Anna Krotova

You’ve seen sustainability from many different angles. How did you end up at Picnic?
“I got to know sustainability from many perspectives, but ultimately I wanted to lead the transition from the inside. In 2023 I joined Picnic as its first sustainability employee, to prepare the company for the CSRD. That quickly grew into something more! I now connect all the initiatives that were already running in the company into one strategy, with projects around assortment, procurement, operations, waste and packaging.
Two years later, a lot is in place. The processes are running, responsibilities are clear, and we’ve since become a small core team. But we never do it alone. Everyone at Picnic does their bit. It took time, but you plant the seeds, you wait patiently, and eventually they sprout.”

What do you spend most of your time on right now?
“The first is operations. Behind the groceries there’s a whole infrastructure: distribution centres, electric delivery vans and freight transport. There, we’re working on less food waste, less and better packaging, and cleaner, more efficient energy.
The second is the store and procurement. An online store works differently from a physical supermarket where you walk past every shelf. What customers see with us is very curated, so we actively steer towards healthy and organic choices. Healthy campaigns now get a prominent spot on the homepage (our main digital shop window). That’s a clear increase compared to before. We also critically assess our assortment on nutritional value and degree of processing. The next step is traceability in the supply chain; as a small team, we’re tackling that step by step.

New legislation definitely helps with that! We call it compliance, but to meet the rules you have to change processes from within. That’s how more fundamental change gets set in motion.”

What personal mission brings you into the world of sustainable food and agriculture?
“Simply put: reducing impact! I’m trained as a systems thinker, and ‘changing the system’ sounds big. Still, I’m endlessly optimistic about what businesses can do. How much harm they cause to people and the environment depends largely on the rules and conditions they operate under. Make sustainable practice the norm, and companies will adapt.
Within that context, I want to show that things can be done differently. I develop new ways of working, prove that they work in practice, and hope others in the sector adopt them. That’s how business contributes to system change. Everyone has their own role in that, from activists and civil society organisations to companies.
It also delivers concrete results. At Picnic I lead a project against food waste, and together with colleagues we’ve already kept 200 tonnes of food out of the bin. That also saves on disposal costs. It proves that sustainable business really is possible.”

Suppose you had a magic wand that was guaranteed to work. What would you change in the food system tomorrow?
“I would better align financial instruments and subsidies with our sustainability goals. When you set up the market logic so that sustainable choices and innovation are rewarded throughout the entire chain, you give the whole sector a powerful push in the right direction.”

What motivates you to be part of RFC?
“What I appreciate about your work is how you build partnerships. You bring different parties together, look at what one group needs and what the other can offer, deal with the constraints on both sides, and still arrive at coherent projects with tangible results. Joining those groups and that kind of collaboration would be very interesting for us. No one can do this alone; big impact requires scale.”