The Picnic Collective was founded in 2018 when Lauren Rivard opted to leave her 9-5 to set out on her own. Inspired by her background in marketing, Rivard decided to use her talents to design uber-chic and customizable picnics. The idea was to find a way to bring people together to enjoy time in community and the outdoors. Now, The Picnic Collective offers picnic experiences up and down the southern California coast. Here, Rivard tells us about the inspiration behind the company, what’s included in a typical picnic, and the different styling options and add-ons on offer.  

Ever since I could remember, I’ve been passionate about creating and helping people experience the beauty of the world in a seamless way. I saw how helpful it could be if I packaged my expertise on event styling, planning, and gourmet food in the form of customizable, intimate gatherings.

I have learned a lot from my job as a Marketing Director for an HR company. My job entailed everything from social media management, event planning, PR, and nonprofit work. Not only did my job experience with that company give me skills that I use every single day in my business operations, but it taught me how to be a leader and manage a team. 

Our mission is to bring people together to share the simple pleasure of the outdoors and delicious food, surrounded by the magic of beautiful styling. We find great joy in exceptional, shared experiences.

At The Picnic Collective, we make it easy to customize many aspects of our clients' picnic experience. We have two main packages: The Simple Pleasures Package, which is more of a classic picnic experience, and our more elaborate Bliss Package, which includes our signature low wooden picnic tables and many other frills such as a place setting for each guest, beautiful floral arrangements, cheeseboard grazers, and much more.

All of our picnics include one or more of our signature coastline grazers, which is a cheeseboard with three choices of your favorite cheeses, fruits, and crackers. We also include a styled setting for each guest and our beautiful fringe umbrellas. No picnic is complete without the details of our picnic collective styling that really sets the experience apart. We provide a dessert choice and a sparkling mineral water for each picnicker. If you're having a picnic at sunset or after sundown, we provide string lights to add a lovely glow to the evening. All you have to do is show up and enjoy the ambiance!

We love to customize picnics and offer ten different styling options. For example, the ‘Endless Summer Styling’ includes lots of bright, summery colors like peach, blush, yellows and oranges. Our Bohemian styling includes a more muted color palate with neutrals, burnt oranges, and mauve. After selecting from our many styling options, our guests get to choose from our many preferred locations that include parks and beaches from San Diego all the way up to Malibu. We even go as far as offering cheese selections and customizing a personal message on a chalk sign.

We mostly set up on beaches, however if a guest has a custom location in mind, we can accommodate depending on approval for terrain. We love finding new scenic venues and exploring Southern California. We also love setting up lovely park picnics and in private homes.

 

Immediately upon arrival, we love seeing the shock of a guest who is being surprised by a significant other or friend-it is the sweetest feeling to know that we get to be apart of a special moment like that. The reaction that comes next is almost always our clients pulling out their phones to take epic, insta-worthy photos of their picnic. That's when we know we crushed it! 

It is truly such a rare occurrence to get a moment of time to just sit with your loved ones and detach from the hustle and bustle of the world. We thrive on experiences like this and we think our guests do too.

We are excited to see The Picnic Collective grow into a national brand. We are finding like-minded partners in other areas of the country to expand the love of picnicking to the entire country!