Perched under Mount Učka on the Kvarner coast, the village of Brseč has around a hundred year-round residents, one church with a restoration team in town this autumn, and one shop: Suzi Sirotnjak's Mini-Market, better known locally simply as "the butiga". This year it turns 30, and writer Vicki Sussens spent a morning there for Croatia Week to see why it still matters.
Suzi opened in 1996 with her sister Lili, when the surrounding Mošćenička Draga municipality counted 10 to 15 small family shops. Today just three survive. Big-box chains selling cut-price groceries, clothes and household goods have hollowed out village retail, and young people have moved away. In the off-season Brseč's roughly 100 residents are mostly pensioners. Yet Suzi, 51, has no plans to close, and her survival is partly strategy: she stocks beloved Croatian brands — Radnik bread from a socialist-era bakery, Gavrilović salamis now run by the ninth generation, Podravka gherkins, Dorina chocolate, Ledo ice cream — and keeps prices on par with the chains. She also keeps a fat file of ingredient lists to answer questions from health-conscious locals and curious tourists, something no hypermarket assistant will do for you.
The shop doubles as the village square when the square is empty. Suzi halves loaves without being asked because she knows what each customer wants, answers the phone in German for Austrian second-home owners, and runs a coffee machine she installed 20 years ago when Brseč had no cafés — still a lifeline once the summer cafés shut in October. Locals drop in for marenda, the worker's breakfast (rolls with mortadella in one case), and Suzi, who speaks English, German and Italian, chats with restorers from Zagreb, foreign visitors and the occasional politician — Zoran Milanović campaigned here before his first stint as prime minister. "I'm like the local psychologist," she laughs.
Why does a traveller care? Because this is what Croatian coastal villages look like out of season, and shopping at a butiga like Suzi's is a far better souvenir than fridge magnets: real local brands, real conversation, sea-view benches outside to eat your ice cream. It's also a reminder to spend in the small inland and hillside villages around the Riviera — Opatija's glitz is 20 minutes away, but places like Brseč depend on off-season custom. Suzi usually closes in winter; after a sunny autumn she may stay open longer this year.
