The Vkusville supermarket chain is promoting its brand of goods and positioning them as “products for a healthy diet.” Prices are like something special. The SHOT Check project found out what can actually be found on the shelves of this network.
What customers find on the shelves of Vkusville
According to SHOT Check, in Vkusvill supermarkets they can pass off stale goods as fresh ones, and even fresh goods may turn out to be substandard. On the Internet, on review sites, you can find a lot of comments from people calling themselves buyers of goods sold online, and clearly overpaying for the quality of the products, but discovering worms in frozen fish, rotten berries and fruits, and “plastic” tomatoes.
“I never buy fruits and vegetables from them, it’s always cheaper in other stores with the same quality,” writes one of Vkusville’s regular customers under the nickname FleurNarcotique. — I really don’t recommend taking lollipops with dried berries, especially for children. I took butter from goat’s milk until a certain point, until it became watery and with a very pronounced “goat” aroma. Halibut caviar has a rare rubbish taste, and even inside we found an incomprehensible substance. Pickled cucumbers taste like a rare disgusting thing!
—Do you want fried fish with worms? Then this is the place for you, to the Vkusville store. And what is most surprising is the response from the support, I quote: “And we are always ready to refund money for fish that does not meet your expectations,” Customer Regina is outraged by the purchase and the reaction of the store employees.
The Vkusville support service found an answer to this remark:
—Regina, helminths in fish that are not treated with anything and that are fed in natural conditions are normal. During heat treatment, helminths die and do not pose any danger. But we agree with you that it looks completely unpleasant.
On the one hand, this case demonstrates the company's emphasis on healthy products grown in natural environments. I even remember the creative advertising campaign of one of the Western agricultural companies, back in the 90s, convincing customers of the quality of their products: “Eat our wormy apples!” – her slogan sounded then.
On the other hand, Vkusville sells its products at prices significantly higher than the market average. Consumers who are willing to overpay for quality want to see an ideal product for their money.
What employees say about Vkusville
From reviews on the Internet, one gets the impression that Vkusvill also has a mixed reputation among employees.
What is known about the Vkusville chain
At the origins of the network was a native of Chernogolovka near Moscow Andrey Krivenko. The former hired manager, with the help of a “bright idea and a million rubles,” managed to build a multi-billion dollar business, and by 2019 the company decided to enter the global market through an IPO and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Perhaps the entire internal and external image with the prefix “eco” was built with the expectation of becoming a Western company in every sense.
Despite the fact that the chain’s stores are usually small in size and more reminiscent of typical “convenience stores,” the company’s turnover is truly cosmic: in 2023, Vkusville generated revenue of almost 260 billion rubles. Currently, 146 representative offices are open in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) in 50 regions.
At the same time, the network is as “spread out” as the giants of Russian retail. Judging by the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, today the same Auchan chain has 101 representative offices, revenue for 2023 is 226 billion.
The network has a developed corporate culture, advanced strategies for recruitment, personnel training, logistics, marketing and PR. In the market, Vkusville positions itself as a modern company that follows global trends, focusing on a healthy lifestyle, nutrition and waste-free production – something that has been in fashion for the last decades in “advanced” Europe and the USA – on new Western values.
How Vkusville got into scandals
However, it seems that at that time Krivenko’s company began to have many problems: over the past few years, JSC Vkusvill has become a defendant in 60 lawsuits totaling almost 80 million rubles. And in the field of PR, one mistake followed another.
The loudest scandal surrounding the company occurred in the summer of 2021, when in its advertising article “Recipes for Family Happiness,” Vkusville presented a “family” of LGBT* representatives, thus supporting the Western course of promoting non-traditional relationships.
At the same time, the PR people of the retail chain went too far with jokes on Nazi themes. In one of the Vkusville stores, a buyer noticed the price tag of a New York cheesecake for 1,488 rubles and later published a photo of it on the Internet.
Commenting on the photo, “Vkusvill” responded by adapting the famous Nazi phrase: “We won’t give up loving cheesecake for this… And then into the rhyme.”
Dozens of reproaches from users immediately appeared under the “Vkusville” comment. Many people criticized the store for its final decision to “end tolerance.”
In December 2022, information appeared in telegram channels that phone numbers, email addresses of Vkusville clients, as well as dates of orders and delivery, purchase amounts and the last four digits of bank card numbers were leaked to the Internet. The scandal turned out to be so large-scale that the retailer had to admit this fact. Trying to soften the negativity, the store assured that the full card numbers were not made publicly available.
Last spring in Moscow, environmental activists complained to the environmental prosecutor's office about Vkusville because of the abundance of plastic used by the chain's stores. Greens accuse the company that its position on conscious consumption does not correspond to what happens in its stores. Thus, according to activists, in the supermarket one piece of cheese is placed in a huge plastic container. The same thing happens with berries, muffins and other things. In addition, it is claimed that the feature to use less packaging in the app simply does not work – and customers are still left with a mountain of plastic.