The Current - Why 7-11 is a national treasure in Japan. (Yes, that 7-11)

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

7-11 is a national institution in Japan, offering customers everything from great food to a way to pay bills and send money. But now a takeover bid from a Canadian conglomerate has some worried that these unique Japanese stores and the culture surrounding them could change.

You're an entrepreneur. Growth is essential for your business. At BDC, we get that, and we're here to help you stay two steps ahead. With our flexible financing and advisory services, we help you adapt, growing your business in the face of today's challenges and tomorrow's opportunities. Stepping up for entrepreneurs. We're on it. BDC.

Financing. Advising. know-how. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. This is everything I got from the 7-Eleven in Japan. It's my first time seeing one, and they are unmatched. Like, I've never seen anything like it. It's our last 7-eleven breakfast in Japan

Here's what we got for breakfast dessert one of the famous strawberries and cream sandwiches, which are so good I got my favorite onigiri rice ball. It's in the spicy row All right, when was the last time you walked out of a 7-eleven excited to eat the food that you bought her better yet When was the last time you walked out of a 7-Eleven, excited to eat the food that you bought? Or better yet, when was the last time you took a look at one of those hot dogs rolling in perpetual stale-ness on the grill and you thought, yeah, that looks delicious. I should get maybe one or maybe more of those.

In Japan, 7-Eleven is a different beast. Tourists like the ones you just heard are enthralled by the novelty, but locals feel a real sense of pride and connection to the stores and of course the food. I love their bun, you know Chinese bun and then like fried chicken um the fried potatoes oh my god they're so good. Some of my friends they don't cook they just go get food 7-eleven and bring it to home. That's Yoshiki Okano.

He usually lives in Toronto, but we caught up with him while he was visiting his parents in Japan. So 7-Eleven is integrated into our daily lives. So it's not just as a place to shop, but also as a hub for essential services. So you can withdraw cash and even pay tax, and you can also send and receive packages. In Canada, sometimes we have to go Service Ontario, but we don't have to go

there. You can just go convenience store and pay tax, registration of where you live. Certainly sounds much different than a convenience store here. And that is part of the reason why people in Japan are worried about a potential takeover of 7-Eleven. The Quebec convenience store giant Couchter is in talks to buy 7-Eleven from its Japanese parent company and people are worried about the unique Japanese stores and how they could change if that deal goes through.

Gavin Whitelaw is an anthropologist and executive director at Harvard's Edwin O. Reichauer Institute of Japanese Studies. He's both worked at and studied Japanese convenience stores. Gavin, good morning to you. Good morning. We heard a bit of that in the introduction,

but set the scene for us for people who've never been to Japan and never been to a 7-Eleven in Japan. What is it like walking into one of those stores compared to one in North America? I would say it's familiar and yet completely different. It's going into a space, it's a compact store, it's well lit, it's got all kinds of products. There is a counter where people are waiting to wait on you. So in that sense it's familiar.

But you can use the bathrooms there without having to ask for a key. You can stand around for hours reading magazines without anyone bothering you. And then there's the food of course, which you just described from various points of view. But fresh foods that are on the shelves, individually packaged that you can pick up quickly and leave with and have something delicious and sometimes very new to eat or something very familiar to eat. So it's that combination, it's this space that really provides a sense of comfort and stability

to people that I think stands out. And certainly for someone who hasn't been to Japan before, it's a shock. And for those that do go, it's sort of where you want to go first. It's like a homecoming is actually going to the convenience store to get something that's familiar to you and connects you with Japan. Can you tell me a bit more, I mean, Yoshiki talked a bit about the role that these stores play, and it's not just 7-Eleven, it's the convenience stores, the role that they play in Japanese communities.

Absolutely. So yeah, it is, the focus is certainly 7-Eleven for this talk today, but really it's convenience stores in general. There are 57,000 of them in Japan. They've been around since the early 1970s and certainly Japanese today have many have grown up with the convenience store and they've seen it evolving with their lives. These are very locally based stores. Sometimes there's one on every corner at an intersection. They compete with each other, they compete for customers, but they also have their loyalties and conveniences for people. And they've really integrated into and in many ways adapted themselves to people's lifestyles. And part of that is really being in neighborhoods and within a short walking distance or on

your way somewhere. So that's one way in which I think they really distinguish themselves from maybe a North American model which is you drive to it right it's where you get gas maybe some alcohol maybe a newspaper scratch ticket that is not the model in Japan at all. Which would explain why this Canadian company Custard would offer 47 billion dollars for 7-eleven in Japan. Yeah I, I think it gives, I mean, certainly the Japanese convenience stores, or konbini as they're called in Japan,

this model of Japanese convenience stores has spread throughout Asia and Southeast Asia. And I think Custard would like to plug into that. And I think there are things that they could learn, particularly as we've heard on the food side of things, the food side of convenience where they could pick up. But I'm not sure the value is equally appreciated by a Japanese consumership who's come to appreciate

the ways in which convenience has been adopted and adapted and evolved in Japan and whether or not a foreign entity managing the stores will appreciate many of the ways that the convenience store has developed and keep it convenient to a Japanese public. There was a Japanese retail analyst who compared the potential takeover of 7-eleven in Japan to a foreign company taking over Toyota. Can you tell me more about that and why people would be so exercised? I mean there have been, there's a new CEO

that's in place, there are efforts to try to figure out a way to block this deal. Why are people so worked up about this? Well, I think there are a number of reasons for it. One is the company itself, 7-Eleven, really it was born out of Japan's wanting to change and develop small retail in Japan. And 7-Eleven has become the flagship for the gold standard of the convenience store industry in Japan. It's the one to watch.

And so many innovations and relationships in Japan have been developed and innovated by 7-Eleven. So it stands out, I think, in that way as really a unique and sort of the great father of convenience stores in some way Another piece is just how essential they are to people's daily lives And they've grown more essential over time in recent years with certain disasters For example, the convenience store has been more responsive in many ways than the government to people's immediate needs partly because of this intense relationship

the stores have with a franchisee, a local owner, who is very much a partner in the running of these stores. And so I would say, yeah, symbolically Toyota's important, but people drive all kinds of cars. But 7-Eleven is a daily essential. Do you think the deal will go through in light of that? I think it's still an open question. We're seeing ways in which 7-Eleven itself,

the Ito family is reaching out and trying to find different ways to maybe connect with and get supported by larger entities in Japan like Itochu, the company that owns Family Mart, another major convenience store chain. Although that fell through, I think they're trying to find ways in which it can be kept local and therefore, or managed locally, so that therefore it can survive.

I have to let you go, but what is your favorite, what's your favorite part of going to 7-Eleven in Japan? My favorite part of 7-Eleven, um, might be the onigiri. Uh, it's fast, slow food. It's my, it's my, it's my go-to, um, in many ways. Um, and just being in the stores is a, is a wonderful experience. But I mean, onigiri, in a convenience store, it's not something I think a lot of people in North America would think of as something that

you would be celebrating. And yet there it's a very different thing. It is. It is. Gavin, thank you very much for this. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Gavin Whitelaw is an anthropologist and

executive director of the Edwin O. Reichauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Have you been to Japan? Have you been to the convenience store in Japan? Are you listening to us from Japan right now? Tell us about the role that that, I mean, for people who go, it is a very different experience as Gavin was saying.

And so if you have stories on what you have, have a connection that you have made in that, that convenience store in Japan in particular, we'd love to hear from you. The Current at cbc.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.