New 7-11

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storewanderer
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New 7-11

Post by storewanderer »

New 7-11 in Reno that has been under construction for almost a year finally opened. Corner of Rock and Longley.

Store is actually different than any 7-11 I have seen before. While it has the same general layout as a typical one with a few aisles, restroom hidden behind the counter, there are some major differences:
1. Hot dogs, etc. are now self serve
2. Coffee is in urns or brew on demand machine, no more open pots
3. Cement floor throughout
4. Exposed/warehouse ceiling
5. Music was playing- overhead speakers

What was interesting is they also had some different dispenser beverage equipment. They had a "frozen Slurpee lemonade" machine which took a lemonade flavor slurpee and shot a flavor of your choice into it, they had various options; berry, mango, etc. They also had a machine next to the fountain drink machine for "fresh brewed iced tea" again this machine had a few options and you touched the screen and it dispensed out whatever you wanted. It would not be hard for them to upgrade to this equipment, plus the coffee upgrade, in EVERY one of their locations. I don't understand why they don't do it... it radically improves their offer.

Also the way this was set up is all of the dispensed beverage equipment was along the back wall then across from it the first aisle was a long counter with the lids, straws, etc. so you can finish off the drink over there away from the machines. The other side of that aisle/long counter was where the self serve hot food was.

Also the gas station part has cash price and credit price (both showed the same price today). No other 7-11 sites in Reno do this and most competitors don't either. In fact, recently some stations that did cash price/credit price discontinued that practice and started advertising same price cash or credit (Golden Gate and a couple of Valeros). Safeway also long discontinued that practice in Reno.

As for the usual 7-11 experience, I was at this store for 10 minutes and only saw one other customer. There were 3 employees just standing around talking. Restroom was employees only. Uniforms were very loose. The floor in front of the soda/slurpee machines was already very dirty and sticky. On that iced tea machine described above, it had 8 options, but there was a handwritten note that only 2 of those options worked. When I paid the cashier did not seem to know how to scan the 7-Rewards app and it kept giving an error (cashier had already activated the pinpad and needed to go back to the transaction screen).

So overall, quite interesting. A better offer on dispensed beverages than recent remodels they've done. Already being run somewhat poorly and it just opened. We will see how it goes.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by Alpha8472 »

I saw a new 7-Eleven Gas Station with these new machines back in 2020 in Antioch, California. That location was very clean and well kept. It really depends on who works at the store.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on September 5th, 2022, 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by mjhale »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 5th, 2022, 2:14 pm I saw a new 7-Eleven Gas Station with these new machines back in 2020 in Antioch, California. That location was very clean and well kept. It really depends on who work at the store.
And that is what the problem is - lack of consistency. 7-11 opened one of the stores designed like storewanderer describes near me. It is just fancy lipstick on the 7-11 pig. Until 7-11 has consistency of operations and a quality food program like Sheetz or Wawa they are always going to be second fiddle in an area with higher quality operators. It is no surprise to me that 7-11 opened a "fancy" store in the area it did. They are smack in the middle of four Sheetz and three Wawa locations. No way they could even attempt to compete if they built their average store even if it had fuel.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by storewanderer »

Went to new 7-11 again today. This time the Frozen Lemonade Slurpee machine was out of all flavors except Lemonade and Blueberry Lemonade. All of the flavors were previously working. There are two other Slurpee machines. On those two machines, a total of four flavors were out of service (three said out of product, but obviously had product defrosted; the fourth said defrosting and was doing its cycle).

Tea machine still only had 2 flavors available (of 8 offered).

Good to see they are running this like a typical lousy 7-11. Despite many better features, they can't even maintain them a week. Consistency is certainly important and they are absolutely working to have this new one run into the ground to be consistent with their other locations.

Also noticed one of their gas price signs (digital) was not working either along Rock Blvd.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by jamcool »

The typical 7-11 problem….most of its stores are franchises, which means there is no quality control unlike the QTs, WaWas, which are company owned sites. And buying up Stripes and Speedway didn’t seem to help.
Expect their Japanese owner 7&i to possibly spin them off in the future.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by Super S »

There are a few of these newer design 7-Eleven stores in Southwest Washington. I have been to a couple of them and thought they were well designed compared to what I have seen from them in the past. It remains to be seen long term how they are run, but you can tell that they are trying some new things with these stores. These locations seem to be well run at the moment.

7-Eleven seems to be in expansion mode in the area. They have also taken over a few older buildings from other operators. I am not sure if the older locations are being remodeled into this layout though.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: September 6th, 2022, 7:41 pm There are a few of these newer design 7-Eleven stores in Southwest Washington. I have been to a couple of them and thought they were well designed compared to what I have seen from them in the past. It remains to be seen long term how they are run, but you can tell that they are trying some new things with these stores. These locations seem to be well run at the moment.

7-Eleven seems to be in expansion mode in the area. They have also taken over a few older buildings from other operators. I am not sure if the older locations are being remodeled into this layout though.
Yes, the new 7-Eleven in Ridgefield, WA was also very nice. It was larger than this one with two sets of aisles and even more equipment as I recall. I also noticed a new one being built between Battle Ground and Vancouver last year, I assume it is open now. I saw a third one being built somewhere.

I think 7-Eleven has realized they need to try to expand so some of these markets like the Pacific Northwest where basically nobody is challenging them, they think they can build and be successful. Even Speedway for whatever reason did not want to run convenience stores in the Pacific Northwest as they did not have a single corporate operated Speedway in OR/WA/AK but shifted everything to "Speedway Express" run by multi site operators (terrible operations). So the Pacific Northwest seems to be a particularly poor market for convenience stores for some reason. Eastern Washington is a little better as you have Maverik, Holiday, and Circle K all present over there.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by Alpha8472 »

I passed by a former 7-Eleven in Pleasanton, California today. It used to be a new looking store just a couple of years ago. It was clean and looked great. About a year ago it was converted to a Cox Family Store. The entire store has been remodeled and rearranged. However, it seems like the Slurpee machine was converted to an Icee machine.

The store looked great and this new operator seems to run really fancy looking stores. Some of their other stores have bathrooms that look like spas.

The 7-Eleven branding is not bringing in the customers. The number of stores in this area is getting smaller.

Cox Family Stores has some really futuristic gas pumps at some of their locations. It looks like a giant iPad. The gas selection is chosen on the touch screen and there are no physical buttons to select your gas.
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Re: New 7-11

Post by storewanderer »

Cox has a Shell in Truckee and a Shell in Tahoe City and beyond new gas pumps they haven't spent a dime on the store interiors. The Truckee one has a Shell c-store interior circa the early 90's. Tahoe City doesn't really have much decor going on. They also took over the Chevron in Kings Beach. That one, they did a major/full remodel on and re-configured the entire store. That one has these upper end fixtures including bathroom fixtures that you are talking about.

One time in the bay area I bought a drink from one of these Cox Stores and later found the drink I bought after opening it was flat/expired. I went back into the store and the clerk issued an immediate refund to my card and apology, no problem, very efficient. I was impressed by this as the clerk was able to issue the refund efficiently on their own. Convenience store clerks often are blocked by the system from issuing a refund or there is a lot of red tape to go through.
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