Josef Polák

Food insecurity is not a new phenomenon even in leading European economies, but this complex problem area is facing new global challenges. This article traces the research gap in addressing food insecurity by focusing on the role of food retail chains in the former “Eastern Bloc” in light of unprecedented food price inflation and the resulting scale of demand for the services of food banks. Through empirical analysis of secondary financial corporate data, a low level of their profitability in the period of 2011–2019 was revealed, which preceded the synchronicity of two unexpected global economic downturns. Specifically, Return on Sales for food retailers located in the Czech Republic and Hungary was generally below 2%, offset by higher Total Asset Turnover figures, consistent with the need to extend the volume of goods for sale. Development in profitability in selected newer EU member states is just as significantly similar to the situation in Ukraine. The mutual interaction of factors of economic size and the country of residence of business was analyzed regarding a possible influence on their financial performance. This study concluded that the presence of unresolved market distortions can both lead to increased food insecurity and, paradoxically, contribute to increased food waste.

Acknowledgment
The authors are thankful to the Internal Grant Agency of Mendel University in Brno for financial support to carry out this research as the partial output of the project No. IGA-PEF-TP-23-015 “Zajišťování výživových potřeb obyvatelstva vzhledem k aktuálním výzvám v oblasti regenerativních přístupů při vykonávání hospodářských činností podniků agropotravinářského komplexu se zaměřením na roli tuzemských potravinových bank”.

The startup ecosystem in the Czech Republic falls far below the level of the developed economies of its Western neighbors. The startup map of the Czech Republic shows 1,717 continuously operating startups. And yet they have yet to receive priority attention in the academic realm. The primary goal of this article is to define the key factors of startup sustainability and to look for dependencies between them. The secondary goal is to identify the weaknesses of the Czech startup environment. The scientific hypotheses formulated focus on demonstrating the dependencies of selected factors influencing the startup sustainability. These have been verified on the basis of evaluation of data obtained via primary qualitative and quantitative research. Its findings were compared with the data of secondary research and with the conclusions of the scientific studies of international authors. The data were processed using statistical apparatus. Thanks to this research, the authors have identified in their conclusion the factors of the remote, immediate, and interior environments that can influence startup sustainability. They demonstrate a correlation between the level of strategic management and the quality of internal communications processes, between the capacities of startup management to manage relationships with customers (CRM) and to drive communications strategy, including brand support. In real practice, however, nine out of ten startups do not succeed. The reason is that their design fails to understand and address the needs of customers and lacks marketing and managed sales.