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When Americans land at busy Japanese airports like Haneda or Narita for the first time, it has become a trend for these jet-lagged travelers to drag their luggage toward a konbini like 7-Eleven before checking in at a hotel.
Despite 7-Eleven either operating, franchising, or licensing more than 13,000 stores in North America, its Japanese branches form part of a distinct convenience store culture — led by other konbini chains like FamilyMart and Lawson — that has given them top billing on tourist itineraries.
TikTok and YouTube vlogs guiding first-time visitors highlight not only popular locations, like Shibuya Scramble Crossing and the ancient Buddhist Sensō-ji temple in Tokyo's Asakusa area but also a menu of konbini offerings that America's 7-Eleven's struggle to match.
Hot dogs and Slurpees in stateside stores give way to a variety of foods and drinks such as onigiri rice balls, cheap fried chicken, egg sandwiches on milk bread, and make-your-own frozen smoothies that are kept fresh on shelves with multiple daily deliveries informed by sales data.
These convenience stores also double up as pit stops that live up to their name by offering customers access to ATMs and printers, as well as other services like bill payments and buying concert tickets.
They are night and day from their US counterparts, then. That said, Americans who want to enjoy some of the Japanese 7-Eleven magic closer to home won't have to wait much longer.
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Though 7-Eleven started in Dallas in 1927 as an American company that sold ice, it has been wholly owned by Tokyo-headquartered retail conglomerate 7 & i Holdings since 2005.
This year, its CEO Ryuichi Isaka — who has led multibillion-dollar acquisitions of competitors like Speedway in the US — has made clear that he is ready to give larger 7-Eleven US branches a makeover that puts them more in line with the Japan stores.
It feels like a much-needed move.
Typical drivers of sales at American convenience stores, such as cigarettes and gasoline, have started to decline or are projected to decline, leading Isaka to seek a strategy that gives US 7-Elevens new life.
As Isaka told Bloomberg in February, that strategy is now all about getting "fresh food" on shelves. "We are in the process of building a system to supply fresh, high-quality products to stores," he said at the time.
That process is being helped by Warabeya Nichiyo, a key food supplier for 7-Eleven Japan, as it looks to build its third plant in the US, costing $81.5 million.
It is also being helped by an intricate data system that gives real-time oversight of items being sold to help determine what shipments need to be made to restock a store at different times of the day.
The Wall Street Journal reported that America's 7-Elevens were at one point only receiving two deliveries per week, with many items being ordered that consumers had little to no interest in. That was clearly a waste.
American consumers can expect to see products on shelves at their local 7-Elevens that they might previously have had to venture all the way to Japan to buy, as well as a fresher variety of options that meet the tastes of locals.
In a statement, 7-Eleven told BI that the company was working with its partners in Japan to "introduce new items like chicken teriyaki rice balls, miso ramen, and sweet chili crisp wings to US customers."
"We are constantly evolving the fresh food assortment in our stores, tailoring the offerings at each location to meet the needs and preferences of local customers," the company said.
Instagram user @greenonionbun, based in Orange County, California, posted about a trip she said she'd taken to a local 7-Eleven after hearing that the convenience store chain was going to start stocking Japanese snacks in the US.
She said the egg sandwiches seemed more Japanese-style as they were made with fluffy milk bread, for example, but there were subtle differences, too.
Good news for Americans wanting to taste Japan's 7-Eleven selections: they should soon be able to get similar bites closer to home to satisfy cravings until their next trip to the country.
