Earlier this year, Canadian convenience store company Alimentation Couche-Tard put in a bid to acquire 7-Eleven. Then, management from inside 7-Eleven’s parent company, Seven & i, proposed a record-breaking buyout to counter. WSJ’s Jinjoo Lee on the drama around who will own the world’s largest convenience store chain. Further Listening: -The Fight Over U.S. Steel and the Community Caught in the Middle -Why the FTC is Challenging a $25 Billion Supermarket Merger Further Reading: -The Fight for 7-Eleven Isn’t Just About Money -Talk of a 7-Eleven Takeover Has Japan Worried About the Rice Balls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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7-Eleven. In America, it's home of the Slurpee. The Big Gulp, coming in a rainbow of artificial colors. The Big Bite Hot Dog, rotating under a heat lamp. Bright yellow nacho cheese. Rows of chips. Shelves of candy bars. Yesterday, I popped into one by the office. All right, I'm in lower Manhattan and I'm about to go into a 7-Eleven.
Definitely lots of soda and stuff that you'd expect in a normal 7-Eleven. And like these, I don't even know what you call them, like taquitos or something, like crunchy with like cheese or chicken inside. And then you got your big gulp options here. My gosh, the Big Gulp is so big. I decided to pick up a classic Slurpee. I went with Coke-flavored with some cherry mixed in there as well. Wow.
It's really sugary and... Hmm. I mean, it tastes good, I'm not going to lie. But I don't think I could have more than one of these a decade, honestly. But I wasn't at 7-Eleven for culinary reasons. I was there for journalism. Because right now, 7-Eleven is the subject of a major bidding war. A Canadian company really wants to buy it, and they're offering to pay a lot of money for it.
But 7-Eleven is playing hard to get. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Tuesday, November 19th. Coming up on the show, why 7-Eleven doesn't want to sell.
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7-Eleven was founded in Texas in 1927. It was originally called Southland Ice Company. In the 1940s, it changed its name to reflect its hours, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the chain went on to become a convenient American icon. But there's a country that loves 7-Eleven even more than Americans do. Japan. If you could describe 7-Eleven and Japan in one word, what would it be?
Hmm. I don't know if magical is quite the word. Exciting, maybe?
That's our colleague Jinju Lee. Even though 7-Eleven started in the U.S., it's been a Japanese company since the early 1990s. And Japan has more 7-Elevens than anywhere else in the world.
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