The 7-Eleven of the Future Is an Organic Hellscape of Turmeric Slurpees
March 31, 2019 3:05 PM   Subscribe

The title that came with the article explains it all.
posted by gryphonlover (29 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Huh. I never knew traditional slurpees are carbonated.
posted by Grandysaur at 3:25 PM on March 31, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm glad the article mentioned that 7-11 in Japan is already perfect and they should just copy that.
posted by potrzebie at 3:33 PM on March 31, 2019 [16 favorites]


I guess we're supposed to be hating on the fancy 7-11, but that cucumber slurpee sounds good on its own and fantastic with gin.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:38 PM on March 31, 2019 [10 favorites]


Oooh dairy free options! It would be nice to eat a snack and not worry about later digestive issues. This is odd, but it could be good.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:49 PM on March 31, 2019


I was completely meh about a cucumber Slurpee until gin was mentioned, now I'd love to try it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:51 PM on March 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


I work on an army base, and it's entertaining to see the PX try to strike the right balance between healthy food and the kind of cheap greasy food it has always sold. It still sells beef jerky, but now it's labeled "gluten-free" and comes in chili-lime flavors. There are green boiled peanuts, but also pomegranate-encrusted pistachios. Fritos, but also non-GMO blue corn chips. There are weenies eternally rolling on hot metal cylinders, but also "protein packs" containing cubes of ham, cheese, and almonds. Unfortunately, every time I find something delicious, it's replaced by something even trendier.
posted by acrasis at 3:51 PM on March 31, 2019 [5 favorites]


Don't get the hate and disdain from the author about trying to introduce new, healthy foods to easy availability. Sounds like a great thing to me. Sure, unfortunately they're more expensive, but if the standard cheap but toxic "foods" are also still available, what's wrong with having more options? Glad to hear 7-11 trying new, better things but hate the framing of this article.
posted by blue shadows at 4:03 PM on March 31, 2019 [5 favorites]


Boo! Don't give people choices!

Who, exactly, is this 7-Eleven for?

People who don't like what 7-Eleven does now. Because if what they have been doing was working great they wouldn't be changing it.

Business is hard.
posted by bongo_x at 4:14 PM on March 31, 2019 [6 favorites]


I note they still use plastic cups. They missed a trick: they should be selling 7-11 branded Slurpee Keep Cups.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:23 PM on March 31, 2019 [1 favorite]




Eh, I can get on board with hating this. Not everything needs to morph into a bougie deli for the wealthy upper-middle class. I can't afford this shit. Why should I be excited that a convenience store is adding a bunch of expensive, trendy stuff? Should I be happy that they'll graciously leave some space on the shelves for some of the affordable stuff? I wonder what will be eliminated to make room.

As the author said:
If 7-Eleven truly wanted to improve upon its model in a meaningful way, it would look to its own stores in Japan: The food there — sandwiches stuffed with fluffy egg salad, soba noodles, and onigiri — has earned a cult following because it is cheap, varied, and most importantly, of high quality.
This is something else entirely. This is bringing in expensive, name-brand stuff (Justin's effin' Chocolate Hazelnut Butter, for $12), alongside expensive health foods and the like (kombucha and whatnot). I'm glad there's dairy-free options. I'm glad people with celiacs might potentially find more. But I don't think those are the primary motivations here.

I'm sure this comment will be written off as some cartoonish "change bad!" But I've seen a lot of places go upscale, and I have no reason to think this is as innocent as just adding some nice, organic mixers to the Slurpee machines.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 5:30 PM on March 31, 2019 [8 favorites]


Yeah I wasn't a fan of the author's hot take. There'll still be plenty of places where he can work towards that STEMI one roller-dog at a time; you'd think we were banning bacon to save the whales. Or raising taxes or outlawing pickup trucks or something.

But I do want to know where these expansion-league 7-Eleven Labs stores are going to be, though, and where I can find one. Because I would drink the hell out of a blood orange Slurpee. Mostly to create some space, into which I would add bourbon. Or maybe the bourbon should go in first? I'm going to have to try this for science.

I'd be all over iced coffee on tap, too.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:26 PM on March 31, 2019 [3 favorites]


If 7-eleven want to be competitive, they need to look at WaWa and Sheetz, which are the actual competitors who are driving them out of business in the markets where they complete.

Clean stores. Good coffee. Tolerable restrooms. Fresh food that isn't a disgusting tray of rotating sausages. That's it -- that's the formula for running a successful convenience store in America.

Unfortunately, this kind of store requires more staff and lower margins, and the MBAs in charge don't like hiring people -- so, instead, we get a half-assed Tumeric milkshake as the gutless hail-mary to save a dying convenience chain.

The level of improvement that it takes to outcompete 7-eleven is so small that it's embarrassing that 7-eleven isn't even trying. It's a bottom-tier low-end store that isn't even inexpensive. It's fast food that somehow manages to sacrifice branding, consistency, and efficiency. It's a place that you only go when there isn't any other option. It's a business that, if free-market economics worked as well as its proponents said it did, wouldn't exist.

The real upshot of this article is that 7-eleven's executives think that there's a path forward for continuing to effortlessly run their business as a headless zombie, and that this path is just requires a dash of tumeric on top of an existing recipe that the world has long grown tired of.
posted by schmod at 8:03 PM on March 31, 2019 [18 favorites]


If 7-Eleven truly wanted to improve upon its model in a meaningful way, it would look to its own stores in Japan: The food there — sandwiches stuffed with fluffy egg salad, soba noodles, and onigiri — has earned a cult following because it is cheap, varied, and most importantly, of high quality.

7-Eleven in Japan is basically a different company entirely, itself a large conglomerate. And perhaps more importantly, other convenience stores like Family Mart or Lawson follow roughly the same model, so this may have more to do with culture (not that I think it's a bad idea for U.S. companies to follow their lead...especially by adding more onigiri, noodles, and nikuman...).
posted by dubitable at 8:14 PM on March 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


7-Eleven in Japan is basically a different company entirely, itself a large conglomerate

I wouldn't call it a different company entirely - 7-Eleven Japan is officially the parent company of 7-Eleven (based in the US), so 7-Eleven (US) is a subsidiary of 7-Eleven Japan.

The umbrella-organization conglomerate is called Seven & I Holdings Co., Ltd., and it owns 7-Eleven Japan as well as department stores, financial service companies and so on, so I guess it's the grandparent company of 7-Eleven (US).

And yes, the food is pretty good at 7-Eleven Japan - arguably the best of the major convenience-store chains.
posted by Umami Dearest at 9:19 PM on March 31, 2019 [5 favorites]


Umami Dearest! That is a great thread name! Ginger tumeric tea for me at my fav coffee place. I haven't stepped into a Sev since the kids grew up.
posted by Oyéah at 10:10 PM on March 31, 2019


I’ll bet one of the major differences between 7-11 Japan and 7-11 USA is supply chains: when the CEO at USA-version says that he wants to see different food his options are going to be choosing from a selection in a catering catalogue, because they don’t have a long chain supply network of fresh food.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:33 PM on March 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


If 7-Eleven truly wanted to improve upon its model in a meaningful way, it would look to its own stores in Japan: The food there — sandwiches stuffed with fluffy egg salad, soba noodles, and onigiri — has earned a cult following because it is cheap, varied, and most importantly, of high quality.

7-Eleven in Japan is basically a different company entirely, itself a large conglomerate. And perhaps more importantly, other convenience stores like Family Mart or Lawson follow roughly the same model, so this may have more to do with culture (not that I think it's a bad idea for U.S. companies to follow their lead… especially by adding more onigiri, noodles, and nikuman...).

Specifically, Japanese 7-Eleven is a large conglomerate of which American 7-Eleven is a subsidiary.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:05 AM on April 1, 2019


an existing recipe that the world has long grown tired of

I think you might be overgeneralising. The USA might have gotten tired of it, but it seems to be pretty popular and successful in a lot of east and south east Asia. The world is bigger than the US.
posted by Dysk at 2:49 AM on April 1, 2019


MetaFilter: a disgusting tray of rotating sausages
posted by Foosnark at 4:33 AM on April 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


but it seems to be pretty popular and successful in a lot of east and south east Asia

Southeast Asian 7e's (as Malaysians call them) follow the Japanese model, though not fully (you can pay bills in the Japanese ones!). Their house brand snacks are pretty great.
posted by cendawanita at 4:51 AM on April 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


It's actually quite funny that for all that 7-11 in Japan perfected the model that they're so hesitant to export it fully, like how I mentioned above. Yet, Japanese convenience stores is a minor tourist attraction for us here, enough that Family Mart is able to push into the region in a big way with the setup mostly unchanged, down to the hot soupy stew counter by the cashier, and dine-in corners.
posted by cendawanita at 5:01 AM on April 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


The ones in Hong Kong were pretty great. Decent food options, cold drinks, they were absolutely everywhere, always pretty clean and unintimidating. And cheap as chips compared to the ones here in the UK or elsewhere in Europe.
posted by Dysk at 5:07 AM on April 1, 2019


I'm still mourning the passing of the Diet Pepsi Slurpee.
posted by Flexagon at 6:58 AM on April 1, 2019


I'm just so happy to see someone using the serial semicolon (and correctly!).

Thanks to the current dominance of the keto trend, hard boiled eggs; portion-controlled packets of cured meats; cheeses; and cured meats wrapped around cheeses are abundant.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:40 AM on April 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I’m sorry if my take is totally off base here, but I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that our food system in the US (or whatever it’s technically called) is so fucked up that getting somewhat nutritional food to wide swaths of people requires massive price increases. “Who, exactly, is this new 7-11 for?” It’s for bougie white ppl who think it’s funny that 7-11 use to be “trashy”, because they’ve never lived in a food desert where a 7-11 (or any other corner market) was a major part of eating.

$15 hazelnut butter? Give me a fucking break. Even if 7-11 were to continue doing hotdogs and taquitos, they shouldn’t have to be branded as being super organic and artisinal and cost $8 for one. In fact, ditch the branding all together and just make the quality better and advertise that. These days when I see “organic” or any of those other words I immediately expect it to be a massive fucking ripoff, where I’m spending an insane amount of money for LESS FOOD, just because it’s considered “organic”. The organic food ain’t gonna fill me up more, and the “trashy” food isn’t going to fill me up very much in the first place, and is bad for me, so can we get a healthy middle ground?

I haven’t been to Japan, but it seems funny to me that Americans would go to a foreign country and laugh at or find it strange that they have actual good food in their convenience stores, because we’re so inundated with shit food that’s cheap and apparently the only solution is to skyrocket the prices. But hey, we laugh at the “trashy” people with their gas station burritos and pizzas and taquitos and slurpees in our own country so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Whole Foods-ization of our food outlets is just so infuriating to me. I love gas station food, I grew up eating it and I still do, I just think it can be made better without raising the prices a ton, and that healthy foods can be introduced alongside them without being expensive as well.

Basically, I find the idea of a “bougie” 7-11 to be offensive in multiple ways, both socioeconomically and food systematically. I hate the idea of people being looked down upon for eating gas station food, when there are oftentimes no other options locally, and I hate the fact that this country can’t get its shit together to introduce healthy foods without having the prices be outrageous.
posted by gucci mane at 8:14 AM on April 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


Japanese-style convenience stores have been tried in the United States. Family Mart came to Southern California and opened up a few stores starting in 2005 under the name Famima!! (Yes, the two exclamation points are part of the store name), but they were all closed down in 2015.

Food retail is just tough. British-based groceries giant Tesco tried a Trader Joe's-esque small mini-market concept with decent quality ready made food available called Fresh & Easy around California and also around the same time (2007). They tried harder with 200 stores opened, but eventually sold off the whole thing and took a 2 billion pound loss. And all the stores ended up closing anyways in 2015.
posted by FJT at 9:24 AM on April 1, 2019


Yea, i'm with gucci mane here. When i was in japan, the only thing that shocked(and then angered) me about 7-11 was the prices. A nice fresh onigiri was $1~, a good(and i mean seriously, 6/10 i would happily pay $6 in the US) sandwich was $3 or a bit under.

A lot of the food was basic, but flavorful and healthy and not overly greasy or salty. And they still had the same greasy hot food as the US, but with more variety! The prices of all that was about the same.

How have we managed to fuck up so bad that the options are either "cheap garbage that's slowly creeping up in price and is shamed as sinful trash for poors to be endlessly made fun of" and "precious still low quality junk with meme ingredients at jaw dropping price points"? Like, i know why, but people should be enraged instead of continuing to get jabs in at "junk food", and dumb fat trumpers being mad it's gone and whatever*

We should be really angry that the idea of honest, somewhat healthy corner store food is so close to dying it might as well be dead here. I grew up with little neighborhood grocery stores and bodegas selling reasonably cheap, pretty healthy sandwiches and deli food. Now they're ENTIRELY gone or fully subsumed into "upscale" and $12 artisinal "cuban" sandwiches and shit. The unpretentious grocery next to my childhood home looks like a mini whole foods now.

And just like so many other fucking problems, all anyone cares about(and in turn, the market research and marketing of these companies) is the aesthetic of eating clean, and of your consumption not being associated with dirty poors or "low class" junk food or whatever

To top it all off, none of these places are even doing a good job of it. The only somewhat accessible chain pulling off the "clean" thing with sane prices is trader joes. Their $3 fancy juice and $4 sandwich wraps are not only reasonably healthy, but actually taste good. I can think of no other chain in the US that even vaguely represents japanese convenience store food(they even have cheap sushi! it's edible!) 7-11's fartisinal cold pressed juice and macarons and stuff taste like ASS. It's entirely a farce. All their new "select" shit tastes like plastic and failure. It's hubris scented.

I just can't see this as anything but a snake that eats itself. What's 7-11 going to look like in 5 or 8 years when all this overpriced, inedible garbage flops and they go back to taquitos and bit gulps? I know we're never getting cheap, no frills, unassuming reasonably good food like they have no issues selling in japan but just... how do these companies admit defeat and go back to their greasy core staples? What happens to "bougie" mcdonalds?

Part of me wants to see it burn, but people genuinely rely on this stuff and we need to just make peace with that and work from there, rather than try and shame it out of existence as "what's wrong with this country". If anything, this fake ass shit is.


*and this isn't a straw man. Living in seattle i see SO MUCH OF THIS, even from actual direct friends of mine who have lived abroad and have... opinions that need further examination about the class associations and story behind food/products in general in the US
posted by emptythought at 9:27 AM on April 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


I know we're never getting cheap, no frills, unassuming reasonably good food like they have no issues selling in japan

7-11's in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Bali...in my experience, all more or less match Japan for decent, cheap, fresh, nutritionally adequate food. Jakarta & Phnom Penh...don't have much in the way of 7-11's, but Circle K and Family Mart make pretty good stand-ins, and where there are lots of 7-11's (you nearly trip over them in Bangkok & Hong Kong), other brands offer much the same experience.

While I agree that population density probably plays a part, the model clearly works across many cultures and regions. I don't understand why it's hard in a city the size of Dallas.
posted by saysthis at 7:52 AM on April 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


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