Swedish healthy food to go brand Picadeli is set to launch in the UK for the first time.
The Swedish company, which operates around 2,000 ‘smart’ salad bars across Europe, has scheduled a London press event in early September. It will also be exhibiting at this year’s food to go Lunch event on 14 and 15 September at the ExCeL in London.
Picadeli supplies stores and supermarkets across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Belgium and France, including Carrefour, Euro Garages, Co-op, Rewe, ICA, Franprix and 7 Eleven.
It also launched in the US late last year, where it is available in supermarket chains Safeway, Acme and Kings.
While timings and details of potential UK supermarket partners are not known, the press event on 8 September is expected to confirm a rollout of the concept.
Picadeli’s ‘smart salad bar’ integrates a series of tech solutions such as AI-powered auto order suggestions, digital labels and planograms, smart cooling algorithms and displays to communicate with the consumer as well as smart hand units for scanning containers.
Each of the salad bar’s containers has a QR code that makes its contents fully traceable through its digital food safety system. The digital platform is accessible to staff operating the salad bar, allowing them to access all the data stored in the cloud-based monitoring system, such as sales, stock levels, food freshness and temperature.
Picadeli first started in 2009, before expanding as a business when it was bought in 2015 by Greenfood Group, a €500m-sales Nordic multinational with several businesses within green retail and convenience.
Last year, it sold over 30 million portions of self-serve salad, Greenfood Group’s annual report showed. It posted full year net revenues of SEK 825m (around £66m), up from the year before when sales tumbled due to covid. In the first quarter of 2022, Picadeli’s net sales were up by 82.7% at SEK 228.6m (£18.3m) compared to SEK125.2m (£10m) in the same period the year before. Its second quarter results, out today, show momentum has continued, with net sales up 61% to SEK341.5m (£27m), while EBITDA was up 109%.
In its annual results, Greenfood CEO David von Laskowski said the company was finally emerging from the pandemic to continue its “growth journey”.
“Despite exceptional circumstances as a result of the pandemic, in 2021 we have managed to reach several important milestones through fast-paced innovation and a continued strong focus on sustainability, digitalization and product development.”
“With Greenfood’s food tech company, Picadeli, the group has succeeded in creating a scalable business model with continued great growth potential.
“Greenfood can cost-effectively expand into new countries, which was proven once again in 2021 when Picadeli crossed the Atlantic and introduced the concept to the US market.”
During the year, it also continued to invest in plant-based foods and alternative protein sources in addition to phasing out all red meat from the salad bars. Picadeli claims its salad bar concept “pays for itself in about a year, with immediate profitability for the customer”.
“If for some reason a salad bar were to prove unsuccessful, it could be moved to another location at very low cost, whether it’s 15m away in the same store or at another location, meaning that the risk involved in establishing a bar in a new area is relatively low.
“There are also a number of different ways Picadeli can be established in new markets, from wholly owned to fully franchised models. All in all, this results in a highly scalable model that has the potential for great growth in the coming years.”
In November 2021, Greenfood issued a four-year sustainability-linked bond for just over SEK 1bn (around £80m).
Greenfood CEO David Von Laskowski is set to speak at The Grocer’s Omnnichannel Foodservice Conference on 9 November at the Pullman Hotel in London. For tickets and more info see theomnichannelconference.co.uk/
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