Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Gas stations & convenience stores (AM/PM, 7-Eleven, etc.)
Alpha8472
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by Alpha8472 »

In Northern California, many Mobil stations converted to Speedway or Speedway Express. The Mobil stations were some of the lowest priced gas stations around except for Costco. Mobil became a trusted brand once again. The Mobil brand in the San Francisco Bay Area became BP in the early 90s and then returned in the 2010s.

Speedway still has low priced gas, but not as low as Costco. There are some Mobil and Exxon stations left. They are all lower than Chevron or Shell. They are higher than independent stations and Costco. I have an ExxonMobil credit card and it gives me ten cents off the cash price. The rewards app often has deals where you can earn additional points that you can redeem for discounts on gas.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 27th, 2022, 1:39 pm In Northern California, many Mobil stations converted to Speedway or Speedway Express. The Mobil stations were some of the lowest priced gas stations around except for Costco. Mobil became a trusted brand once again. The Mobil brand in the San Francisco Bay Area became BP in the early 90s and then returned in the 2010s.

Speedway still has low priced gas, but not as low as Costco. There are some Mobil and Exxon stations left. They are all lower than Chevron or Shell. They are higher than independent stations and Costco. I have an ExxonMobil credit card and it gives me ten cents off the cash price. The rewards app often has deals where you can earn additional points that you can redeem for discounts on gas.
It depends on the station how that Exxon Mobil card works. I have in CA had that card give .10 off the cash price, and also had it give .10 off the credit price. When I called to complain I was told the station has the price policy and the reason I was getting .10 off was to ensure I was getting the best deal.

Also recently a change has been made with Exxon Mobil where you do not earn rewards points if you pay for gas using the Exxon Mobil card. That is within the past few months.

Every other major oil brand or at least Shell and Chevron and 76- the station MUST honor the cash price for customers who use the oil company's card. That is how the system is configured and there is nothing the station operator can do about it whether they want to or not.

One Mobil owner I talked to told me they (they being Exxon Mobil card processing network) charge a processing fee to the station to accept the ExxonMobil card unlike Chevron or Shell who does not charge the station any fee for accepting their branded card. Not sure if that was true or not.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by storewanderer »

Bought gas from a 7-Eleven. This one had the Chip card turned on. After playing 20 questions with their stupid gas pump's payment process- the loyalty card question, zip code question, constant "leave card inserted" message keeps flashing through all this even after it already said "card approved" I thought it was finally time to start fueling. So I took the nozzle and selected the fuel type using the octane button on the pump. No fuel comes out. I look over at the screen. The screen is asking me ANOTHER quesiton- it is asking if I want to proceed with fuel type regular unleaded yes or no. That, is a first. In using thousands of different gas pumps, I've never seen the payment screen ask me if I want to proceed with the fuel type that I have already selected via the octane button. When done fueling the pump asked if I wanted a receipt and of course the pump had no paper for a receipt. The store was a filth pit inside and the service was terrible.

At Speedway this process- I would have tapped my card on the pump and it would have immediately gone to authorizing then approved. No questions. No hassle. If you want to use loyalty card there, you press loyalty button before you run your card. Given Speedway has a loyalty card program that has been running for 20+ years I trust they know how to implement it successfully and holding the payment process up to make the customer "yes or no" the loyalty question isn't very speedy.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by mjhale »

storewanderer wrote: May 28th, 2022, 12:32 am Bought gas from a 7-Eleven. This one had the Chip card turned on. After playing 20 questions with their stupid gas pump's payment process- the loyalty card question, zip code question, constant "leave card inserted" message keeps flashing through all this even after it already said "card approved" I thought it was finally time to start fueling. So I took the nozzle and selected the fuel type using the octane button on the pump. No fuel comes out. I look over at the screen. The screen is asking me ANOTHER quesiton- it is asking if I want to proceed with fuel type regular unleaded yes or no. That, is a first. In using thousands of different gas pumps, I've never seen the payment screen ask me if I want to proceed with the fuel type that I have already selected via the octane button. When done fueling the pump asked if I wanted a receipt and of course the pump had no paper for a receipt. The store was a filth pit inside and the service was terrible.

At Speedway this process- I would have tapped my card on the pump and it would have immediately gone to authorizing then approved. No questions. No hassle. If you want to use loyalty card there, you press loyalty button before you run your card. Given Speedway has a loyalty card program that has been running for 20+ years I trust they know how to implement it successfully and holding the payment process up to make the customer "yes or no" the loyalty question isn't very speedy.
7-Eleven bought out a number of Sunoco A-Plus Mini Marts near me. Almost every single one of them has gone down in quality, cleanliness and service levels. Don't even get me started about all the gas pump problems like you describe. There is one near the county dump, a number of government buildings, a Costco and a Home Depot that has done OK. I think they keep their standards higher because they have the Laredo Taco thing in the store. Maybe they are more afraid of the health department with the larger food service operation. There is one A-Plus that wasn't part of the sale. It is still operating at its same decent to above average self. You can really tell a difference between it and the former A-Plus locations that 7-Eleven has. Thank goodness Sheetz is building its first location in my county and Wawa is expanding here too. All these gross 7-Elevens, especially the ones from the 70s and 80s need to go.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by storewanderer »

mjhale wrote: May 28th, 2022, 7:09 pm

7-Eleven bought out a number of Sunoco A-Plus Mini Marts near me. Almost every single one of them has gone down in quality, cleanliness and service levels. Don't even get me started about all the gas pump problems like you describe. There is one near the county dump, a number of government buildings, a Costco and a Home Depot that has done OK. I think they keep their standards higher because they have the Laredo Taco thing in the store. Maybe they are more afraid of the health department with the larger food service operation. There is one A-Plus that wasn't part of the sale. It is still operating at its same decent to above average self. You can really tell a difference between it and the former A-Plus locations that 7-Eleven has. Thank goodness Sheetz is building its first location in my county and Wawa is expanding here too. All these gross 7-Elevens, especially the ones from the 70s and 80s need to go.
I've been to multiple 7-Eleven units in CO, CA, and NV in the past couple months. Strictly due to "convenience." Some of these units are only a few years old. Others are 40 years old. It is the same old thing every time. The new units are just as bad as the old units. Usually only one employee on duty even in busy stores with 12 gas pumps and strong customer traffic. Obviously these are franchise operations. They are filthy, their employees are beyond rude and disengaged, the stores have a poor selection of products, and even the experience using the gas pumps is universally terrible.

The 7-Eleven parent company in Japan should be very ashamed with how most of the US stores operate. But I assume as long as the profits keep rolling in, nobody knows or cares what is going on here. The current strategy to buy more and more other c-store chains out and try to ruin them probably won't end well because better c-store chains keep expanding like crazy throughout the US.

7-Eleven brings nothing to the table when they buy other c-stores out. They think the "Slurpee" is revolutionary. It is like their biggest thing they are proud of when they buy other c-stores out. It was a special thing back in 1990 when few other gas stations had a similar product but at this point in time 30 years later all of the other gas stations have various forms of frozen carbonated beverage many with better flavors/more variety at a lower price than Slurpee.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by storewanderer »

7-Eleven announced layoffs of over 800 corporate employees this week.

However if you go over to various layoff message boards, etc., the number is estimated to be significantly higher.

I thought they just shut down Speedway HQ. But that isn't quite it. Many who have been laid off are reporting from 7-Eleven HQ or in field positions for 7-Eleven, and on the Speedway side the layoffs appear to be more administrative (finance/legal/marketing type positions) as opposed to operational.

It looks to me like this outfit is crashing and burning. They had no business buying Speedway. It is really too bad that had to happen. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by jamcool »

The main competitor to Slurpee was/is Icee, which was introduced a decade before Slurpee. In fact many 7-11s sold Icee before the introduction of Slurpees.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by jamcool »

The problem with 7-11 is that most of its stores are franchisees-unlike its main competitors which are majority company-owned sites and have better quality control. 7-11 corporate is in a continuous conflict with the franchisee association(which is independent of 7-11). You can’t have QC when you have a bunch of one store operators. Plus the Speedway sites were never a standard design-especially in the West and Southwest.
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: July 23rd, 2022, 12:31 am 7-Eleven announced layoffs of over 800 corporate employees this week.

However if you go over to various layoff message boards, etc., the number is estimated to be significantly higher.

I thought they just shut down Speedway HQ. But that isn't quite it. Many who have been laid off are reporting from 7-Eleven HQ or in field positions for 7-Eleven, and on the Speedway side the layoffs appear to be more administrative (finance/legal/marketing type positions) as opposed to operational.

It looks to me like this outfit is crashing and burning. They had no business buying Speedway. It is really too bad that had to happen. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Not sure why this is any issue - of course when you combine two similar companies, there will be people that are not needed, given that each company has similar positions, and you don't need two people doing the same job.

Could just be that they are (sensibly) choosing those who are the best for each type of job - that is, if the Speedway HQ or field personnel did better at those jobs than the existing 7-11 ones, keep the better ones, while keeping others from 7-11 that also did better (apparently the finance/legal/marketing departments).
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Re: Speedway/7-Eleven integration

Post by mjhale »

jamcool wrote: July 23rd, 2022, 7:27 am The problem with 7-11 is that most of its stores are franchisees-unlike its main competitors which are majority company-owned sites and have better quality control. 7-11 corporate is in a continuous conflict with the franchisee association(which is independent of 7-11). You can’t have QC when you have a bunch of one store operators. Plus the Speedway sites were never a standard design-especially in the West and Southwest.
Add to this that there seems to be no desire from 7-11 corporate to force modernization of stores or if they don't they are out as a franchise. In the area I live there are many 7-11 stores built in the 70s and 80s that have had essentially no work done on them for many, many years. You can tell too. They are old, cramped and dirty. Selection is limited and they have very few hot foods. I think it is very interesting that in areas where you have a strong presence from a modern, all corporate owned convenience store like Sheetz or Wawa you just don't have the franchisee 7-11 type stores. If there is a 7-11 it is a modern store trying to have the same concepts as Sheetz or Wawa. I always wondered if the 7-11 stores with Laredo Taco or other significant food service options are corporate owned. Not saying a franchisee could keep that up but corporate oversight would give the consistency between locations people desire.
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