Czech web supermarket Rohlik starts European advance

Rohlik, the leading grocery delivery service in the Czech Republic, has started its European expansion: the grocery delivery service just started in Hungary, Austria, and Romania, but is already approaching Germany. 

On its way to Germany

Active in nine cities and with home delivery within two hours, Rohlik is currently the leading online grocery service in the Czech Republic. Range and speed of deliveries are the company’s greatest assets. Now, the delivery service is also embarking on an international expansion. 

Hungary is first: Rohlik has just started in Budapest with the promise to deliver groceries to customers’ homes within three hours. Other supermarket players such as Tesco, Auchan and Spar are already established there, however, and they ‘only’ manage to deliver the next day.

More launches are planned later this year in Vienna and Romanian Bucharest. However, for founder and CEO Tomáš Čupr, the German market is the main target: the start-up’s primary objective is to honk its horn in Germany within the next three to five years, the entrepreneur explained to Lebensmittel Zeitung.

80% growth expected in 2020

His ambitions are not mere whims: on the Czech home market, Rohlik already has a net turnover of around 100 million euros, in a country with eleven million inhabitants. Tesco, which is well established, achieved only about 35 million euros of online revenue in the Czech Republic. Last year, the online challenger also reported a profit for the first time.

According to Čupr, its success lies in the technology: the company runs on a self-developed IT system, which ensures a very efficient ‘last mile’. “We are quite obviously an IT company that’s learned to do retail,” the founder quotes the well-known Amazon formula. Recently, the grocery service also has diversified into B2B, ‘Rohlik Fresh Partner’, to deliver fresh produce to offices and corporate customers.

By 2020, the company aims to achieve a turnover of 4.5 billion Czech Crowns or almost 180 million euros, which represents an increase of no less than 80%. Is the company grandstanding or giving a realistic prognosis? Only time will tell.