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7-Eleven is in the middle
of going from being the world's
largest convenience store chain
to closing over 1000 stores
in the United States.
7-Eleven had invented
the convenience store concept
and exploded it after World
War Two, and by the 1980s,
the United States
convenience store market.
But then they started to lose it all.
Business was about convenience.
How close was the store to you?
Was it open 24 hours a day?
Did it have what you need
when you walked in?
And for decades,
7-Eleven won that war.
Then as the 2000 came around,
things started to change radically.
Well, badly for 7-Eleven.
The first of those was
that cigarette smoking
started to decrease
heavily for decades.
For decades,
The highest margin products
sold at convenience
stores was cigarettes,
and the sales of those
would go down by over 50%
between 2014 and 2023.
While in America,
the United States stores
never found a replacement
for tobacco
as it started to die.
The Japanese versions of 7-Eleven
did something entirely different.
In Japan, 7-Eleven
are basically essential
civic infrastructure.
You can pay your taxes there.
You can pay your cell phone bill,
get dinner.
30% or more of their sales
come from prepared
food of quality
that's better than most
American restaurants.
And as the 20 tens came along,
while other chains like Wawa,
Buc-ee's, and Sheetz figured
out that the future was food
and becoming a bigger
part of American life.
7-Eleven stayed
basically the same, and in 2021,
instead of making their stores
better, 7-Eleven decided
just to invest more money
to buy competitors
and spent $21 billion
to buy the Speedway
chain of convenience stores.
They did it at precisely
the worst time.
Their interest rate
has tripled from 2021 to 2024,
and now the entire chain
with enormous amounts of debt.
And that's why today
they've announced over
1000 store closures.
And basically they're
becoming a non-entity
in American convenience stores.
Great businesses don't stand
still while the world
chains around them.
They anticipate
what's coming in
the broader world,
and they move aggressively
to meet it.
In the case of 7-Eleven,
they didn't do that,
and it's really hurting them.
A long form video about the rise
and fall of 7-Eleven,
and why they turned down
a $47 billion
offer for a company of theirs
without much of a future.
You can check that in the
comments below or on my bio.
