Archive for Author 'John Santiago', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Who Is Out Of Touch?

  On November 9, an article titled “Franchisees to Boycott Annual 7-Eleven Trade Show” was published on CSPdailynews.com. The article accurately states, “The presidents of all 43 7-Eleven Franchise Owners Associations, which represent the interests of nearly 7,000 franchised U.S. convenience-store locations, have voted unanimously not to attend 7-Eleven’s annual convention and trade show in […]

7-Eleven By The Numbers

  As I write this, SEI is gearing up for a series of so-called Town Hall Meetings across the country, the apparent purpose of which is to somehow convince existing franchisees how wonderful it is to be a franchisee and why franchisees should be grateful for the franchise agreement they have, notwithstanding the pervasive control […]

Protecting Our Brand Versus Protecting Our Numbers

  No one can argue that we have a great brand. People like it, it’s established, our clientele is established, and the public in general believes in our brand. But it seems that lately our focus has shifted from our brand to “the numbers.” All we care about is achieving our numbers—store count, foot traffic, […]

Fixing Some Of Our Operational Issues

  I continue to hear from franchisees throughout the country who have many concerns regarding the operation of their stores. The biggest concern that 7-Eleven franchisees currently have is the declining gross profit. You can list many reasons for this decline. You can say it’s because of cost increases, trying to keep up with the […]

A Less Than Smooth Conversion To ExxonMobil Gas

  For some time SEI has been converting its 7-Eleven gas to major brands, such as ExxonMobil, in stores across the country. SEI said the reason behind this conversion is a widely known gas brand will bring more customers to our pumps and into our stores. As of this date, 7-Eleven stores in areas of […]

Overcoming Our Hot Foods Challenges

  When it comes to hot foods, our guests today are looking beyond cheesy, greasy and fried temptations. No doubt our products are within our guests’ everyday budget, but there are several challenges to our hot foods program we must overcome before we can reach SEI’s goal of 20 percent of the total merchandise sales. […]

Updating And Expanding Our Product Offerings Are Key To Attracting Customers

  Recently, I set out with some FOA leaders to visit a few 7-Eleven stores and some of our competition to see how we are sizing up compared to other c-store chains. After a few stops it became clearly evident to me that, although 7-Eleven is heading in the right direction with several programs designed […]

Register System Issues With Newly Acquired Gasoline Stores

  By now you have all heard of SEI’s purchase of 1,100 Sunoco convenience stores, all of which have gas. It’s just the latest in many acquisitions the company has made within the last few years, with more planned for the future. This is great news, as our franchisor is growing and the 7-Eleven brand […]

Billions For Acquisitions; Pennies For Upkeep

  One of the most famous phrases of early American history is “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” This phrase grew out of negotiations that the young nation of the United States attempted to carry out with France in order to avoid war. The French diplomats agreed to commence negotiations, but only […]

Building On Food Service

  Recently, SEI started a ‘Grab-n-Go’ test in a few stores in Dallas. The idea behind ‘Grab-n-Go’ is to have hot food and grill products stocked in boxes ready to go to help increase sales without adding costs to payroll. The test has shown success in terms of increasing sales of the grill products, but […]