvement is set to move quickly, with a large part of the assortment expected to meet a premium benchmark within a year. The focus is on fruit and vegetables, the premium and fragile end of the category where quality makes the clearest difference. The Senior Buyer is the person who helps make that happen, setting the bar for quality and translating deep, structured category knowledge into what reaches the app.

The work runs along two tracks. Most sourcing flows through Everest, which covers the high-volume base of the assortment. While some retailers are primarily price-driven, Picnic is prepared to pay more for quality where it matters. The Senior Buyer oversees what Everest sources and is responsible for buying premium and more fragile products directly. A large part of the value lies in that direct sourcing, and in the judgment it requires, from knowing which variety tastes better to deciding when to move growers as one country’s season gives way to the next.

The Senior Buyer joins the team led by the Fruit & Vegetables Category Lead, who played a key role in building Picnic’s in-house quality operation and in setting up its own fresh distribution center in Geldermalsen a year ago. The team includes ten quality managers on the floor, a fellow buyer, a category manager, and two analysts. Together, they work closely around the category on a day-to-day basis, from sourcing decisions through to what happens on the warehouse floor. In practice, this means the Senior Buyer is regularly in the field, visiting growers and walking the warehouse with the quality team to assess product quality and feed insights back into the organization. Especially with growers, strong relationships are essential, and the Senior Buyer builds and maintains them with ease.

“We are still at the beginning of building our quality benchmark in fruit and vegetables. This is a rare moment for a Senior Buyer to step in and truly take ownership of the category as it develops.” – Karel van der Voorden, Head of Buying & Category Management

Picnic only began competing on fruit and vegetable quality a few months ago, which means the category and standard are still taking shape, with the new Senior Buyer playing a key role in defining them. The bar is high, and there is still significant ground to gain, which is what makes the role demanding and exciting at the same time. For a commercial professional who knows fresh produce, this is a unique opportunity to steer a category that is still in motion and directly influence what customers eat every day.

Interested?

Picnic is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy. To express your interest, please contact Quirijn Mohr at quirijn.mohr@topofminds.com.