7-Eleven

• 1. Introduction

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  7-Eleven, headquartered in Irving, Texas, operates, franchises or licenses roughly 85,000 stores in 20 countries and territories, as of August 2024. Few retail brands have spread so widely, and fewer still have done it without a single signature product to explain the success. The chain has changed owners, changed names and changed what it sells. Its American stores now stand beside others carrying completely different signs. So where did it begin, and who first thought to sell bread and milk from a place built for something else? Why does its largest national market lie far from Texas? And why do some countries embrace the brand for decades while others watch it leave within a few years? The answers start in Dallas, with an ice company and a totem pole.

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• 2. Ice House Roots

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  In 1927, an employee of the Southland Ice Company in Dallas named John Jefferson Green began selling eggs, milk and bread alongside the ice. He worked from 16 ice house storefronts, with the permission of Joe C. Thompson Sr., one of the company's founding directors. Thompson had a theory that stocking basics like bread and milk nearby would spare customers long trips. He later bought the ice company and reshaped it into the Southland Corporation.

  A manager named Jenna Lira carried a totem pole home from Alaska in 1928 and planted it in front of her store. It drew so much attention that executives put poles outside every location and adopted an Alaska Native-inspired look. The stores became Tote'm Stores, because customers "toted" their purchases away. That same year, the company tried building filling stations at some Dallas sites. Thompson also trained staff so that every store delivered the same quality of service, and the ice station service boys received uniforms.

  In 1931, the Great Depression pushed the company toward bankruptcy. It survived through reorganization and receivership. A Dallas banker, W. W. Overton Jr., helped restore its finances by selling the company's bonds at seven cents on the dollar. The result placed ownership under a board of directors.

  In 1946, as the company worked to recover after the war, it dropped the Tote'm name for 7-Eleven. The new name advertised hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week, which were unprecedented at the time. In 1963, an Austin, Texas, store stayed open all night to satisfy customers, and the company tested a 24-hour schedule there. Round-the-clock stores followed in Fort Worth, Dallas and Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Since 1968, the logo has used a lowercase n. The first wife of company president John P. Thompson Sr. found the all-capitals version a little aggressive and suggested the softer look. That small change has outlasted every owner since.

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• 3. Debt and Rescue

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  In 1963, Southland bought 126 Speedee Mart stores in California, all of them already open the same long hours, and entered the franchise business. In 1968, it signed its first area licensing deal with Garb-Ko, Inc. of Saginaw, Michigan, the first domestic area licensee. In 1971, it acquired the former Pak-A-Sak stores owned by Graham Allen Penniman Sr. of Shreveport, Louisiana. Two years later, in 1973, the Japanese supermarket chain Ito-Yokado signed an agreement to develop 7-Eleven stores in Japan.

  In the late 1980s, rumors of a corporate takeover pushed the Thompson family to take the company private. In December 1987, chairman and chief executive John Philp Thompson Sr. completed a $5.2 billion management buyout. The 1987 stock market crash hurt the deal, and the company failed at first to raise high-yield debt. It had to offer a portion of stock to persuade investors to buy its bonds.

  Between 1987 and 1990, the Chief Auto Parts chain, the ice division and hundreds of store locations were sold to ease the debt. Many metropolitan areas lost their 7-Eleven stores to rival operators as a result. In October 1990, the heavily indebted Southland filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, designed to hand 70% of the company to Ito-Yokado.

  Southland left bankruptcy in March 1991 after a cash infusion of $430 million from Ito-Yokado and Seven-Eleven Japan. The two Japanese entities held 70% of the company, and the founding Thompson family kept just 5 percent. By 1999, the company had taken the name 7-Eleven, Inc., citing its sale of every business other than 7-Eleven. In 2005, a tender offer made it a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, under the new holding company Seven & i Holdings.

  In 2007, the holding company announced plans to add 1,000 more 7-Eleven stores in the United States.

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• 4. Giant Drinks

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  The Slurpee, a partially frozen soft drink, arrived in 1965. Stores in Oklahoma sold it as the Icy Drink until 2020. The Big Gulp followed in 1976, and the chain later offered the Team Gulp at 128 U.S. ounces. Each of these sizes ranked among the largest soft drinks on sale when it launched.

  When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on large sodas, the press often called it the Big Gulp ban. The label was a little unfair. Convenience and grocery stores in New York are regulated by the state, so the proposed ban would not have applied to 7-Eleven.

  In 2012, the Double Gulp shrank from 64 ounces to 50 ounces, or 1478 mL. The old cups were too wide at the base to sit in vehicle beverage holders. A company spokesperson said the change was not a response to the soda ban proposal.

  Every the 11th of July, the stores give away small Slurpees on 7-Eleven Day. The holiday first became widely celebrated in 2008. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled it, and 7 Rewards members received a free medium Slurpee in the app instead.

  In Winnipeg, Manitoba, the first store opened on the 21st of March 1970. The city is credited with the world's largest number of Slurpee consumers, with an estimated 1,500,000 sold.

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• 5. Asia's Appetite

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  Japan holds 21,668 stores, nearly a quarter of the global total, including 2,824 in Tokyo alone. Japanese stores offer a wider range of products and services than those elsewhere. Seven Bank cash machines accept foreign debit and credit cards for withdrawals in yen, which draws tourists. About 1,400 stores carry solar panels and LEDs. In July 2019, the company launched a mobile payment service called 7pay and suspended it almost at once. Hackers spent money from customers' accounts.

  The first Thai store opened on Patpong Road in Bangkok on the 1st of June 1989. CP All, a listed subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand, owns the Thai franchise rights. It ran 13,838 stores in 2022, up from 12,432 in 2020. Those stores hold a 70% share of the country's convenience store category, set against some 7,000 other convenience stores and 400,000 mom and pop shops. In 2018, the Thai business generated 335,532 million baht in income for CP.

  In May 1989, the first Korean store opened in Songpa-gu in Seoul under a license held by the Lotte Group. South Korea now has 11,067 stores, behind only Japan and Thailand. In January 2010, Lotte bought the Buy the Way chain and rebranded its 1,000 stores as 7-Eleven. In January 2022, it paid 313.37 billion won, about $263 million, for Ministop Korea.

  Taiwan began poorly. The first fourteen stores opened in 1979 and struggled to make a profit. Southland partnered with Uni-President to modernize them, but business stayed slow until Uni-President chose to stock Asian foods. In 1986, the Taiwan stores finally turned a profit. In the early 2000s, 7-Eleven and the agency Dentsu created a mascot named Open-Chan, an alien dog in a rainbow-shaped crown from a fictional Planet Open.

  Hong Kong's first store opened in Happy Valley on the 3rd of April 1981. Locals call the chain "little seven". In 2004, Dairy Farm bought the rival Daily Stop and converted its 84 shops, mostly in railway stations, into 7-Eleven stores. In 2009, a Quarry Bay location added a hot food counter selling traditional street food and milk tea. The format later spread to select other stores.

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• 6. Hits and Misses

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  In 2008, Modern Sevel Indonesia signed a master franchise agreement to open 7-Eleven stores in Indonesia, starting with Jakarta. There were 190 stores at the peak, and 166 by September 2016. The company closed in Indonesia in 2017, citing low sales.

  In October 2021, Israeli media reported a contract with Electra Consumer Products for hundreds of stores. The first opened in January 2023 at Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center. Electra had planned about 400 more branded stores, 300 of them through franchisees. The effort failed, and the stores were sold in May 2024.

  In Dubai, the first Middle Eastern store opened in October 2015, and the country had 13 stores by January 2018. By the 2020s, the brand had shut down there. In the United Kingdom, the first shop opened in Hendon, north London, in 1985, and in October 1997 all 57 stores were sold to Budgens. Announced returns in 2014 and 2019 never produced a store. In Brazil, 17 stores in São Paulo closed in the 1990s under heavy competition. In Turkey, Özer Çiller sold his master franchise shares in 1993, after his wife Tansu Çiller became prime minister.

  Denmark shows the opposite pattern. The first Danish store opened in Østerbro, Copenhagen, on the 14th of September 1993. The three highest-grossing 7-Eleven stores in the world are all Danish. Two are at Copenhagen Central Station, and the third is at Copenhagen Airport beyond security.

  In 2022, a ransomware attack temporarily closed every Danish store. The company refused the attacker's demands, and no customer data was compromised.

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• 7. The Wage Scandal

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  The first Australian store opened on the 24th of August 1977 in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh. Most stores there are franchises, run under a central administration. In August 2015, Fairfax Media and the ABC's Four Corners program reported that many employees at certain franchises earned only about A$10 to A$14 per hour. The legal minimum award rate was A$24.69 per hour.

  The method was simple. Franchisees kept rosters and pay records that showed the correct rate, but the records included only half the hours actually worked. Employees were also often denied the loadings and penalty rates owed for nights, weekends and public holidays. Some workers told Fairfax Media they were later paid correctly through the payroll system, then told by the franchisee to hand half their wages back in cash.

  The company agreed to fund an inquiry, run by an independent panel chaired by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels, with support from Deloitte. In September 2015, chairman Russ Withers and chief executive Warren Wilmot announced their resignations. Michael Smith replaced Withers, and Bob Baily became interim chief executive. In December 2015, head office offered to pay the first $25 million of back-pay claims. Franchisees would then pay the next $5 million, with further payments split evenly.

  The Four Corners investigation won a Walkley Award in 2015. 7-Eleven ultimately paid more than $173 million for what was described as systematic wage theft, covering workers employed between 2015 and 2020. In April 2022, the company settled a franchisee class action for A$98 million. Franchisees had claimed they were misled about profitability, including a claim that employee costs were pitched at about seven percent of total costs when about thirteen percent was closer. The settlement carried no admission of fault.

  In December 2023, Seven & i Holdings agreed to buy the Australian franchise from its original owners for A$1.71 billion. The purchase was finalized in April 2024.

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• 8. Betting on Fresh Food

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  On the 2nd of August 2020, Seven & i Holdings announced a $21 billion buyout of the gas station chain Speedway LLC. The deal closed on the 14th of May 2021. U.S. antitrust regulators ordered 293 stores across 20 states to be sold. Anabi Oil took 124, Cross-America Partners LP took 106 and Jacksons Food Stores took 63. Speedway also left Pilot Flying J's One9 fleet network in favor of 7-Eleven's own 7 Fleet.

  In April 2021, the chain launched its "Take it to Eleven" campaign. The slogan partly borrowed the phrase "up to eleven" from the film This is Spinal Tap. The company then put $70 million behind commercials directed by Harmony Korine, doubling its marketing spend from the previous year. Chief marketing officer Marissa Jarrantt said the ads would show that "this isn't just gas station food, there's real restaurant quality food at 7-Eleven".

  In early 2024, Seven & i Holdings chief executive Ryuichi Isaka announced a shift away from reliance on gasoline and cigarettes. The company is working with Warabeya Nichiyo, which already supplies 7-Eleven's prepared foods in Japan, to build a U.S. supply chain. Plans call for hot and cold food and a larger baked goods selection at up to 1,600 Speedway and Stripes stores. In March 2023, the company also announced 7Charge, its own electric vehicle charging network and app.

  On the 19th of August 2024, reports said Alimentation Couche-Tard, owner of rival Circle K, had offered to buy Seven & i Holdings. On the 6th of September 2024, the holding company rejected the bid as too low and carrying regulatory risk, though it said a sweetened offer might be considered. On the 6th of March 2025, it announced that the American store operations would be spun off as a separate publicly traded company by the end of 2026. The announcement came alongside the appointment of Stephen Hayes Dacus, its first foreign chief executive.

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