Youtuber and tiktoker Kapek opened a fake Żabka in Warsaw – as he himself says. In reality, it was a place selling hot dogs, which for one day turned into a Ropucha. Kapek wanted to break Żabka's record in the number of hot dogs sold in one day. He eventually achieved the goal of three hundred hot dogs. However, we were unable to verify where this number came from.
Żabka only announced at the beginning of January that in 2023 it sold over 80 million hot dogs, so an average of 220 thousand per day. Considering that in Poland there are 10.5 thousand shops chains, each sold an average of 20.95 hot dogs every day.
He opened a fake Żabka. The network responds
Kapek said in a recording summarizing the whole campaign that he does it because he constantly sees “a small local shop closing down and a Żabka store popping up in its place – the fortieth one in the area”. He also stated that if he failed to break the record, he would tattoo the Żabka logo on his forehead, dye his hair green and get a job at a chain store as a cashier. Although it was difficult, he managed to avoid such a fate. To encourage customers, he handed out leaflets, dressed up in a frog costume, stole customers from Żabka, invited other YouTubers to the promotion, and finally lowered the price of a hot dog from PLN 5 to PLN 1.
He asked Żabka for a comment on the matter. Fakt.pl. The company responded that “the hot dog from Żabka is already an element of pop culture”. “We appreciate every critical look at our activities, because it allows us to constantly improve our offer”, the chain wrote. However, it emphasized that small stores disappeared from the market regardless of Żabka's competition, losing to large formats. “Our franchise offer is for many owners stores the opportunity to stay on the market and be successful. For customers, it is a chance to shop in a local store with a seller who is not anonymous,” says Żabka.
We wish Kapek and other internet creators good luck in breaking our hot dog sales records.
– the network concluded.
The number of small shops is constantly decreasing. They are being taken over by large retail chains
Żabka has opened 2.5 thousand stores since 2022, in two years. Other small stores are closing. In 2022, this fate befell 4 thousand small stores, and nearly 10 thousand were suspended – wrote BI in 2023. The GfK report shows that the number of grocery stores operating within chains increased by 3% in 2023 to 40.3 thousand, while the number of independent stores, usually in smaller formats, dropped by as much as 18% to 14.5 thousand – it was reported in July this year “Republic”.
“Wprost”, which referred to the same reportreported that 2.3 thousand retail outlets disappeared last year. – These small shops change in some way, evolve, adapt. Networked trade is developing very quickly and is absorbing existing retail outlets – said Piotr Palutkiewicz, vice president of the Warsaw Enterprise Institute. Many of these “disappearing” retail stores do not cease their operations, but change their name to Lewiatan, Żabka, ABC or Groszek.