A bar for 56 groszy, a beer for 1.67 PLN. There is also a second meaning in the Biedronka leaflet from 1997

The user of the website “Demotywatory” published a Biedronka advertising leaflet from 1997. It was an important year for the history of the brand, because it was then that the Portuguese chain Jerónimo Martins bought 210 stores from Mariusz Świtalski, the founder of Biedronka. We do not know whether the leaflet is from before the takeover or was published later.

Old leaflets. Prices in Biedronka in 1997

So what could you buy in Biedronka 27 years ago? Or a better question: how much could you buy the presented food products for? A Princessa bar cost 56 groszy. The Rekord bar produced by E. Wedel was 34 groszy more expensive. A sachet of Dr. Oetker pudding could be bought for 40 groszy, and the once popular Bona margarine (500 g) for 2.29 PLN. EB beer (0.5 l) cost 1.68 PLN, and Palmolive soap – 1.49 PLN.

Did a tear come to your eye at the sight of such prices? Well, who among those who grew up in the 90s doesn’t remember that for a złoty you could buy some sweet snack, and sometimes even enough for an orange soda? Some of the commenters immediately started daydreaming – that life was so cheap back then and give us back the low prices.

Not everyone was swept away by this wave of nostalgia, however. “Do you remember what wages were like back then? You probably wouldn’t want them to come back,” someone wrote.

Is it really cheap?

“Yesterday I bought a Grześki wafer for 1.67, which is about 3.5 times more expensive than the one here in Demota. My salary is about 15 times more than then. I am a low-paid teacher. Back then I worked in a dairy for the minimum wage. In my opinion, even now for the minimum national wage you can buy 3-4 times more than then,” added someone else.

Without a point of reference, it is indeed difficult to realistically assess whether “it used to be somehow better”. At the beginning of 1997, the average salary was PLN 1,062 gross, in the fourth quarter it increased to PLN 1,182.77 gross. The lowest national salary was only PLN 391 gross. Unemployment was 10.3%, and in many regions, and not only in eastern Poland, it exceeded 20% (Starachowice – 29%, Chojnów – 27%, Malbork – 27.7%, Końskie – 25%).

The average salary was an enviable situation in those conditions.

For such an average salary (we are still talking about gross, so the take-home pay was about 20 percent lower) from the first half of 1997, one could buy 1,063 Princess bars and 632 half-litre bottles of EB beer.

How much do the same products cost today?

How does this relationship look today? Average salary in April 2024 amounted to PLN 8,271.99 gross. It should be noted that the Central Statistical Office does not include in its calculations office workers, teachers, people employed in companies with up to 9 employees, entrepreneurs, and contractors. The average is drawn from the earnings of only 37.7% of Poles, so it is not reliable. A better indicator is the median salary: in 2023 it amounted to PLN 5,700 gross. This means that half of Poles earn more than PLN 5,700, and the other half less.

Since we based the calculations for 1997 on the average salary, let’s stick with this indicator. In 2024, Princessa in Biedronka costs about PLN 1.99 (although we may be lucky and hit a promotion, e.g. recently, Moja Biedronka card holders could buy 5 bars and get 5 more for free, which reduced the unit price to PLN 1). For half a liter of EB beer, we pay about PLN 2.8 plus a deposit for a glass bottle.

With the average salary, we can buy 4,156 40-gram bars or 2,954 bottles of beer. That’s almost three times as many wafers and almost five times as many bottles of beer.

The purchasing power of the zloty has increased

Such calculations show how the purchasing power of our currency has grown over almost three decades – it allows us to determine how many goods and services can be bought for a given monetary unit. It determines the real value of money. When it is low, we can conclude that the economy is doing badly. Purchasing power changes over time, as shown by the example of prices from years ago. In general: it depends on all the indicators describing the economy, the credibility of the country, analysts’ assessments… We can assume that the value of the złoty will strengthen in the coming years (we ignore exchange rate fluctuations, which are something natural).

The icing on the cake of all this is the median wage, which diverges significantly from the average price level, and the fact that the group of workers earning minimum wages is growing dangerously fast. We describe this mechanism here.