Archive for Items Categorized 'Avanti Magazine', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

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 […]

Are We Profit Partners Only?

  As 7-Eleven franchisees, we love our brand. Our stores allow us to make a good living while providing friendly services to our customers and building strong ties with our communities. But times are changing. Unlike in the past, when our only worry was a competing c-store, these days we’re being bombarded with additional competition. […]

Keeping Up With Rising Operational Costs

  A number of years ago, our franchisor’s focus was on obtaining the lowest cost of goods for our stores. Any company with a recommended product delivered a lower cost, and SEI would renegotiate to obtain the lowest possible price in the form of billbacks. This process helped generate sales and profits for both franchisees […]

Conflicts Of Interest

  Many of us are familiar generally with the concept of a conflict of interest, but seldom is that term defined in a formal sense. Essentially, a conflict of interest exists where the impartiality of a party is undermined by simultaneous duties to other parties that have differing interests. Many franchise systems give franchisors the […]

BT Demand Chain Issues

  When 7-Eleven went about selling the BT program as a way to “simplify processes” at the store level, it sounded promising and maybe even too good to be true. Franchisees went along with our business partner on this endeavor, because franchisee store sales performance is directly impacted by how efficiently the demand chain works. […]