Even people from the border do not come to shop in Poland anymore

After the recent Czech invasion, Polish merchants chose to a greater extent the tried and tested strategy of cutting and cutting.

Shopping specifically at Biedronka, popular in Bohemia, still pays off with an app or card, which stabilizes customers and allows them to buy in bulk at attractive prices.

Butter sold for six zlotys, almost 36 crowns, can be bought two times cheaper only when buying at least three pieces. And that’s how it is with almost everything now.

The few things I need, I buy with a negligible difference at home and sometimes even save

Czechs who have had enough of a decent grasp of the Polish food market usually fill their car trunks with entire cartons and boxes of various assortments of generally more durable foods.

“Permanent full-fat milk cost one per ten crown. But we had to buy at least six of them with the Moja Biedronka card. It doesn’t matter, it will last for a while,” said a man from nearby Trutnov in front of a market in Lubawka.

“I estimate the savings compared to the Czech Republic at maybe a thousand, if not more. But I have to buy quantities of things that don’t spoil right away. Then it’s pointless to recalculate. I always make money,” he says.

According to an elderly woman from Náchodsk, going to Poland for regular shopping is not very worthwhile if you don’t have the same distance to the local store or gas station as in the Czech Republic.

“After the prices in Poland also went up and the zloty exchange rate hovers around six crowns, I no longer go there. The few things I need, I buy with a negligible difference at home and sometimes even save. At least for gasoline, the price of which is comparable, and time. I don’t stockpile,” says the woman.

However, according to her, one current assortment remains unattainable in Poland. Namely flower and vegetable planting. “I got it there for almost half the Czech price,” confides the woman of a recent experience.

Nevertheless, the number of Czechs in Polish supermarkets has significantly decreased compared to the recent past, especially on weekdays. There are often more customers in the Lidl in Náchod than in the neighboring Kudowa-Zdroj.

Vegetables, unlike seedlings, are no longer very profitable in the European agrarian powerhouse, not even in market stalls. At the end of last week, a kilo of potatoes in Jelenia Hora, Lower Silesia, cost around sixty crowns for the Polish early variety.

Then last year’s potatoes for eighteen crowns. Strawberries harvested in Poland were sold by marketers, depending on the quality, from 72 to 96 crowns per kilo. Apples are still cheaper, first-class for 27 crowns.

The days when Czechs in Poland saved thousands and left with a full tank of cheap gasoline are over. The reasons are this year’s price increases associated with the arrival of Donald Tusk’s government cabinet, the exchange rate of the zloty, currently higher inflation than in the Czech Republic, and the recently renewed five percent VAT on selected Polish foods.

“Until recently, I didn’t have to choose and it was always cheaper in Poland. Today I have to take on a lot in order not to fail,” summed up the woman from Hradec Králové. Cigarettes are still a hit, a third cheaper than in the Czech Republic.

Polish stores kept the prices, took on the higher tax

Economy