September 2026: This month we met with Leszek Jurczak, Member of NACS Global Industry Engagement Council. We spoke in depth about the Polish fuel and convenience market, the opportunities for technology providers in Poland, and successful approaches in Poland that retailers in other European countries should be taking note of.
What’s different about Poland’s fuel and convenience market that surprises market observers from outside the country?
One of the biggest surprises is how advanced, competitive and fast-moving the Polish market is. Poland combines a very strong traditional fuel retail sector with one of the most developed convenience ecosystems in Europe. Customers expect speed, good food, digital services and increasingly high-quality retail environments, even at locations that historically would have been seen simply as fuel stations.
But there is another characteristic that makes Poland particularly unusual: the extraordinary scale advantage enjoyed by the market leaders.
In fuel retail, ORLEN operates around 1,900 stations in Poland, while the second-largest international player, BP, has around 600. In convenience retail, the difference is even more striking: Żabka has approximately 13,000 stores, compared with around 550 Carrefour Express locations. In both cases, the leader is not 10 or 20 percent larger than its nearest competitor, it is several times larger.
This creates a fascinating competitive environment. Market leadership at this scale brings enormous advantages in purchasing power, logistics, brand visibility, loyalty, data and the ability to deploy new technologies across thousands of locations. At the same time, competition remains intense, because Polish consumers are highly value-conscious and retailers continue to invest aggressively in formats, foodservice and digitalization.
For many international observers, the real surprise is therefore not simply the size or sophistication of the Polish market. It is the combination of extreme market leadership and extremely dynamic competition.
Poland is also no longer a market that simply adopts concepts developed in Western Europe. In areas such as convenience formats, digitalization, self-service and retail technology, Polish operators are increasingly setting benchmarks of their own.
Which strategy or operational approach from the Polish market do you think retailers in other European countries should be taking note of?
I would definitely point to Żabka and its ability to combine technology, customer engagement and foodservice into one integrated convenience ecosystem.
The most visible example is the Żappka mobile app, which has more than 10 million users in a country of around 35 million people. This is an extraordinary level of penetration for a retail app. But what is more important is how Żabka uses that digital relationship. Loyalty, personalized promotions and gamification turn the app from a simple discount tool into a platform for frequent customer interaction.
This digital reach is also becoming increasingly important for retail media. With millions of identifiable customers, thousands of physical stores and enormous transaction volumes, Żabka can connect brands with consumers across both digital and physical touchpoints. In my view, this combination of first-party data, physical reach and customer frequency is one of the most interesting retail media propositions in European convenience.
The second area retailers should watch closely is fresh food and ready-to-eat meals. Żabka is steadily moving beyond the traditional convenience assortment and expanding its role as a food destination, offering customers solutions for breakfast, lunch, dinner and consumption on the go.
This is particularly relevant for Generation Z, sometimes described as the ‘non-cooking generation’. Younger consumers increasingly expect food to be immediate, accessible and easy to consume rather than requiring traditional meal preparation. For them, the convenience store can increasingly become an alternative not only to the supermarket, but also to quick-service restaurants, food delivery and even cooking at home.
What makes the Żabka model particularly interesting is that these elements reinforce each other: technology drives engagement, gamification drives frequency, data enables personalization and retail media, while fresh food and ready meals create new reasons to visit the store.
And this is becoming particularly relevant beyond Poland. Couche-Tard’s move into Żabka creates a much more direct bridge for transferring this know-how to other markets. Couche- Tard already has an extensive presence across Western Europe through Circle K, so successful concepts developed and proven at scale in Poland could potentially travel much faster across the group, while Żabka can also benefit from Couche-Tard’s global operational experience.
This makes the combination especially interesting: it is not simply about ownership or scale, but about the potential cross-pollination of retail technology, foodservice, customer engagement and operational know-how between Poland, Western Europe and the wider global convenience market.
For me, that is another reason why European retailers should be watching Poland very closely.
Where do you see gaps or inefficiencies in the Polish market, and are they gaps that technology providers should be paying attention to?
One of the biggest opportunities I see is around foodservice technology. Foodservice is developing extremely rapidly in Polish fuel and convenience retail, but the technology supporting it has not always developed at the same pace.
If we look at more mature convenience markets such as Ireland, Denmark or the Netherlands, foodservice has already become a fundamental part of the convenience proposition. These markets have developed sophisticated solutions around kitchen operations, food preparation, ordering, self-service, menu management, production planning, waste reduction and real-time performance monitoring. I believe Poland is moving rapidly in the same direction. There is also a powerful economic driver behind this transition. Poland’s economy is growing at around 3.5%, one of the stronger growth rates in the European Union. As Polish consumers become wealthier, I expect their purchasing behaviour to increasingly resemble what we already see in Western European markets: greater spending on convenience, more consumption outside the home, stronger demand for high-quality fresh food and ready-to-eat meals, and a willingness to pay for products and services that save time
And that last point — saving time — opens another major area of opportunity for technology providers.
The entire technology layer that makes the customer journey faster and easier still has considerable room to develop. That includes payments, self-checkout, unattended retail, vending and other forms of automated self-service. Polish consumers are already highly comfortable with digital and contactless payments, so the natural next step is to remove more friction from the overall shopping experience. For retailers, this is not only about customer convenience. Automation can also help address rising labor costs, improve operating efficiency and make it economically viable to offer services for longer hours or even 24/7.
The opportunity, therefore, is much broader than foodservice alone. I see two major technology growth areas developing simultaneously: technologies that help retailers build a stronger foodservice proposition, and technologies that make the entire customer journey faster, simpler and increasingly autonomous. Providers with proven solutions from advanced convenience markets such as Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands should be looking very closely at Poland.
The transformation is already underway, but there is still a gap between the ambitions of Polish retailers and the technology infrastructure required to deliver them at scale. For technology companies, that gap represents a very significant market opportunity.
What’s the biggest shift you expect in Polish fuel and convenience retail in the next 2–3 years? Market consolidation, EV transition, foodservice expansion, or something else?
All of those trends will matter, but I believe we may be approaching a much broader reshaping of the competitive landscape in Polish fuel and convenience retail. One potentially transformative factor is the combination of Żabka and Couche-Tard. Bringing together Poland’s dominant convenience retailer with a company whose core expertise is operating one of the world’s largest fuel and convenience networks could fundamentally change the competitive dynamics of the Polish forecourt market. The potential introduction of Żabka stores or Żabka concepts at Circle K fuel stations would be particularly significant. Żabka has exceptional brand recognition in Poland, enormous customer frequency, a highly developed digital ecosystem and a very strong food-to-go proposition. Combining those strengths with Circle K’s forecourt network could make Circle K significantly more attractive to Polish consumers and give customers an entirely new reason to choose one fuel station over another. If this model is implemented successfully, I would expect other fuel retailers to respond. Competition would increasingly move beyond fuel price, location and loyalty programs towards the overall quality of the convenience and foodservice proposition. Other networks would have to work harder to protect market share, increase customer frequency and strengthen their own retail concepts.
This could accelerate investment across the entire sector — in foodservice, loyalty, mobile applications, payments, self-service, retail media and other technologies that improve the customer experience.
EV charging will be another important part of this transformation, but Poland may follow a somewhat different path from the early-adopter markets of Western Europe. EV adoption is still relatively slow, and the development of public charging infrastructure has also been gradual. Paradoxically, this could become an advantage.
Fast-EV charging technology is progressing extremely quickly. Because Poland is building a significant part of its charging infrastructure later, operators have an opportunity to leapfrog earlier generations of charging technology and deploy the latest high-power solutions from the outset. As vehicles and charging infrastructure become capable of accepting increasingly higher charging power, charging stops can become significantly shorter.
For fuel retailers, this means that the future EV customer does not necessarily have to be a customer spending a long time at the station. Ultra-fast charging could progressively bring the EV experience closer to the speed and convenience consumers associate with the traditional forecourt. That changes the investment equation and makes the integration of charging, convenience retail, foodservice and digital services even more important.
So, while consolidation, EVs and foodservice are often discussed as separate trends, I see them increasingly converging. The next two or three years may therefore be less about the transformation of the fuel itself and more about who wins the battle for the customer at the forecourt. And the combination of a powerful convenience brand such as Żabka with an established fuel retailer such as Circle K could become an important catalyst for that change.
You’ll be joining us at forecourttech’26 next month in Alicante. What are you most looking forward to?
What I value most about forecourttech is the quality of the conversations, but also the way the event itself is designed to make those conversations happen. I think forecourttech is exceptionally well timed and located. Alicante gives us the opportunity to extend the feeling and atmosphere of summer for a little longer, while the quality of the hotel and venue creates a very comfortable environment both inside the conference room and, just as importantly, outside it.
But what really makes the event special for me is its format. Everyone stays in the same place. Retailers, technology providers and industry experts are together throughout the event, so interaction does not stop when the conference session ends. Breakfast, coffee breaks, lunches, dinners and informal evening conversations all become opportunities to exchange ideas.
In practice, this creates an almost unlimited number of opportunities for meetings and discussions with industry colleagues from different countries. Some of the most valuable conversations happen outside the formal agenda, when people have time to compare experiences, discuss a problem in greater depth or discover that someone in another market has already found a solution to a challenge they are currently facing.
And that international exchange is particularly important. Different European markets are at different stages of development in areas such as automation, payments, AI, EV charging, foodservice and digital customer engagement. Bringing all those perspectives together in one place creates enormous value.
For me, forecourttech is not simply a two-day conference. It is an intensive, continuous industry conversation in an environment specifically designed to encourage it. That combination of content, people, timing and location is what I am most looking forward to.
And finally, if any retailers or solution providers are still thinking about attending, what would you say to convince them to register?
I would say: don’t look at forecourttech simply as another conference in your calendar. Of course, the content matters. Forecourt retail is being reshaped simultaneously by payments, automation, AI, EV charging, foodservice, loyalty and changing customer expectations. Having retailers and technology providers from different markets discussing these challenges together is already extremely valuable. But what makes forecourttech genuinely different is the combination of people, place and atmosphere.
The quality and profile of the participants create access to decision-makers, innovators and industry experts who are facing many of the same strategic and operational questions in different markets. These are not simply people you listen to from the audience; they are people you meet over coffee, sit next to at dinner and continue talking to throughout the event.
Then there is Alicante itself. The Mediterranean climate, the atmosphere of the hotel and the fact that everyone stays together create an environment that is both professional and informal.
That balance is difficult to reproduce at a conventional conference where participants arrive for individual sessions and disappear immediately afterwards.
Here, the conference room is only one part of the event. The hotel, the local Alicante atmosphere and, above all, the quality of the people attending are part of the value proposition.
That is what makes forecourttech unique. You have two days in which conversations can start during a conference session, continue over lunch, develop by the pool or over dinner, and potentially turn into an idea, partnership or project. Reports, webinars and large exhibitions can give you information. forecourttech gives you access, to people, experience and conversations that are very difficult to replicate anywhere else.
If you work in fuel and convenience retail and are still considering whether to attend, I would say: come to Alicante. You will understand very quickly why people who experience forecourttech want to come back.
