7-Eleven | History, Facts, & Business Overview

To operate a 7-Eleven convenience store, business owners pay a one-time franchise fee and make a down payment on store inventory. The company provides ample support for franchisees selected to become part of the program.

Founding and early history

In 1927, several icehouse companies, which primarily sold block ice for food preservation to households without electric refrigerators, merged to form the Southland Ice Company in Dallas.

One of the icehouses began selling food items after the merger or shortly before it. Southland Ice soon started general retailing, installing attention-getting Native American totem poles in front of some of its stores and adopting the name Tote’m Stores, which served as a punning invitation to customers to “tote” their purchases away.

• Joe C. Thompson, Sr., became president of Southland Ice in 1931.
• During the Great Depression, the company went through bankruptcy. It emerged with a new emphasis on food and drink, especially after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, when beer and liquor were first offered for sale.
• In 1946, the stores were renamed 7-Eleven to call attention to their extended hours of operation—from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.
• In the late 1950s, Southland began to expand beyond Texas, opening 7-Eleven stores on the East Coast.
• Joseph Thompson’s son, John P. Thompson, became president of the company in 1961 and further expanded operations in the United States and elsewhere.
• Starting in 1963, some outlets stayed open 24 hours a day.
• In 1964, the company began to franchise its stores.
• 7-Eleven introduced the Slurpee, a frozen beverage, in 1966. It is one of the company’s signature products and remains popular today.
• In 1976, 7-Eleven introduced the Big Gulp, a 32-ounce (946-milliliter) cup for fountain drinks. After the Big Gulp proved highly popular, the company added even larger Gulps.

Worldwide expansion and corporate raiders

Southland licensed a Japanese affiliate in 1973, and by 1974, there were 5,000 outlets worldwide. The company expanded beyond food, drink, and convenience stores into other fields, purchasing businesses such as Chief Auto Parts (1978).

• Because many of its stores also served as gas stations, Southland bought CITGO Petroleum in 1983 as a supplier. The company sold off 50% of its stake in CITGO in 1986.
• During the heyday of corporate raiders in the 1980s, the Canadian financier Samuel Belzberg threatened a hostile takeover of Southland. In response, the Thompson family took the company private in a leveraged buyout in December 1987.
• Many subsidiaries, including Chief Auto Parts, were sold off to pay the heavy debt that resulted from the repurchase of shares.
• The company went bankrupt for the second time in 1990, the same year it sold the remaining half of CITGO shares.
• It emerged the following year with 70% of its stock owned by Ito-Yokado Co., a Japanese retailer, and Seven-Eleven Japan, the company’s Japanese licensee.
• In 1999 Southland Corp. renamed itself 7-Eleven, Inc.
• Continuing to expand, the company opened its 25,000th convenience store in 2003.
• In 2005, the company’s largest shareholder, Ito-Yokado, formed a diversified retailer, Seven & I Holdings, and used it to purchase 7-Eleven. The headquarters of 7-Eleven remains in the Dallas area, although Seven & I Holdings is based in Tokyo.

7-Eleven today

7-Eleven has continued to expand; it owns several other brands acquired during the 2010s. Additionally, 7-Eleven created its Evolution Stores to experiment with new foods, products, features, and services, resulting in the roll out of new 7-Eleven concepts as it continued to make acquisitions.

• In January 2018, 7-Eleven began acquiring Stripes stores in Texas and Louisiana. The acquisition of more than 1,000 stores included the Laredo Taco Company, which is now 7-Eleven’s proprietary Mexican-style food vendor.
• In March 2020, 7-Eleven launched Raise the Roost Chicken & Biscuits, a mini-restaurant concept found in select stores. It features a range of premade and made-to-order chicken and biscuit menu items.
• 7-Eleven acquired Speedway convenience stores and gas stations from Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corporation in May 2021. The addition of Speedway’s 3,800 locations increased the number of stores operated by 7-Eleven in the U.S. and Canada to more than 13,000.
• Building on its idea of offering in-house dining at select 7-Eleven locations, the company debuted a new type of store in Tennessee in August 2021 that put both Raise the Roost and Laredo Taco Company in the same building.
• In April 2024, 7-Eleven completed a $1 billion deal that included acquiring more Stripes and Laredo Taco Company locations from Dallas-based Sunoco LP.

In August 2024, Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard made a $38 billion offer to acquire Seven & I Holdings. The company raised the bid to $47 billion later in the year. Seven & I initially formed an independent committee to evaluate the proposal, but negotiations eventually collapsed. In July 2025, Couche-Tard formally withdrew its offer, citing what it described as “a calculated campaign of obfuscation and delay” by Seven & I’s board. The Canadian company criticized the lack of transparency, while Seven & I defended its governance and said it remained committed to its own value-creation plan.

In response to the takeover pressure, Seven & I appointed Stephen Hayes Dacus as chief executive officer in early 2025. Dacus, a Japanese American and former executive at Walmart (WMT) and Fast Retailing, has emphasized operational efficiency, regionalized store offerings, and strategic divestitures. His plans include listing the North American convenience store business by 2026, investing in fresh food expansion in U.S. locations, and repurchasing more than $13 billion in shares by the end of the decade.