7-Eleven Franchise Essay

History of the franchise
    7-Eleven is a worldwide, technology-enabled, people-driven customer service machine that understands the importance of neighborhood focus. They offer an extended hour, retail convenience store providing groceries take out foods and beverages, dairy products, non-food merchandise, specialty items and selected services that emphasize convenience to the customer. In addition, the company also offers self-service gasoline in some outlets. Almost all of which is sold under the Citgo brand through a long-term product purchase agreement with Citgo Petroleum Corporation. The process to set up this company was really interesting. Joe C. Thompson, who was an employee of the Southland Ice Company in 1927, discovered selling convenience items such as bread and milk was really popular due to the ice’s ability to preserve the items. He bought the Southland Ice Company and turned it into Southland Corporation. The company began to use the 7-eleven name in 1946 since its operation time was from 7am to 11pm. It was incorporated as Southland Corporation in 1961. The first 24-hour schedule was experimented in Austin, Texas in 1962 and the first 24-hour store was established in next year in Las Vegas. The famous Japanese company Ito-Yokado formed Seven & I Holdings Co. and 7-Eleven became its subsidiary in 2005.   Nowadays, 7-Eleven, Inc. is the world’s largest operator, franchisor, and licensor of convenience stores with more than 18,200 stores in 18 countries. Its operations include 5,560 7-Eleven convenience stores in 30 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces. (Fundinguniverse, n.d.).
Type of growth has the franchise experienced.
      As I have mentioned, 7-Eleven, Inc. is among the world's famous convenience store retailers with a long and proud history that dates back over 75 years.   They have been a leader in the franchise industry for more than 40 years since they purchased 127 franchised Speedee Mart stores in California in 1964. According to...