Food, Drinks & Tech Are Focus of 2020 7-Eleven Experience

Prepared food, beverages and technology will be key drivers of growth for 7-Eleven Inc. franchisees in 2020, based on the themes revealed at this year’s 7-Eleven Experience — the convenience store retailer’s annual trade show and conference.This year’s 7-Eleven Experience drew a record 8,500 attendees, including franchisees and their families, corporate employees and vendor partners. The event, held at the MGM Conference Center in Las Vegas, featured 280 exhibitors representing most of the top brands sold in the c-store industry, as well as a wide spectrum of proprietary 7-Eleven products, and a Learning Center that, among other things, showed off the latest technological innovations being tested and implemented by the chain.Speaking with Convenience Store News at the event, 7-Eleven President and CEO Joseph DePinto extolled the company’s incremental progress on improving its fresh foods offering, broadening and sharpening its selection in both dispensed and packaged beverages, and building a technological platform that enables 7-Eleven’s growing loyalty/rewards program, delivery service, mobile checkout, and first cashierless store.“As you know, I’m very positive and upbeat about the growth potential of the c-store industry,” said DePinto. “We are perfectly positioned to where the public is going. We are the retail channel that is closest to the customer, and we offer the most simplicity and ease of any other retail concept.”The nation’s No. 1 convenience retailer in store count, according to the latest CSNews Top 100 ranking, opened hundreds of stores last year. The company is off to a great start this year due to the recent announcement of an acquisition of 7-Eleven Stores of Oklahoma (100-plus stores in central Oklahoma) from the Brown family. DePinto shared that the retailer plans to build hundreds of additional stores that are “in the pipeline for the next two years,” and execute a significant number of remodels in 2020.TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTSDePinto, along with Senior Vice President of Merchandising and Demand Chain Jack Stout, Chief Information Officer Mani Suri, Chief Digital Officer Tarang Sethia and Head of 7NOW Raghu Mahadevan, discussed how 7-Eleven continues to push the technological envelope.The company’s loyalty/rewards program is up to 27 million members and growing. Delivery service, through the 7NOW app, is available in 47 markets and counting. “We have average delivery time down to just 28 minutes,” noted Mahadevan.In addition, the retailer’s mobile checkout store in New York City’s Manhattan borough is being rolled out to thousands of locations this year. Mobile checkout enables customers to scan and pay for their purchases without going to the checkout. And, for the ultimate in frictionless engagement, the retailer recently announced it is piloting its first cashierless store at its corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas.As previously reported by CSNews.com, the 700-square-foot non-traditional store is available to 7-Eleven employees only. The store uses a proprietary mix of algorithms and predictive technology to separate and identify individual customers and their purchases from others in the store.

Food, Drinks & Tech Are Focus of 2020 7-Eleven Experience

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