Grupa Żywiec is one of the leading beer producers and market leaders in Poland. The company is an integral part of the global Heineken Group, the largest beer producer in Europe. Grupa Żywiec's portfolio is one of the most diverse on the Polish market, and the company is also a pioneer in innovative and fastest-growing market segments, such as non-alcoholic beers. Through an extensive distribution network serving both the retail and HoReCa markets, Grupa Żywiec reaches tens of thousands of points of sale across Poland, playing a key role in shaping the market and responding to dynamically changing consumer tastes.
In a dynamic and saturated foodservice market, making sound investment decisions is key to maintaining a competitive edge. Grupa Żywiec faced the challenge of creating an objective evaluation and segmentation system for its network of nearly 9,000 foodservice partners. The existing model, which relied largely on internal sales data and the subjective assessments of sales representatives, needed to be enriched with measurable, external market context that would allow for a more precise assessment of each venue's real potential.
"A key challenge in the HoReCa channel has always been limited access to reliable, external market data. This made it impossible to fully objectively assess the potential of a location and forced a reliance largely on internal analyses and intuition."
– Agnieszka Michalecka, Shopper Marketing Horeca
In response to this challenge, Grupa Żywiec, in collaboration with dataplace.ai, developed and implemented an advanced segmentation model. Our data became the foundation of the third, key analytical pillar, which provided an objective view of the surroundings of each point of sale.
- Internal client sales data: hard metrics regarding sales volume, dynamics, and product portfolio.
- Qualitative insights from sales representatives: knowledge about the venue's atmosphere, guest profile, and brand visibility.
- Objective geospatial data from dataplace.ai: for each of the 9,000 venues, we provided key metrics, including:
Based on a compilation of this data, each location receives a precise score that classifies it into the appropriate segment, determining further strategic actions.
"Data from dataplace.ai has become a key component of our new segmentation. It has allowed us to objectively assess the potential of thousands of venues and better target our investments."
– Agnieszka Michalecka, Shopper Marketing Horeca
- New, objective segmentation implemented across the entire network: Since January 2025, Grupa Żywiec has been managing its HoReCa portfolio based on a new, data-driven model.
- Decisions based on data, not intuition: The scoring model has become the foundation for making decisions regarding investment levels, trade marketing activities, and support for individual venues.
- Creating a scalable standard: The process, which was previously partially subjective, has been fully standardized and is designed to ensure consistency and efficiency in the long term.
