jamcool wrote: ↑March 6th, 2024, 7:47 am
It looks like 7-11 isn’t going to drop the Speedway brand anytime soon. They just started a major ad campaign for the Speedway brand which includes offering Slurpees and Big Gulps.
What seems to be happening is the 7-11 banner being emphasized in urban markets, with Speedway in the more rural areas- and Stripes in Texas.
I have seen a Stripes Big Gulp cup... However, every Stripes I know of has converted in the last few years but two: a San Marcos location (nothing particular about it) that has remained Stripes even as others converted, including all the former Sac-N-Pac locations. (The San Marcos area has a motley collection of stores that includes a native stand-alone 7-Eleven, at least one Quix, Stripes, and Sac-N-Pac).
The other one is in Bryan, a massive 12k square feet store that started out as Chicks, which was designed as a "destination" convenience store before selling (long story). Every other store I know of, even the stores in the more rural areas, have converted to 7-Eleven.
jamcool wrote: ↑March 6th, 2024, 7:47 am
It looks like 7-11 isn’t going to drop the Speedway brand anytime soon.
One of my nearest Speedway stations seemingly closed up overnight last week and the property was stripped of signage, pumps, everything! (Someone forgot to tell Amazon apparently as there is still a running pickup locker sitting outside the building with a roped off parking lot.) I can't really understand it as its on a prime corner. There's a Wawa on the other corner, but tucked back and not the easiest to access, and a ratty indie station that butted up against the now former Speedway.
For whatever reason(s) they have not gone forward with plans to convert Speedway. They actually expanded the brand by taking various oil branded stations that they received from Marathon and were contractually required to rebrand within a certain time period (USA, Mobil, Arco, Thrifty, Tesoro) and actually rebranding those to "Speedway Express"- those are dealer op stations but 7-11 controls the fuel operation (7-11 has nothing to do with the store but control the real estate/lease the store to a dealer op).
I'm not sure if they ultimately plan to separate Speedway or what.
They haven't even merged the loyalty programs together yet. They have started to move Speedway over to 7-11 IT/systems but it is a separate system for Speedway, a "copy" of sorts of the 7-11 system. They managed to get it to function the way the old Speedway Radiant system did- Chip at the pump, Tap at the pump, Loyalty point info displays on the pump as you fuel, so I am okay with their system conversion decision. Not sure why none of this exists at the regular 7-11s (well, a few have Chip at the pump but most in my area are still Swipe at the pump) but whatever.
The Big Gulp and Slurpee cups at Speedway have no store logo of any kind. They should just go back to Speedway's drink programs/cups and pricing of all sizes one price and same price for frozen/fountain and quit playing games. Big Gulp is meaningless and Slurpee is basically a joke at this point, customers are more concerned with the flavor offer on the frozen carbonated beverage than what the brand name of the frozen carbonated beverage is. And Speedy Freeze had better flavors than Slurpee also, like Orange Cream and Mango. Slurpee may have a lot of flavors but many are disgusting combinations.
7-11 saw a huge drop in traffic at Speedway sites when they moved over to their overpriced drink program/pricing and briefly changed the fuel pricing model at Speedway to match the 7-11 fuel pricing model. I think that was so bad for them that any plans they had to convert Speedway outright to 7-11 got scrapped. I also don't think Speedway has recovered from those moved either.
About a year ago Seven & i Holdings was discussing spinning off 7-Eleven. I suspect that keeping Speedway is a contingency plan in case 7-Eleven runs into trouble. The late 1980s and early 1990s had Southland exit lots of markets, even in their home state of Texas, and only recently with other acquisitions (Stripes, though some in-roads with buying Speedy Stop locations) have they been able to rectify that.
I suspect that 7-Eleven will start slowly converting Speedway stations, but if/when the hammer comes down, they can just announce a spin-off of Speedway to recoup cash and not have to suffer a "market pullout".
pseudo3d wrote: ↑March 6th, 2024, 9:36 pm
About a year ago Seven & i Holdings was discussing spinning off 7-Eleven. I suspect that keeping Speedway is a contingency plan in case 7-Eleven runs into trouble. The late 1980s and early 1990s had Southland exit lots of markets, even in their home state of Texas, and only recently with other acquisitions (Stripes, though some in-roads with buying Speedy Stop locations) have they been able to rectify that.
I suspect that 7-Eleven will start slowly converting Speedway stations, but if/when the hammer comes down, they can just announce a spin-off of Speedway to recoup cash and not have to suffer a "market pullout".
I expected them to convert out west especially in CA. It makes little sense to keep Speedway in CA; the brand was barely established and was a patchwork of very variable quality stations. They built a couple new ones in SoCal though. Plus the Speedway Express thing is very confusing to customers in CA as those stores are not an actual Speedway Store. They only do that Speedway Express thing in the CA/OR/WA/Alaska territories from what I can tell. There are no corporate Speedways in OR/WA/Alaska either.
The original plan back in 2021 was to do store remodels to Speedway Stores and convert them to 7-11. Also when new stores opened in a market the plan was to open them as 7-11. Well in 2023 they had yet to do one remodel that resulted in a conversion and they also opened multiple new build Speedway Stores in various states in the midwest- even following the last Speedway prototype instead of following a 7-11 prototype.
They may have figured out Speedway was a superior operation...
storewanderer wrote: ↑March 6th, 2024, 6:34 pm
They haven't even merged the loyalty programs together yet. They have started to move Speedway over to 7-11 IT/systems but it is a separate system for Speedway, a "copy" of sorts of the 7-11 system. They managed to get it to function the way the old Speedway Radiant system did- Chip at the pump, Tap at the pump, Loyalty point info displays on the pump as you fuel, so I am okay with their system conversion decision. Not sure why none of this exists at the regular 7-11s (well, a few have Chip at the pump but most in my area are still Swipe at the pump) but whatever.
The Big Gulp and Slurpee cups at Speedway have no store logo of any kind. They should just go back to Speedway's drink programs/cups and pricing of all sizes one price and same price for frozen/fountain and quit playing games. Big Gulp is meaningless, and Slurpee is basically a joke at this point, customers are more concerned with the flavor offer on the frozen carbonated beverage than what the brand name of the frozen carbonated beverage is. And Speedy Freeze had better flavors than Slurpee also, like Orange Cream and Mango. Slurpee may have a lot of flavors, but many are disgusting combinations.
7-11 saw a huge drop in traffic at Speedway sites when they moved over to their overpriced drink program/pricing and briefly changed the fuel pricing model at Speedway to match the 7-11 fuel pricing model. I think that was so bad for them that any plans they had to convert Speedway outright to 7-11 got scrapped. I also don't think Speedway has recovered from those moved either.
The cup doesn't have a logo, but it does say 7-11 in the copyright information on the side in small print.
Not sure that the drinks are overpriced (in fact, the cold drinks are much lower now that Cumberland raised their pricing and went to this by size thing as well) - coffee prices are very similar to others in the area, and they still do the buy 6 get 1 free thing (where the free can be any size, so you can buy 6 $0.89 sodas and get a $2+ coffee as the free item).
They also switched on the fuel a few months back, and you now get 7 cents off for having their card (which is like a supermarket card, not requiring it be hooked to a bank etc.), with that they have been the lowest price around this area (even in a part of the area that is overall lower by 10-20 cents than other parts of the surrounding area).
veteran+ wrote: ↑March 7th, 2024, 8:32 am
I am curious.
I cannot find ONE 7-11 anywhere close to me that is decent or at least clean.
Does anyone know of a location in the Los Angeles area that is actually nice?
There was a nice Speedway in Irvine until 7-Eleven bought it and took over management... Now it's just as bad.
I saw a new build 7-Eleven on the border of Murrieta and Temecula that was pretty nice and clean a few months ago. But then it takes a little while for the dirt to build up from lack of caring... I'll check it out and see if they're trying to turn over a new leaf or if it's the same old same old.
I think we can thank 7-Eleven for why we are floored when we go out of the area and see a QT, or RaceTrac, or Wawa, or Maverick. They seem like you landed on another planet the first time you walk into any modern location they operate. A clean, well stocked convenience store with lots of relatively fresh and decent looking options, clean bathroom and friendly service? Always a shock to those of us who grew up on 7-Eleven.
Currently there are 3 7-Elevens in Greensboro, all of which are new builds which have opened in 2021 or later. Out of these, two have already accumulated a fair number of 1 star Google reviews (mostly for not being open during what should be regular business hours but a few are things like accusations of racism and catcalling from staff), one of them is next to the Urban Loop and has truck diesel and a scale, but hasn't been open long (this is close to the Urban Loop across from a Sheetz that opened in 2019.)
As far as I can tell, all of the Speedway stores in Greensboro are former Hess(Wilco) locations that converted when Hess existed the retail fuel market in 2015, and there has been no effort to open any further locations until the new 7-Eleven stores began to appear a couple of years ago. I suspect that even Sheetz with its not-so-stellar reputation in the Triad will probably outclass them easily in the long run.
veteran+ wrote: ↑March 7th, 2024, 8:32 am
I am curious.
I cannot find ONE 7-11 anywhere close to me that is decent or at least clean.
Does anyone know of a location in the Los Angeles area that is actually nice?
There was a nice Speedway in Irvine until 7-Eleven bought it and took over management... Now it's just as bad.
I saw a new build 7-Eleven on the border of Murrieta and Temecula that was pretty nice and clean a few months ago. But then it takes a little while for the dirt to build up from lack of caring... I'll check it out and see if they're trying to turn over a new leaf or if it's the same old same old.
I think we can thank 7-Eleven for why we are floored when we go out of the area and see a QT, or RaceTrac, or Wawa, or Maverick. They seem like you landed on another planet the first time you walk into any modern location they operate. A clean, well stocked convenience store with lots of relatively fresh and decent looking options, clean bathroom and friendly service? Always a shock to those of us who grew up on 7-Eleven.
