Picadeli Group is Europe’s leading healthy fast-food business, operating around 2,500 tech-enabled salad bars in grocery stores across Europe and the US, serving some 70 million healthy meals in 2026 alone. We sat down with CEO David von Laskowski to hear how it all began, how technology has enabled the business to scale and the opportunity he sees ahead.

You've been part of the Picadeli story for a long time. How did it begin?

It actually started with me trying to acquire Picadeli back in 2012. I genuinely believed in what the concept could become. But my offers were turned down not one, but four times! Eventually, the founders and Fidelio suggested I join the board instead. I quickly became chair, and after Picadeli became part of a larger food group, I was asked to step in as COO, shortly thereafter transitioning to Group CEO. So, it was a long road, but perhaps that persistence says something about how strongly I believed in the business.

What was it that you found so compelling?

I came from the pick-and-mix world, where the whole ethos is freedom of choice, finding exactly what you want, as much or as little as you like, whenever you like, wherever you are. Picadeli felt like that same idea applied to healthy food. At the time it was a small Swedish business with no digital infrastructure, but I could see the seeds of something unique. What struck me was that healthy food did not have to be niche or premium. If you could combine choice and convenience with the right operating model, there was an opportunity to make it part of everyday life and ultimately, at real scale.

How would you describe Picadeli Group today?

We've built what I believe is one of the world's most digitalised food companies, which surprises people because they don't expect that from a salad bar. On the surface, the model is deceptively simple: fresh, high-quality salad bars inside grocery stores, using existing retail infrastructure and customer flows rather than building restaurants from scratch. But making fresh food work at scale is anything but simple. Behind every bar is a technology-driven system for assortment, forecasting, traceability, food safety and waste reduction.

In 2026 we operated approximately 2,500 salad bars across Europe and over 200 in the United States. We served roughly 70 million healthy meals per year, which is equivalent to about two meals every single second, around the clock. What we have built is an infrastructure for making healthy food available at scale, and that is ultimately what Picadeli Group is about.

You mention technology. How does that differentiate Picadeli?

Every salad bar is connected to the cloud in real time. We can see exactly which products are in each of our bars, how much shelf life remains on every individual item, and how quickly products are being consumed. That granular data allows us to tailor the assortment bar by bar. What sells well in one neighbourhood may be different from what sells a few streets away. The most significant consequence of this is a dramatic reduction in food waste, creating substantial shared economics for us and our retail partners.

We are also rolling out an AI-powered camera system across our network, small cameras that photograph the contents of each bar every time the lid closes, building a continuous real-time picture of stock levels. The system flags low availability and generates ordering suggestions based on historical sales patterns, day of week, weather forecasts and more. The bar essentially manages its own replenishment.

Fidelio has followed Picadeli for many years. What does that ownership mean to the company?

Fidelio has been closely involved with Picadeli for many years and has played an important role in the company’s development. They know the business well, understand what drives it and have consistently supported the ambition to build something much bigger. Their support for investments in technology, international expansion and the organisation has been important as we have scaled Picadeli into the business it is today.

How do you think about the opportunity ahead?

Our purpose is to democratise healthy food, to make it genuinely available and affordable for everyone, everywhere. In terms of scale, we estimate a substantial addressable opportunity in Europe and the United States. We are on track to be among the larger fast-food operators globally by number of points of sale, and we are building a new category.