Small grocery stores in the Czech Republic continue to disappear, crushed by large chains
The number of smaller food retailers in the Czech Republic continues to fall; over the past eight years, their number has fallen by more than a fifth. At the end of September this year, there were 3,763 small and medium-sized companies operating in the field of food retail in the country, while in 2007 there were 4,729 entities operating in this field. This follows from the analysis of data on the Informofirmach.cz portal, which contains data on business entities from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
According to Jan Cikler, project manager of the Cribis application, the reason for the decline in small grocery stores is the expansion of supermarkets and hypermarkets. “Large retail chains are able to reduce the price of goods sold to a level that small shops cannot compete with, thanks to tough negotiations with their suppliers,” said Cikler.
According to him, however, small shops as such cannot be fully replaced. They can keep theirs thanks to local food, product specializations or specific competitiveness for specific customers.
Compared to other regions, the largest number of medium-sized food retailers is in the Central Bohemian Region, where, according to the 603, the capital and the Ústí nad Labem Region are located. On the other hand, there are the fewest of them in the Karlovy Vary region, namely 78, and in the Vysočina region (124).
With regard to the legal form of entities, natural persons – entrepreneurs have the largest representation in the Ústí Region, where their share reaches 87 percent. They have the lowest ratio in the South Moravian and Moravian-Silesian regions and in Prague. The capital is currently the only region where legal entities predominate. The portal belongs to CRIF – Czech Credit Bureau, it draws data from the Cribis application.