Żabka Polska (; ''lit.'' "little frog") is a chain of

convenience store A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, ice creams, tobacco products, lottery ticket ...

s in Poland. There are at least 9,000 manned and unmanned stores across Poland, including at least 500 in Warsaw and over 340 in the Tricity area, as of . Some Żabka stores are located in the Czech Republic and owned by the Czech branch of the UK retail giant Tesco plc. The retail turnover was about €650 million in 2010. As of 2022, Żabka has more than 15.5 million customers.

History

Żabka was founded by entrepreneur Mariusz Świtalski in 1998 and in the same year opened its first seven stores in Poznań and

Swarzędz Swarzędz (German: ''Schwersenz'') is a town in west-central Poland with 29,766 inhabitants. It is the seat of a mixed urban-rural commune called Gmina Swarzędz with 40,166 inhabitants. The town is situated in the Poznań metropolitan area, in ...

. By October 2005, Żabka had 1,700 stores throughout Poland. In 2007, Żabka was acquired by Penta Investments. In December 2010, Penta sold the Czech operations of Žabka and its Koruna subsidiary to UK retail giant Tesco plc. The deal was closed in April 2011. In February 2011, Penta signed an agreement to sell the remaining Polish operations Żabka Polska, including the Freshmarket store format, to

Mid Europa Partners MidEuropa is an independent private equity player in Central and Eastern Europe focused on Central and Eastern Europe with approximately €5.3 billion of assets under management. Strategy MidEuropa seeks to take controlling stakes in its inve ...

. In 2016, Żabka underwent a rebranding. In February 2017, Mid Europa Partners closed a deal to sell Żabka for an undisclosed value (but estimated by analysts between €1 billion and €1.5 billion) to the Luxembourg based

CVC Capital Partners CVC Capital Partners is a Luxembourg-based French private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately US$133 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, E ...

. Since 2018, after the long-expected Sunday trading ban in Poland was introduced, Żabka Polska has increased its focus on self-checkouts and automated, unmanned stores, the latter using the

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...

cloud computing platform. In late-2022, Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested that the Polish

Law and Justice Law and Justice ( pl, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość , PiS) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Poland. Its chairman is Jarosław Kaczyński. It was founded in 2001 by Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński as a direct su ...

government might buy Żabka from

Formats

In addition to its regular manned stores, Żabka also has smaller, unmanned stores called Żabka Nano (formerly Żappka, also the name of Żabka's mobile app, introduced in 2020). The first Żabka Nano store was opened at the grounds of the Poznań International Fair in June 2021. Notable Żabka Nano stores include one located inside Poland's largest

Decathlon The decathlon is a combined event in Athletics (sport), athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word "decathlon" was formed, in analogy to the word "pentathlon", from Greek language, Greek δέκα (''déka'', meaning "ten") and ...

store in Piaseczno, opened in December 2021, and a pilot store located at the Tesla

Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg (also known as Giga Berlin or Gigafactory 4) is a manufacturing plant for Tesla, Inc. in Grünheide, Brandenburg, Germany. The campus is located south-east of central Berlin and some southeast of the Berlin ...

in Germany, which operated during the third quarter of 2022.

References

External links

* (Poland) * (Czech Republic) Convenience stores Retail companies established in 1998 Retail companies of Poland Polish brands {{Europe-company-stub

History

Formats

References

Further reading

External links