Picnic: Affordable Grocery Delivery in France You’ve Got to Try

Since launching in Amsterdam in 2015, Picnic (a so-called online supermarket) has been wildly successful. Picnic makes getting your groceries simple – just fill up your cart on the Picnic app, choose a time slot convenient for you, and get your order delivered straight to your door for free. Sound too good to be true? We recently placed our eleventh order with Picnic and decided we just had to share how this online supermarket has become part of our routine as Americans living in France.

As a budget-conscious couple, Jalen and I take care to monitor our grocery expenditures carefully. When we lived in Troyes, we shopped weekly at Colruyt, a supermarket with Belgian roots and cheap goods. In Reims, we frequented Carrefour Market, one of the more affordable iterations of all the Carrefour stores with a large selection and reasonable prices. But, when we moved to Palaiseau, we struggled to find “our grocery store.”

We tried the local Supermarché G20 (very little selection), Carrefour City (too pricey), and Franprix (poor price-quality ratio). After more than a few disappointments, we considered going to the town over for our groceries – but just couldn’t see ourselves doing that week after week, especially without a car. That’s when we remembered that we now lived in one of Picnic’s delivery zones in Île-de-France, and decided to give it a shot! Let’s just say that Picnic didn’t let us down.

Does Picnic Deliver to My Address in France?

The user-friendly app allows customers to shop by aisle, category, recipe, or direct search. Your cart is stored on the app and doesn’t have to be filled all at once, meaning you can add an item or two to your next order whenever you’re thinking about it! Once you’re satisfied with your cart, and have hit the 35 € minimum, you get to choose from a number of time slots spread over the following days. You can even get next day delivery if you order before 11:00 PM!

Picnic booklet surrounded by grocery items.

Picnic optimizes delivery routes to make their services as sustainable as possible. Instead of meandering all over town with no rhyme or reason, Picnic’s 100% electric vehicles delivery groceries neighborhood by neighborhood. And, they’re big on avoiding gaspillage alimentaire (food waste). Picnic requests the exact amount of goods ordered through their app from their own baker, greengrocer, and other suppliers straight to their distribution center – which means no mediators to drive prices up and no over-estimating their stock needs.

Sustainability fact: Picnic prioritizes sourcing locally whenever possible.

The day of your delivery, a Picnic Shopper assembles your order, places your items into recyclable bags, and specifies a 20-minute delivery window from within the longer time slot you chose previously. Impressively, our deliveries have been punctual every single time! Then, a Picnic Runner brings your groceries right to you. You also have the option to hand over the recyclable bags from your previous order to get a 35 cent refund. All that’s left is to put your items away!

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In our experience, even when Picnic makes mistakes, they correct them promptly. Over the course of our eleven orders, we’ve notified Picnic of one spoiled vegetable and two missing items. On all three occasions, Picnic responded in a timely manner and offered us a refund of the items or replacement items. We are more than satisfied with these solutions – especially since we’ve accidentally bought bad produce or forgotten to pack up an item at an in-person grocery store and received nothing in return.

Forgot something? You can add items to your Picnic cart until 11:00 PM the night before your delivery is scheduled!

All in all, we are obsessed with Picnic, and consider ourselves grocery delivery converts. Using Picnic is far cheaper than shopping at any of our local grocery stores, and (much to our chagrin) even our local markets. By skipping our weekly trip to the supermarket, we save valuable time on the weekends, allowing us to more easily recuperate from the work week and giving us more time for our hobbies (like writing this blog!).

Are you interested in getting your groceries delivered? Have we persuaded you to try Picnic? Feel free to use our referral code JALEN223 – we’ll both get 10 € off! Not convinced grocery delivery is for you? Tell us your thoughts in a comment!