Żabka Polska reimagines personalized retail space planning with Blue Yonder

With Blue Yonder at its core, Żabka worked with Blue Yonder partner Strategix to develop a unified transformation program. It needed to utilize a microservices architecture to connect to its existing IT infrastructure (including SAP Retail and Snowflake) to create store environments tailored to local customer needs. The goal was not only to automate the creation of planograms, but to redesign how Żabka manages space, data, and operational intelligence across its network of 13,000+ stores.

The Blue Yonder planogram generation solution is the automation engine which enables precise, store‑specific planograms at massive scale. AI‑powered data models, which were developed by Zabka, act as the primary input for layout and assortment optimization. Micro space planning (planograms) automatically generate store‑specific product placement on shelves.

Key transformation elements:

• Digitization and standardization of detailed store layout data.
• Implementation of a recurring, automated planogram update cycle.
• Integration with downstream systems to ensure layout changes inform other core processes, including supply chain and store operations.

Collaboration as a key function

Collaboration between Żabka’s franchisees and operations teams proved pivotal to driving adoption across its network of stores.

Partner support from pilot to enterprise-wide rollout 

Żabka worked with Blue Yonder partner Strategix to conduct several pilots at the category level with several test store‑specific planograms and AI‑based macro‑space logic in selected regions. It enabled Żabka to refine and improve its rules and category decision trees, and to handle exceptions based on insights from pilot stores. Early successes allowed the team to deploy store-specific planograms at scale across 5,200 stores. Żabka was opening two new stores every day which also required planogram support, and the rollout to additional categories was executed gradually in phases.

Strategix also provided API integration support by connecting planogram data to Żabka’s other enterprise and reporting systems (SAP and Snowflake), ready to support the addition of over 1,000 new stores every year.

Automation acceleration at scale

The implementation of Blue Yonder fundamentally reshaped how Żabka manages shelf space, setting a new benchmark for convenience retail in Europe. Over 400,000 personalized planograms are generated annually based on store‑level data models and rules for store differentiation.

Żabka has improved visibility into its key selling products and category performance and can conduct stronger rotation to promote better product availability with fewer execution errors.

The solution also created a consistent link between strategic decisions made at headquarters and execution in local stores. Central category and space planning guidelines can now be translated automatically into store-specific layouts while still reflecting local customer needs and shopping behavior. This ensures alignment across the organization, improves execution quality, and enables rapid rollout of assortment and space planning decisions at scale.

“Żabka’s transformation demonstrates how AI, automation, and modern space planning can be combined to deliver localization at unprecedented scale. Together with Blue Yonder, Strategix helped design and implement a scalable ecosystem that enables handling of hundreds of thousands of live store-specific planograms each year, setting a new benchmark for convenience retail in Europe,” said Jan Hanussek, CEO of Strategix.

Better, faster shopping experience

Another benefit of Żabka’s deployment of Blue Yonder has been stronger franchisee satisfaction, driven by clearer, more relevant in-store execution guidance. This has led to a faster, more convenient customer shopping experience for Żabka’s shoppers.

“As one of the fastest‑expanding convenience retailers in Europe, growing by over 1,000 new stores every year, we know that we need to harness the full power of AI, data, and automation to redefine what personalized retail can be. Our aim is to move faster, scale smarter, and innovate more boldly than ever. Our next phase is to have a fully integrated space planning ecosystem so we can respond to changing customer needs faster than the competition while scaling our business without adding operational complexity,” said Kupracz.