Thanking Heaven
I like to tell people that my only requirement for where I live is that I be within walking distance of a 7-Eleven.
Our rowhouse on Capitol Hill was just a short city block from one. In Bethesda one was a five-minute stroll away. Now, in Kensington, I must walk slightly farther but the rewards are greater — three 7-Elevens within 15 minutes of home.
It’s not true about the requirement, of course. Should future life events find me next residing in an assisted living or skilled nursing facility that’s not within an amble of the iconic convenience store, it’s not like I’ll lose my will to live. (The cause of that more likely will be the manifold indignities of age that landed me there.) In fact, I might not even be ambulatory enough at that point get to a 7-Eleven on foot.
But given the fact that the chain operates, franchises and/or licenses 13,000-plus locations in North America alone, the odds are not none that with a second-floor room and a good set of binoculars, I might be able to spy one of the store’s familiar red, orange and green logos from my apartment.
It’s not even true that, at this point of my life, I patronize 7-Elevens all that much. The coffee is generally good (315 million cups sold in the U.S. stores last year), so I do enjoy an extra-large serving every so often. I’ll grab a bag of Chex Mix on occasion, or a ginger ale to pair with my happy-hour bourbon. But I haven’t slurped a Slurpee in years. Vegetarianism rules out the hot dogs and chicken tenders kept warm under the heat lamps. My perpetual hangup about weight gain dissuades me from away from the pizza slices that my fellow Americans purchased 99 million times in 2023.
But the thing is, I feel good every time I enter a 7-Eleven. As with most things, it’s all about the associations.
When I was a kid, my friend Steve and I would walk or bike to a 7-Eleven in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, after having pitched baseballs to each other and shagged flies on the Mountain Park Elementary School baseball diamond on hot summer days. Dripping sweat, we’d reward ourselves afterward with a Slurpee in a promotional plastic cup bearing the likeness of a current major leaguer. My mom would load the empties into the dishwasher, where they’d warp and distort. Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente came to look something like the stars of a circus sideshow.
Later, the 7-Eleven in Warrenton, Virginia, was a mainstay on road trips in my 20s from North Carolina up U.S. 29 through Central Virginia to see the Orioles play at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The sugar high from convenience store Butterfingers and Oreos — as well as the offerings of Mr. Donut on Erdman Avenue — helped fuel catches we single guys had in an overgrown vacant lot near the ballpark before game time.
In D.C. in the early years of my married life, the 7-Eleven came with a police presence in our transitioning-but-never-quite-transitioned neighborhood. It was frequented by ne’er-do-wells, street preachers and kids who likely were skipping school. There were some transplanted suburbanites like me among the customers, but not many. I’d duck in for the occasional coffee or cruller, slightly on guard but happy to see the scowling or bored man or woman with the badge near the cash register. Those visits played into my grandiose narrative that I’d somehow become cool, living in a big city dangerous enough to have an off-duty cop on premises.
The 7-Eleven near Glen Echo Park in Bethesda more mirrored my suburban Berkeley Heights experience, albeit with an influx of Spanish-speaking construction workers and day laborers who’d load up on energy drinks and mountains of junk food but were almost never doughy themselves — their calories-in, calories-out equation having seemingly resulted in a draw. By that time, I had a 7-Eleven Rewards fob that on certain multiples afforded me a free medium coffee. Sweet!
One of my favorite things to do was walk down to the Glen Echo 7-Eleven for coffee to reward myself after shoveling snow from our walkway and drive. Toward the end of our Bethesda years the store’s owner was an engaging Bangladeshi guy who liked to talk geopolitics. I picked up a few internet facts about his native country to sprinkle into conversation, but he never seemed particularly impressed by my efforts. Of course, that neighborhood was chockablock with current and retired government workers. Compared with Foreign Service veterans who might once have actually been stationed in Dhaka or at least New Delhi, I imagine my references to the latest monsoon or instance of political unrest in the region was pretty weak tea.
For most of my last 20 years in the workplace, I stocked up on extra-large chocolate Tootsie Pops from a bin on the bottom shelf of the Glen Echo 7-Eleven’s candy aisle. Five days a week, one of them constituted my dessert after I’d polished off my bag lunch. (I had an office with a door I kept closed so nobody saw the Senior Writer/Editor sucking on his lollipop.)
One of my nephews professes to share my enthusiasm for 7-Eleven. So, when we moved to Kensington last year, I assured him I’d scope out the three nearby locations and report back to him on their differences in personnel and clientele. But the truth is, I’ve mostly patronized the one closest to our house, which I’ve come to learn is staffed by hard-working multitaskers of various ethnicities and traffics in packs of students from the high school that’s a block from our house.
There was a glitch in my Rewards account for a while that I think I’ve resolved, but coffee no longer appears to be among Rewards options. As I ponder sending a strongly worded email to the chain’s Texas headquarters about this vexing issue, I nevertheless enjoy the ability to walk home sipping my extra-large cup of joe. (Somehow I imagine myself looking cool doing this, too — sporting my John Lennon-reminiscent round specs with the sunglass attachment and an awesome-in-my-estimation indie rock band T-shirt. I’ve never lacked the capacity for delusional self-regard.)
I was struck recently by a Washington Post article bearing the headline “Can Japan’s Love for 7-Eleven Survive a Canadian Takeover?” The piece described a pending proposal for Quebec-based retail giant Alimentation Couche-Tard — owner of Circle K convenience stores and gas stations — to operate, franchise and/or license the approximately 84,500 7-Elevens scattered across 19 countries and territories. (While “Couche-Tard” sounds like a politically incorrect epithet for someone with a low IQ, it’s actually is French for “the kind of person who goes to bed late” — presumably after buying midnight snacks at a convenience store.)
7-Eleven Inc. was founded in Texas in 1927 and is still headquartered in the city of Irving. Since 2005, however, it’s been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan’s Seven & I Holdings. While I remember seeing multiple 7-Elevens in Tokyo during my week visiting friends there in 2008, I wish I’d stepped inside one of them. Because what I know now is that they are very different from their American cousins.
What I should note first is that there are about 3,000 7-Elevens in Tokyo alone and more than 21,000 throughout the country.
(Some quick stats: There are about 9,500 7-Elevens in the United States, scattered across 38 states and territories. Globally, you’ll find 7-Elevens from Taiwan to Tel Aviv, the Emirates to Singapore. On the Chinese island of Macau —a gambling mecca with a land area of 12.7 miles — there are a whopping 45 stores.)
More striking, though, than Japan’s density of 7-Elevens — impressive but hardly Macau-like in a country the size of California — is how indispensable the chain is deemed to be in the Land of the Rising Sun. Per the Washington Post article, “They are a mainstay of Japanese life — where businesswomen flock at lunchtime for freshly made bento boxes, teenagers slurp ramen into the night and early-rising older folks can stop by for tea, pay their bills and pick up necessities.”
Which is why the Japanese people reportedly are eying warily the potential sale to Canadian owners. In North America, after all, 7-Elevens also embrace the native culture. But the thing is, our native culture is so disproportionately obese that those Americans, Canadians and Mexicans who are not yet diabetic can expect to be so any day now. About the only food item at our 7-Elevens that purports to be freshly made is the two-packs of cookies sold at checkout; I can vouch for the oatmeal raisin. Our stores stock up on the highly processed and the packaged. Also, anyone walking into a U.S. 7-Eleven seeking consumer services will walk out disappointed. You can’t pay your bills there. The best you can hope for is that the lottery ticket you purchase will score big enough to help you pay those bills down.
I read another article, from Food & Wine magazine, titled “Japan-Style 7-Elevens are Coming to America — and That Means a Vastly Improved Menu.” The piece outlined the chain’s plan to introduce Japanese features such as freshly prepared foods and even a hot bar. It linked readers to a Wall Street Journal video titled “The Economics of 7-Eleven.” In it, plans are detailed to sink major yen — sorry, dollars — into upgrading 7-Eleven’s 17 regional stateside commissaries in order to produce and deliver oven-fresh goods quickly.
I noted, though, that the Food & Wine article came out in July — a month before news of the possible Canadian takeover. Would the Quebecois see similar merit in bringing Japanese food strategies to America? Would they at least, in a nod to a provincial favorite, add poutine under those heat lamps?
I personally have my doubts that Americans craving fresh food will seek it out at the place they’ve been coming to for donuts and chicken wings.
Nobody asked me for foot-traffic strategies, but the reason why a rival convenience store chain — Sheetz — is my go-to along the interstates is because they have bathrooms, unlike most of the 7-Elevens I’ve ever patronized. I imagine bathrooms are more frequent at 7-Elevens that also have gas pumps, but none of the stores I’ve lived near sell gas. Given my fondness for liquids in 24-ounce helpings, should 7-Eleven get big-time into the latrine business, I can guarantee I’ll stop in more often.
Here’s something else I’d like to mention. Have you ever noticed that 7-Eleven is referenced in the lyrics of Billy Idol’s 1984 hit “Rebel Yell”? What’s that about? you might ask. I’m going to assume you just did!
First of all, if you guessed that Billy was not born with the surname “Idol,” you are correct. He came into this world in late 1955 as William Michael Albert Broad. (The moniker Billy Broad might have served as an apt identifier had he been raised on non-Japanese 7-Eleven food.)
Second, the American Songwriter website (Idol is Anglo-American) informs me that “Rebel Yell” describes the singer’s relationship with English dancer Peri Lister. The song is “a sexual cry of love,” Idol has said. Given the contemporaneous existence of a (since-discontinued) bourbon named Rebel Yell, the song’s lines “He lives in his own Heaven/Collects it to go from the 7-Eleven” suggest that Idol’s particular cry of love may well have been alcohol-fueled. (Yes, some 7-Elevens sell hard liquor.)
Idol and Lister would produce a son before breaking up in 1989. They named him Jack Daniels Sonny Lister Broad-Idol.
I made that last part up.
What else can I tell you about 7-Eleven that you had no idea you need to know?
In 2010, the first “green” 7-Eleven opened in DeLand, Florida, which may or may not be news to my brother-in-law and his wife who live there.
In February 2020 the chain opened a cashier-less location at HQ in Irving.
Most Chinese 7-Elevens are 24 hours. (And you’d better believe they all have surveillance cameras.)
The chain was a bust in Indonesia, shuttering its 150+ stores in 2017.
After Japan, Thailand and South Korea are the chain’s biggest markets.
Finally, in a 2007 promotion, some 7-Elevens were temporarily renamed Kwik-E Mart — that being the name of the fictitious convenience store managed by Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. This was 10 years before the documentary The Problem with Apu prompted a cultural reexamination of an Asian character who had been voiced by a white actor Hank Azaria and was depicted as having eight children with his wife Manjula.
Wow, I see that my word count has now exceeded 2,000. I hadn’t meant for this post to become such a Big Gulp. But I have to say, it seems appropriate.
[Late-breaking news: Seven & I Holdings has rejected Alimentation Couche-Tard’s $38.5 billion takeover offer. The deal is off, at least for now. 7-Eleven’s Japanese customers presumably have issued a sigh of collective relief.]
