7-Eleven buying large chunk of Sunoco

[storewanderer]

I thought 7-11 already took over all of Sunoco's retail operations...I guess that was only in the Northeast at the time.

Not even all of them there, just the ones that were part of that AM/PM group coming from the former Atlantic fuels.

There are still many Sunoco stores that are not part of 7/11 all over this area in NY.

I'm all confused how the company is divided now and who controls what. I thought all Sunoco's with APlus (a brand that came from Atlantic when Arco went away in the Northeast?) branded mini marts were company owned, and that is what 7-11 acquired, but now I have no idea as I see a few APlus units have converted to 7/11 (fuel still branded Sunoco), a few that have completely de-branded to generic 'Food Mart' status (sold to independent operators?), and others that have received a remodel with the new APlus branding. And then there were plenty others that never had APlus branding to begin with (either generic mini mart and/or mainly an auto repair facility)
[/quote]

7-Eleven bought the corporate operated Sunoco A-Plus units. My understanding is they have converted all of the units they want to keep, to 7-Eleven.

Some of those corporate operated Sunoco A-Plus units that 7-Eleven bought, they did not actually want to keep. So they ran them as A-Plus for a while then sold them/subleased them and some of those stayed A-Plus as franchisees and some of those went to independent operators.

There are still some franchise A-Plus units out there. Those didn't and don't have anything to do with 7-Eleven.

[storewanderer]

The Sunoco sites in NM are mostly in Eastern NM, adjoining Texas. In the rest of NM there is Speedway, especially in Albuquerque. I noticed in ABQ several 7-11s converted to DKs. And a bunch of ex-7-11s that are now part of some independent chain-they use the existing 7-11 signage frames-that all sell Alon fuel. And there are many Speedways-which were originally Giant stores until the Marathon takeover. There have been no Speedway-to-7-11 conversions in that area-or in the rest of NM and AZ, other than offering Big Gulps and Slurpees.

The stores in the worse neighborhoods switched to something called Quick Track instead of converting to DK in Albuquerque. I'm not sure who Quick Track is but they got some really tough stores. Quick Track took some stores from them in other places as well but they don't even seem like a corporate operation, they seem like independent convenience stores.
https://quicktrackfuel.com/

Basically there were stores they did not want to convert to DK (since they spent some money converting the 7-Elevens to DK- redid building fronts and some light interior work) and those got sold off to this Quick Track thing.

I recall the Alon stations in El Paso which were also corporate sites and also will be part of this sale to 7-Eleven were quite a bit nicer than the stuff in Albuquerque. I forget if those had 7-Eleven stores attached or not.

[pseudo3d]

7-Eleven will be buying up a large portion of Sunoco convenience stores so that they can focus more on other areas of the business. I feel like we may have already discussed this here, but it seems to be hitting mainstream news sources today.
Sunoco to sell 204 stores to 7-Eleven

That is not good news.

7-Eleven will destroy whatever is good about Sunoco.

The stations they are buying include 200 West Texas stores that were kept by Sunoco, retained their Stripes names (and LTC), and were operated (not owned) by a new group called Cal's Convenience. They did nothing to the stores and service has gone downhill. This won't affect any A-Plus stores that didn't already convert or close.

[jamcool]

Apparently this is a plan by SEI to become “foodcentric”….less focused on selling gas and more focused on fresh/made to order foods, like WaWa and QT. It doesn’t help that a large portion of 7-11’s stores are one or two location franchises that have stores that are mediocre at best.

[veteran+]

Apparently this is a plan by SEI to become “foodcentric”….less focused on selling gas and more focused on fresh/made to order foods, like WaWa and QT. It doesn’t help that a large portion of 7-11’s stores are one or two location franchises that have stores that are mediocre at best.

You are being kind about 7-11, at least regarding Los Angeles.

[storewanderer]

Apparently this is a plan by SEI to become “foodcentric”….less focused on selling gas and more focused on fresh/made to order foods, like WaWa and QT. It doesn’t help that a large portion of 7-11’s stores are one or two location franchises that have stores that are mediocre at best.

This program is already failing. Their fried chicken concession on their new build in Rancho Cordova, CA on lower Sunrise (south of 50) is failing; high prices, nobody buying the product.

Their best bet would be to rebrand stores to Speedway with Speedy Cafe concept.

Anything 7-Eleven does involving anything other than prepackaged products under its name and under its franchise format is destined to fail in the US.

I don't think the Japan based parent company has any clue how terrible these US Stores are. Evidently as long as they keep sending profits back to Japan that is all they care about. Of course they're profitably when the franchisee and their brother/sister run the store 24 hours with no employees and rarely clean anything. To expedite speed of service the store operator/relatives pretend like they can't speak English so they don't say much to the customer during the transaction if they say anything at all. They cut so many corners of course they can make money with this model.

7-Eleven in Houston with Laredo Taco was pretty good, well staffed, clean, felt comfortable eating food from there, but the store there is nothing like a 7-Eleven. They literally took the Stripes Store and put the 7-Eleven sign out front. It has completely different food, drink, pricing/promotion programs. The store was actually clean. Different interior decor than a typical 7-Eleven. VERY well staffed. It doesn't even use the same cash registers as a normal 7-Eleven. 7-Rewards would not work (tried and tried to scan my barcode straight out of the app but it kept erroring, they claimed it was supposed to work).

[mbz321]

And while we are on the topic, I came across this oddity while I was looking at something else on Google Maps... a standalone APlus Mini Mart with no gas station! (Formerly a 'Pantry 1', and before that, a Wawa that relocated down the road. Many old Wawa's in sketchy areas that don't have a lease restriction have become Pantry 1's over the years).

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0137076 ... ?entry=ttu

And also..right down the road, a former relatively modern 7-Eleven (7-Eleven's with fuel pre-Sunoco buyout are a rarity in these parts) that looks like got crushed by the new Wawa across the street, reopened as a Sunoco with no convenience store branding at all!

[storewanderer]

And while we are on the topic, I came across this oddity while I was looking at something else on Google Maps... a standalone APlus Mini Mart with no gas station! (Formerly a 'Pantry 1', and before that, a Wawa that relocated down the road. Many old Wawa's in sketchy areas that don't have a lease restriction have become Pantry 1's over the years).

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0137076 ... ?entry=ttu

And also..right down the road, a former relatively modern 7-Eleven (7-Eleven's with fuel pre-Sunoco buyout are a rarity in these parts) that looks like got crushed by the new Wawa across the street, reopened as a Sunoco with no convenience store branding at all!

What an odd one. So they are still selling A Plus franchises to anyone who wants one...

That 7-Eleven may be early 00's at the newest.

[jamcool]

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.

[Brian Lutz]

What I've noticed about Sunoco around here is that they tend to be found only associated with generic/unbranded convenience stores, most of them rural and a grade or two below even the older 7-Eleven stores. I suspect that they maintain a token presence in NC mostly due to their association with NASCAR (this seems to be a common thing for big NASCAR sponsors, particularly around Charlotte) but don't really develop much beyond that.