August 7, 2023 – Shopping on Sundays in Croatia has become a little bit of a planning chore after the introduction of the new Trade Act.
Recall, Shops remain closed on Sundays, and the retailer can independently designate 16 Sundays of the year as working days. This will add 15 hours to the working hours of the shop in that week, distributed from Monday to Sunday. Exceptions are shops at railway and bus stations, airports and ports, on ferries and petrol stations, as well as in hospitals, hotels, cultural and religious institutions and museums.
Circumstances in which most stores, shopping centers, and bakeries are closed for two whole days have motivated customers and businesses who are allowed to work on holidays and weekends to find a creative solution to the problem. People have been flocking to INA gas stations for two days to buy – bread.
“Normally we sell bread, but today we don’t have it anymore because we sold out. We had a dozen pieces for testing that quickly disappeared”, said one of the employees of an INA gas station, writes Jutarnji.
The ban on working on holidays and Sundays, a consequence of the new Labor and Trade Act, particularly affected consumers last weekend because the holiday of Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian Defenders fell on Saturday. Combined with a non-working Sunday, many places were left without a single shop all weekend.
Croatian inventiveness once again shines through. As Jutarnji discovered, almost all branches with a Fresh Corner within the INA gas station sell bread. Those who did not get bread during the week and found salvation at the gas station do not have much choice because Fresh Corner sells only one type of bread.
For now, we only offer rustic; the owners will decide whether we will expand the offer given the demand, said the seller.
