EN
The article presents the key elements of the orientation of food businesses in Poland, which determine their functioning and competitiveness at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The survey was carried out in deliberately selected enterprises in the food industry to identify key elements of their orientation. In order to investigate them there were defined: responsibility in the company for creating reports; how to generate reports in an enterprise, responsibility for orders and pricing, the time required to medium enterprise sales cycle, expectations for departments related to customer service, the frequency of customer satisfaction surveys, factors which are part of customer retention strategy for the company, determination of customers that generate the largest revenue/income. The food industry studied takes action on the orientation associated with a modern, market-oriented and client-oriented policy, which has the hallmarks of force in highly developed societies shaped by and reflecting the consumer market.