ROTTERDAM, 13 January 2026 – Picnic says Rotterdam shoppers pushed sungold kiwis and organic limes up the list of the fastest-rising grocery items in 2025. The online supermarket also points to folded flatbreads, skinless salmon fillet, noodles and white beans in tomato sauce as dinner favourites that saw a sharp jump in demand compared with a year earlier.
Picnic is an online supermarket that delivers groceries in Rotterdam via booked time slots. Picnic bases the snapshot on an analysis of order data from more than 1.5 million customers, looking specifically at the products that climbed fastest year-on-year, rather than the items that were already the biggest sellers.
What changed
For Rotterdam, the story is a mix of fresh add-ons and practical weeknight staples. Picnic says sungold kiwis and organic limes ranked high among the city’s fastest risers, suggesting that more people are regularly adding fruit and citrus to their weekly shop, whether for breakfasts, snacks, or quick flavour boosts at home.
At the same time, the Rotterdam list is not all about “healthy”. It reads like the kind of basket built for speed, with ingredients that help you get dinner on the table without turning the evening into a second job.
What Rotterdam bought
On the dinner side, Picnic says demand in Rotterdam rose strongly for folded flatbreads, salmon fillet without skin, noodles and white beans in tomato sauce. Taken together, that points to easy combinations: flatbreads that can carry almost anything, salmon that skips prep, noodles that cook quickly, and beans that work as a fast base for a warm meal.
Picnic also flags that The Hague showed a different fast-riser pattern, with hüttenkäse called out there, underlining that these lists are meant to capture local shifts, not a single national menu.
Returns and statiegeld
Picnic adds a second Rotterdam-related insight that is less about food and more about routines. Over the past year, the company says it collected nearly half a million return parcels via a DHL and PostNL service, and that Utrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam had the highest share of customers choosing to send returns back through Picnic.
It also says it collected a record number of deposit bottles and cans (statiegeldflessen en -blikjes) from doorsteps, describing it as almost 50% more taken back than Picnic itself sold. If you use the service, you will recognise the convenience: it turns returns and recycling into one less trip you need to plan.
Weekplanner effect
Finally, Picnic points to its weekly planner (Weekplanner), which lets customers pick meals for the coming week based on preferences. Nationally, the company says the most selected recipes were spaghetti with chicken mince and boursin, Turkish pizza with chicken mince and salad, and chicken schnitzel wraps with honey mustard sauce.
Picnic says the Weekplanner includes almost 2,200 recipes, which helps explain why Rotterdam’s “fast risers” are not random oddities. They sit inside a system that nudges people towards repeatable, low-effort meals, especially on busy weekdays.
