Online grocery has long been considered the retail sector’s profitability puzzle. While customer demand continues accelerating, countless operators struggle to make the unit economics work. But Richard McKenzie, CEO of Veloq, a division of the Rohlik Group, has a different story to tell.
In a recent episode of Omni Talk’s 5 Insightful Minutes, McKenzie revealed how Rohlik has built a $2 billion online grocery operation across five European countries that’s not just surviving but thriving with 30% annual growth and an exceptional 88 NPS customer satisfaction score.
The question every grocer wants answered: How are they doing this profitably?
The Full-Basket Foundation
McKenzie’s first principle cuts straight to the heart of online grocery economics: a full-basket strategy matters more than speed alone.
“If you do full basket, you get a big basket,” McKenzie explains. “If you’re doing $120 baskets, you’ve got the margin there to pay for some of the picking and the packing and even the delivery.”
Rohlik offers customers the complete complexity of grocery, i.e. fresh bakery, fresh food, and everything found in a traditional store, delivered in three hours. This comprehensive range drives larger basket sizes that create sustainable unit economics, unlike limited-assortment quick commerce models struggling with profitability.
Right-Sizing Automation Infrastructure
The second piece of Rohlik’s profitability equation involves strategic facility design. McKenzie emphasizes that automation success requires more than just implementing robotics. It also demands right-sized infrastructure.
“If you build them too big, they’re not utilized, and you just end up with what’s been called monuments,” McKenzie notes. “For us, build them the right size, and then you can get them closer into the town so you’re managing the last mile.”
Rohlik operates 12 automated distribution centers, typically ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 square feet. This compact footprint delivers three critical advantages: optimal labor utilization, proximity to customers for efficient last-mile delivery, and capital efficiency that avoids the “monument” problem plaguing oversized facilities.
The Software Orchestration Advantage
Perhaps most revealing is McKenzie’s emphasis on integrated technology. While many operators bolt automation onto existing systems, Rohlik built something fundamentally different: “one software brain” that orchestrates every element of fulfillment.
“We run seven picking zones in most of our fulfillment centers,” McKenzie reveals. “This software will orchestrate simultaneous picking of all of those zones, brought together and consolidated in the back of the van about 30 minutes after the fulfillment center received the order.”
This level of orchestration, managing fresh bakery, temperature zones, perishability, shelf life, and seven concurrent picking operations, requires technology purpose-built for grocery complexity, not adapted from general warehouse solutions.
Why Grocery-First Technology Matters
McKenzie candidly addresses why many grocers struggle with automation: “When you take the standard software off the shelf you get with it, it is just not built for grocery. It doesn’t do the orchestration, it doesn’t do the speed. It doesn’t really think about what’s perishable, what the shelf life is, what the temperature zones are.”
Over five years, Rohlik progressively rewrote standard automation software to make it “grocery first.” As operators who depend on this technology daily, they had no choice but to solve these problems comprehensively.
“We eat our own lunch,” McKenzie says. “We’re the operators here, and we have to make it work. We wouldn’t have had a business if we didn’t have this working.”
The Customer-Backwards Philosophy
What distinguishes Rohlik’s approach is their starting point. Rather than asking what technology enables, they began with customer needs and worked backward.
“We started by saying what do you have to do to win? You need a full basket, you need fast delivery, and then we worked backwards from the proposition to say how do you make the technology work for that,” McKenzie explains.
This customer-first methodology created technology that serves operational requirements rather than forcing operations to adapt to technology limitations, a subtle but crucial distinction that separates successful automation from expensive science experiments.
Scaling the Solution Through Lock
Now, as CEO of Veloq, McKenzie is making this battle-tested technology available to other grocers facing the same profitability challenges.
“The problems we’ve solved with Rohlik are actually genuinely the same problems as a lot of grocers around the world have,” he notes. “How do you deliver efficient customer proposition efficiently and make it profitable?”
For partners adopting Veloq’s technology, they gain something invaluable: a provider with genuine skin in the game. This isn’t theoretical software from consultants. It’s operational technology that must work daily across Rohlik’s own fulfillment network.
Key Takeaways for Grocery Operators
McKenzie’s insights provide a roadmap for grocers pursuing profitable online delivery:
Focus on full-basket range to drive larger orders with sustainable economics rather than chasing speed with limited assortments.
Right-size your infrastructure to match market demand, avoid underutilized “monuments,” and enable proximity to customers for last-mile efficiency.
Invest in integrated orchestration rather than bolting automation onto disconnected systems that can’t manage grocery complexity.
Build or adopt grocery-first technology that handles perishability, temperature zones, and simultaneous multi-zone picking rather than adapting general warehouse solutions.
Think customer backwards by starting with the proposition customers want and building technology to enable it, not the reverse.
The Profitable Path Forward
As e-commerce continues growing across global grocery markets, McKenzie’s message offers genuine hope: profitable online grocery is achievable with the right combination of strategy, infrastructure, and technology.
“We have a strong belief that e-commerce grocery can be successful, profitable,” McKenzie concludes. “And we just want to prove that works.”
With $2 billion in revenue, 30% annual growth, and industry-leading customer satisfaction, Rohlik’s proof is already compelling. For grocers still searching for their profitable online model, McKenzie’s framework provides essential guidance, and Veloq may just offer the technology to execute it.
Be careful out there,
– Chris, Anne, and the Omni Talk team
P.S. To see our full lineup of past 5 Insightful Minute conversations, head here.
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Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.