the great 7-eleven experiment

Saturday Feb 23rd 2008

Honestly speaking I don’t know how far this experiment will go but it’s interesting. Or at least to me it is.

Something that is an institution in Tampa are 7-Elevens. For those not from the USA that read my blog, a 7-Eleven is a convenience store. The title of the store chain originally comes from the fact that they opened at 7am and closed at 11pm, however today the vast majority of them are 24-hour stores (more on that later).

To give you an idea of how much commerce happens where I live in Tampa, there are 10 Wal-Marts within 10 miles of where I live.

Five of those ten are Wal-Mart SuperCenters.

To give you an idea of how much penetration 7-Eleven has, there are 35 stores within a 10-mile radius of me. Yes, just 10 miles.

How do I know this information? I just did a store search at each company’s respective web site.

Why did I want to know this information? Curiosity and the fact I’m interested in how commerce works. We see these stores all the time and never give it a second thought. It is nothing shore of incredible that all these stores stay in business and all make money.

To answer the question “Okay.. so what’s the experiment?” The experiment is to see how many 7-Elevens I can visit.

Today I visited five of them. Each photo below is clickable and will state the store # of each along with a geotag to show the physical location in Picasa.

7-Eleven, Tampa Florida

7-Eleven, Tampa Florida

7-Eleven, Tampa Florida

7-Eleven, Tampa Florida

7-Eleven, Tampa Florida

Facts and oddities about 7-Eleven

  • It has never been written as “7-11″ and I’m 100% certain this is because you can’t register a business name in the United States that is 100% numerical. The is why “11″ is spelled as “Eleven” in the title.
  • The vast majority of 7-Eleven stores are 24-hour stores, so the literal definition of the store title doesn’t really apply any longer.
  • 7-Eleven stores that provide fuel are always from Citgo.
  • 7-Eleven has routinely been a sponsor for certain NASCAR race car drivers over the years. To be in a position to do that means yes, this corporation has the cash to do it.
  • The corporate colors for 7-Eleven are orange, green and red (in that order) on a white background.
  • There are several 7-Eleven stores in the Tampa area that do not have fuel for sale. These are older stores that don’t have the physical land area to put in pumps underground or fuel islands above-ground.
  • Newer stores are, said honestly, very clean, very well kept and are large both on the outside and inside. The older stores are the only ones that harken back to the 80s when they were small, cramped and dingy-looking.

If you want to see how close these five stores are to each other, check out the map.

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