Did You Know?

The company now known as 7-Eleven has a history of being ahead of the curve.

Back in 1927, when its founders were running the Southland Ice Company in Texas, an executive recognized the potential of selling basic provisions like milk and bread alongside the ice blocks that were so essential to households in the days before refrigerators were common. With a little company restructuring, the first convenience store chain was up and running. (The name was changed to 7-Eleven, a reference to the hours of operation, in 1946.)

In 1963, 7-Eleven opened its 1,000 store, but a more significant milestone in the convenience store realm was also about to happen. Around this time, according to Oh Thank Heaven!: The Story of Southland Corporation, one store located near the University of Texas campus in Austin found itself unusually busy in the hours after a school football game, to the point where employees never had the chance to shut the doors for the night. When this situation unfolded again following the next football game, the company’s brain trust sniffed a potentially transformative moment for the business, and established 24-hour shops near Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Meanwhile, another 24-hour experiment was unfurling at a 7-Eleven near the Strip in Las Vegas, a move that yielded an increase in profits and the surprise side effect of deterring burglaries. Eventually, both 7-Eleven and their competitors realized that it wasn’t just the amped-up college students and gamblers who sometimes needed a 24-hour pit stop, paving the way for the proliferation of these ever-open outposts to provide beer, chips, and a range of other goodies to help folks everywhere make their way through the night.

See the opportunity and grab it, to be sure!

We win!