I wonder how 7/11 in the US will change now that the Japanese version bought out the US version. Will we actually have hot and prepared food like Japan? I doubt it, seems the supply chain infrastructure just isn't there.

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AlexAplin 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Besides the context in the other comments, they pushed the Japanese fresh food angle in a media blitz pretty hard last year (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/business/7-eleven-ceo-ste...). Egg sandwiches seem to be the most reliably available in the contiguous states, but you can also spot egg rolls and onigiri. They're also now bracing to close hundreds of stores and reopen a fraction of that number to match the new model: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2026/04/17/7-eleven...

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Larrikin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's been fully owned by the Japanese company for over 20 years

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ssl-3 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As others have mentioned, 7/11 in the US has been owned by 7/11 (Japan) for quite a long time, now.

There's some important organizational differences: Stores in Japan are almost entirely franchisee-operated, while stores in the US are more-or-less split 50% on being franchises or corpo.

It's hard to draw conclusions when they're shaped so differently.

But I can say this: Speedway is a large US chain of gas station/convenience stores, with ~2,800 locations (all of them corpo). They varied a lot; some had hot made-to-order food, some others were limited to roller dogs and baked, frozen pizza that was in many ways indistinguishable from cardboard.

There has never been a time when Speedway was awesome, but there have been times when it was acceptable. It was usually better in the suburbs, and worse in the cities (I've seen some weird shit happen at Speedway stores in cities, but they generally kept up with the chaos).

Overall, I'd give 5/10 -- it was often convenient and generally open 24/7, but at all times any of them could have used a lot of very obvious improvement.

5 years ago, 7/11 bought Speedway. They've subsequently managed to allow it to become even worse. Things are dirty, disorganized, clearly lacking any direction other than that which leads towards dilapidation, and the staff just doesn't appear to care about any of it.

Under 7/11's ownership, my buying habits have shifted from "Hey, there's a Speedway. Let's stop in and get a soda or some coffee, or maybe a sandwich" to "Oh look, it's a Speedway. Let's keep moving."

Their accomplishments here are very impressive.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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soared an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

7/11 has always had hot pizza, fried chicken, rollers, etc in my area?

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mgiampapa 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

7/11 Japan has been running the stores in Hawaii for ages, just look there.

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UncleOxidant 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would be great if we could get oniguri in US 7/11s.

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m0llusk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The waste generated is also a major challenge. Having fresh food always ready means trashing a lot of meals. In the US there are networks of food banks and such, but it can still be difficult to keep up with the flow of unpurchased food that is no longer fresh.

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ssl-3 6 hours ago | parent [-]

How is this waste dealt with in Japan? Why can't whatever-that-is be implemented in the US?

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rjh29 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Badly. Until a few years ago there was a franchise-wide rule that no food could be discounted even if it was close to expiry, so either the staff/owners bought them and ate it themselves, or it went in the dumpster.

Giving expired food to homeless people is not really a thing there either.

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ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If that works (badly) in Japan, then why can't it work (just as badly) in the US?

What new impediment does the geography bring to the table?

	▲	rjh29 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was merely answering your question about how Japan deals with it (by trashing it, mostly). I guess the US could do that but unlike Japan, I'd expect people to break into the dumpsters and steal the food out of it. The trashing of food might offend people more in the US. In terms of geography though, Japan has an extremely efficient and well developed cold chain and the country is pretty much a line from north to south. The US is clearly more spread out and significantly larger than Japan. That causes problems with both delivering the food to stores and (as other people have mentioned) efficiently moving waste to food banks.

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thaumasiotes 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It can, but probably not in advance.

It wouldn't make much sense to develop infrastructure around a source of rapidly-expiring food before that source existed. But once the food is there, demand for it will quickly develop.

There's a general theme in policy discussions of people saying "system X has a feature that system Y does not have; therefore, moving from system Y to system X must require a fully-developed auxiliary system to be in place for dealing with that feature before the move can even be considered a possibility". This is complete nonsense; it's what people say when they want to object to something, but don't have any reasons.

	▲	ssl-3 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's kind of what I was leaning towards. It's a problem that needs solved, but it's not necessarily hard to solve, nor does it need solved in advance. It's the kind of problem can often very nearly resolve itself. Here in the States, I've seen what can happen at the end of the night at a busy Little Ceasers in a not-great part of town. They've got a lot of unsold pizzas, already boxed, that they simply need to get rid of so they can close up and go home. So they walk out the back door with armloads of pizzas and... casually give them away to the people who are waiting out there. It's a very calm and surprisingly tidy process that goes by quickly. This happens at the same time every night. The only apparent cost is whatever it takes to maintain the base amount of humility required to let this happen instead of dutifully marching the pizzas over to the dumpster and tossing them in. This routine is almost certainly an invention of evolution, instead of planning.

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m463 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I was in 7/11 in the US and they sell egg sandwiches.

coincidence?