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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

7-Eleven

7-Eleven & Nuro Launch California’s First Autonomous Delivery Service

7-Eleven announced today they are launching an autonomous delivery pilot program in Mountain View, California, in partnership with autonomous delivery tech startup Nuro.

While the Golden State has been a hotbed of activity for autonomous delivery for sidewalk bots, California has trailed Texas in the rollout of autonomous on-street deliveries. All that changes today with the launch of the Nuro pilot, which will be the first commercial autonomous delivery service in the state of California. The path for the program was paved late last year when Nuro received the first-ever Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit from the California DMV.

As with other Nuro rollouts, the 7-Eleven deployment will eventually use both the company’s proprietary R2 robot and Toyota Prius’s equipped with Nuro’s self-driving hardware and software. However, according to the announcement, the pilot will begin with outfitted Priuses that include a human driver in the driver’s seat. These “autonomous vehicle operators” will monitor the technology and ensure an optimal delivery experience, but will not bring the delivery to the door of the customer so as to make the service feel as ‘human-free’ as possible. Eventually, the two companies plan to introduce the Nuro R2 bots (without human drivers) into the pilot.

Customers in the Mountain View area who want to try out the service can start by placing an order with the 7-Eleven 7NOW app. After choosing autonomous delivery, customers should see a Nuro-powered Prius pulling up with their Slurpee and cheese dog order within 30 minutes. The service will be available to those nearby the 7-Eleven at 1905 Latham Street in Mountain View. Deliveries will be available from 8AM–9PM, seven days a week.

You can watch a video of how the 7-Eleven/Nuro pilot service below:

7 Eleven and Nuro Pilot Autonomous Delivery in California

Instacart Expands 7-Eleven Delivery Nationwide

Instacart announced today that it is expanding its delivery partnership with 7-Eleven across the U.S. Instacart will now deliver food, household items, alcohol, snacks and more from roughly 6,000 7-Eleven stores across 33 states and Washington, D.C. in as little as 30 minutes.

Customers looking to get items delivered from the famed convenience store chain can visit www.instacart.com/711 or by opening the Instacart mobile app.

Instacart first partnered with 7-Eleven back in September of 2020, starting with 750 stores across a limited number of southeastern states. It was the first convenience store partnership for Instacart, and the program has grown since, with today’s news marking an expansion of 4,000 new 7-Eleven locations to the service.

The convenience store category has certainly become more, well, convenient over the past year thanks to third-party delivery. In addition to Instacart, DoorDash ramped up its own c-store delivery ambitions last year launching delivery partnerships with 7-Eleven, Wawa, Casey’s General Store, and CircleK.

The pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing made home delivery table stakes for any food retailer. But the biggest competition for existing players like 7-Eleven and CircleK may not be other big c-store brands. Instead, it could come from the rising wave of new delivery-only conveniences stores. Gopuff recently raised $1.5 billion to scale up its dark convenience stores that deliver 24 hours a day. There are also new, small grocers like Fridge No More which are basically convenience stores, offering delivery in as little as fifteen minutes. Not to mention DoorDash building out its own chain of delivery-only DashMart stores.

The question these upstarts raise is whether getting the types of snacks and drinks and impulse items you find at convenience stores will become more like a utility. If fast delivery is available anytime, will people at home still stock up on items in one trip, or will they make multiple orders throughout the day to satiate their snacking whims? The answer may not be so convenient for existing c-stores. [I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN WITH THE LAST LINE.]

7-Eleven Is Adding Drive-Thrus to Its Restaurant Business

Neither dine-in restaurants nor drive-thrus are commonly associated with the name 7-Eleven, but that many not be the case for long. The convenience store chain announced this week that its first-ever Laredo Taco Company restaurant with a drive-thru is open for business in Dallas, Texas. 7-Eleven purchased South Texas chain Laredo Taco in 2018 and has been slowly expanding it in stores since. This is the first time a drive-thru lane has made an appearance at a corporate-owned 7-Eleven store.

7-Eleven purchased the Laredo Taco Company, along with Stripes convenience stores, in 2018 from Sunoco. The restaurant serves up quick-service Mexican food, which customers can order either in the drive-thru lane or for dine-in seating at this new location. Alcoholic beverages are also available for those eating at the restaurant. For those driving thru, the famous 7-Eleven Slurpee is available along with enough specialty beverages to rival a Dunkin’ location.

The restaurant shares space with a new 7-Eleven Evolution Store. As its name suggests, the company’s Evolution stores are a new take on the concept of a convenience mart and a testing ground for the company’s new store formats and technologies, including restaurants. 7-Eleven currently has six of these stores open in the U.S., with three of them being Dallas.

For this newest store, 7-Eleven is also testing its mobile checkout system, where customers skip the cashier line entirely and simply pay for goods on their phones via the 7-Eleven app. Products from the store, including meals from the Laredo Taco Company, are also available for delivery. 

Outside of the Laredo Taco Company restaurants, 7-Eleven has offered delivery from its convenience stores for a few years now. In 2020, the chain expanded those capabilities last year through partnerships with Instacart and DoorDash.

Meanwhile, the lines between QSR, convenience mart, and grocery store continue to overlap. Wawa also has a delivery partnership with DoorDash and has added plant-based meals and other non-convenience-store food to its roster. The concept of the “ghost convenience store,” a delivery-only mashup of a convenience store, grocery, and restaurant, has also become popular in the last year thanks to DoorDash and, across the Atlantic, delivery service Glovo.

7-Eleven will continue building out its delivery, but also has big plans for its Evolution stores. Future stores are slated to open later this year in North Texas and Manassas, Virginia, as well as other yet-to-be-named locations.

How Tech is Putting the Convenience Back in Convenience Stores

It’s hard to believe now, but back when I was a kid, going to 7-Eleven was a treat. It was like destination shopping. Where else could you get a Slurpee in a commemorative Star Trek cup, a pack of baseball cards and a box of nerds?

What I can buy at a convenience store like 7-Eleven may not hold sway over me any more, but as a technology reporter, the ways I can get convenience store items now is something I’m paying attention to.

Like every other retail sector, convenience has had a rocky year thanks to COVID-19. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, for the two-week period ending Sept. 27, dollar sales at convenience stores were up 4.8 percent year-over-year, but overall trips to convenience stores were down 12.6 percent. Beer and packaged beverages drove most of that growth, while foodservice remained depressed.

That traffic to convenience stores is down is not a big surprise. I mean, people aren’t exactly road tripping a lot during this pandemic. The pandemic also explains the boost in beer sales, as we could all use a drink.

But the convenience sector is responding to these troubled times with what appears to be an accelerated wave of innovation. Consider:

Convenience stores are ramping up delivery.
Third party delivery services like Instacart and DoorDash both now offer delivery from convenience stores. Heck, DoorDash is building its own ghost convenience stores. 7-Eleven is making a concerted push into pickup and delivery, even making deliveries to parks and beaches.

Convenience stores are going cashless.
Mastercard recently announced a partnership with Accel Robotics to deploy cashierless tech at retail, and Circle K is among the first customers. Giant Eagle’s GetGo Market+Cafe is using Grabango for a cashierless location. A startup called Skip is focused on convenience stores for its cashierless checkout. And, of course, Amazon Gos continue to roll out across the country.

Smaller, cashierless convenience stores create new opportunities.
Because they can operate without humans, you are seeing diminutive convenience stores pop up with smaller footprints. AWM Smart Shelf is powering a convenience store built into an apartment complex. And the Zippin Cube let’s retail brands create pop-up convenience stores inside places like stadiums.

At the end of the day, all of these technologies are putting more convenience in convenience stores. I can have quick items brought to my home (or park). The ability to walk in, grab what you want and leave without standing in a line will speed transactions up. And smaller stores will be pushed into smaller places in more locations. It all adds up to a pretty fast evolution of that entire category.

Now I just wish they would bring back more of those commemorative cups.

Instacart Enters Convenience Category, Now Delivers from 7-Eleven

Good news for those craving a Slurpee, but don’t want to leave their homes: Instacart announced today that it is now offering same-day delivery from national convenience store chain 7-Eleven.

The service is available from more than 750 7-Eleven stores in Texas, Florida, Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C., with a national rollout to more than 7,000 stores to follow. Instacart will offer delivery of thousands of convenience store items including grocery, alcohol, over-the-counter meds and presumably a hot dog that’s been on hot rollers.

Customers in the current service area can start shopping from 7-Eleven today by visiting www.instacart.com/711 or using the Instacart mobile app. Just as with its grocery service, an Instacart Shopper will go to the store, pick out the order and deliver it. Deliveries can also be scheduled.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge of interest in Instacart’s delivery service. The company said that since March it has expanded with more than 130 retailers to add roughly 6,500 new stores to the Instacart platform.

This partnership with 7-Eleven is Instacart’s first foray into the convenience category, and in a way foreshadows the looming battles ahead as third party delivery services expand. DoorDash, another third-party delivery service, has made multiple moves into the convenience category throughout the year, including partnerships with Circle K, WaWa and… 7-Eleven. All of these efforts recently culminated with DoorDash opening up its own ghost convenience store chain in select cities.

If Instacart and DoorDash duking it out to bring you a Big Gulp doesn’t blur the lines enough for you, there’s the fact that DoorDash is now getting into grocery delivery. Uber Eats, another third-party delivery player is also starting to offer grocery delivery.

It’s understandable that we’re headed for a big delivery battle royale across multiple store categories. Restaurants, which were the bread and butter for services like DoorDash and Uber Eats, have been decimated by the pandemic. As a result, those services are on the hunt for new revenue opportunities, and with record amounts of e-commerce, grocery is a big juicy target.

While Instacart if firmly entrenched in the grocery space (Walmart recently added the company as a delivery partner), adding convenience stores can help broaden its defensive moat. Instacart doesn’t want to see DoorDash creep into more categories and have people get used to the idea of ordering more and different types of food delivery from them.

As these delivery services look to stake out more territory in their search for customers and revenue, we can expect to see similar category expansion announcements from all the delivery players in the coming months.

Wawa Goes Beyond Standard Convenience Store Fare With a Plant-Based Breakfast

Like most other types of food businesses, the convenience store is changing due to the pandemic, and that includes what’s on the menu when it comes to food. In line with that, today, convenience store chain Wawa announced a partnership with Beyond Meat to bring a plant-based breakfast option to its stores.

Dubbed the Sizzli Breakfast Sandwich, the new item will use Beyond’s Breakfast Sausage product. As of today, it’s available at 650 Wawa stores in the Mid-Atlantic region and will be available in all Florida stores from August 10 onward.

In certain parts of the country, namely the Mid-Atlantic, Wawa is practically iconic in the world of convenience store chains. But like many food businesses nowadays, it’s having to reinvent itself in the wake of changing consumer demands around healthy eating and massive shifts in how people get that food.

The chain already offers its “Wawa Your Way” menu, which offers healthier options and caters to various dietary needs/preferences (gluten-free, plant-based, etc.).

Adding a plant-based option to the menu is the obvious next step. Consumer demand for plant-based proteins has surged during the pandemic as ugly truths about the meat industry continue to come to light. The whole of the alternative protein category, including plant-based meat, is expected to grow to $17.9 billion by 2025.

But plant-based options isn’t the only change Wawa has introduced recently to meet new consumer behaviors. With more people staying at home, or just wary of mingling with strangers in public settings, the company has had to turn its attention to serving folks off-premises. Wawa struck a delivery deal with DoorDash in April, then launched curbside order and pickup in June. Just this week, the chain announced its first-ever drive-thru location, which will begin construction in August in Falls Township, PA.

Wawa’s announcements follow moves by other well-known convenience store chains to shift both their formats and products to meet the current times. 7-Eleven expanded delivery and introduced a new pickup feature in July. It too has a partnership with DoorDash. Over in Tokyo, Uber Eats is delivering food from Lawson Convenience stores. And let’s not forget cashierless checkout’s march into the convenience store realm, led by Zippin, Aramark, and others.

Wawa’s news from the week is further proof multiple intersections are happening right now between convenience stores, grocery stores, and restaurants, and between plant-based diets and traditional ones. Expect more of these lines to blur as the entire food industry continues changing at the pace of the pandemic.

7-Eleven Continues Off-Premises Push With Pickup Feature, Expanded Delivery

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven today announced updates to its off-premises business that include expanded delivery and an order/pay ahead feature for pickup orders placed through its 7NOW app.

The new pickup feature works much like pickup at a restaurant or grocery store would. Customers log into the app and select “pickup” instead of delivery, then place items in their cart and pay for them. The app notifies the user of the order’s progress and sends a four-digit code to show the clerk once the order is ready to be picked up. 

The ability to order and pay for snacks, household supplies, and drinks ahead of time is becoming an increasingly mandatory feature in these pandemic-stricken days. Historically, convenience stores have catered more to spur-of-the-moment purchases, so it remains to be seen if the concept of ordering ahead will translate to this setting. 

One thing the new feature does underscore is technology’s continued advancement on the convenience store format. Earlier this month, Aramark opened a convenience store in an apartment complex that features cashierless checkout tech from AWM Smart Shelf. DoorDash, meanwhile, has been delivering items from Circle K and Wawa as well as 7-Eleven, since the early(ish) days of the pandemic. The common denominator for all these developments is the emphasis on contactless transactions and minimizing human-to-human contact. Given the state of the world, the push to further integrate those things into every corner of daily life will continue for some time to come. 

In the same announcement, 7-Eleven said it has doubled its delivery reach to 2,000 stores across 1,300 cities. At the moment, delivery is available through DoorDash, Postmates, Favor Delivery in Texas, and through the 7NOW app itself.

7-Eleven Is Piloting a Cashierless Store Concept in Texas

7-Eleven announced today it is piloting a cashierless scan-and-go store concept in its hometown of Irving, TX. 

The test store is currently available to 7-Eleven employees and functions much like an Amazon Go store. Users sign into the 7-Eleven app, check into the store, shop, and leave. The store’s system, which 7-Eleven says was built in-house and runs on algorithms and predictive analytics, monitors which items customers take and emails them a detailed receipt after they exit the store.

Items for sale at the concept store currently include a mix of groceries, OTC drugs, snacks, and some non-food items. So basically what you’d find in any other 7-Eleven, minus the hot food items.

Finding ways to create a faster, more frictionless convenience store experience has been a priority of 7-Eleven’s for some time. The chain has its own loyalty program, and in 2019 it launched its 7NOW app to enable delivery of items from the convenience store to non-traditional locations like parks and beaches.

It also launched a Scan & Pay pilot program in 2018 that lets customers scan items with their own mobile phones for faster checkout. At the time, my colleague Chris Albrecht pointed out the highly manual aspect of this pilot program, and noted that Amazon was “light years ahead of its competition” in terms of cashierless checkout that requires nothing more from a user than making sure they’re signed into the app.

This new store pilot, which eliminates the need for users and cashiers to scan items manually, is clearly an effort on 7-Eleven’s part to close some of that technological gap between its own stores and those of Amazon.

7-Eleven hasn’t yet given details on when or where a wider rollout of this store concept will happen. According to the press release, the company is currently taking feedback from employees using the pilot store in Texas, and will iterate and adjust based on that feedback before outfitting other stores, of which there are more than 8,500 in the U.S. alone.

 

7-Eleven in Canada Now Sells Beyond Meat Pizza for Grab & Go

Yesterday 7-Eleven Canada announced the launch of Beyond Meat Pizza on its Hot to Go menu. The ‘za is topped with Beyond Italian Sausage Crumbles and roasted vegetables, and is now available in select Toronto 7-Eleven locations.

According to a press release from 7-Eleven, customers can grab a piping hot Beyond Meat pizza to go 24/7. There’s also a to-go “take and bake” option, and select stores offer delivery by Foodora or Uber Eats. Pricing details were not disclosed.

This isn’t the first time meatless meats have graced the top of a quickservice pizza pie. Multiple local chains, such as PizzaREV and Minsky’s, serve pizzas topped with Beyond Meat. Little Caesar’s began selling the Impossible Supreme, topped with sausage developed specifically for the chain by Impossible Foods, at select locations back in May.

Canada seems to be having a love affair with Beyond Meat. The plant-based meat is already available at quite a few local fast-food chains, such as A&W and beloved donut-and-burger empire Tim Horton’s.

However, this is the first time Beyond Meat will be available in a convenience store. It’s also yet another way for the plant-based meat to diversify its products and appeal a wider set of consumer demands. The pizza could be a good option for people who want to pick up a quick meal to make at home, or those looking for a speedy to-go bite that isn’t a fast-food burger.

7-Eleven didn’t mention any details about expansion plans. However, there are over 60,000 locations of 7-Eleven globally, including 8,500 in the U.S. alone. If the Beyond Meat pizza proves popular, we could soon be seeing it next to those rotating hot-dogs at the 7-Eleven hot bar.

Newsletter: Making the Convenience of Delivery More Convenient, Impractical Home Kitchen Gadgets

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Talk to most individuals in today’s restaurant biz, and they’ll tell you that delivery is table stakes at this point. But a slew of news stories from the last week suggests some aren’t satisfied with simply inking a deal with a third-party service. Now, companies are adding haute cuisine, drones, and alternative locations to the list of things they can offer via delivery.

Yesterday, 7-Eleven joined these efforts by releasing 7NOW Pins, a feature that lets customers order via the convenience store chain’s 7NOW app and get their goods delivered to public places like parks, beaches, and sports stadiums. For 7-Eleven, delivering to these so-called hot spots makes a lot of sense, since drinking Slurpees is practically as common an outdoor activity as volleyball.

7-Eleven’s idea isn’t new. Domino’s launched a similar program in April of 2018 and has since been delivering pies to more than 200,000 of these public spaces around the country.

Domino’s, however, was focused more this past week on another delivery-related initiative: in-car ordering. Ever since it announced a partnership with Xevo, who makes in-car commerce technology, the pizza chain has been working to bring in-car ordering for delivery and pickup orders to more drivers around the U.S. As of last week, Chevrolet owners whose cars are equipped with the company’s Marketplace platform can order Domino’s while they’re still en route to home, and, because of the way Marketplace is configured, can do so without ever having to touch their smartphone.

Uber Eats Takes Haute Cuisine to New Heights
But maybe pizza and Slurpees aren’t your thing. No worries. Other companies are applying the convenience of delivery to more upscale foods, including Juniper & Ivy’s “In-N-Haute” burger, which Uber Eats will soon make available via drone in San Diego. While as of right now the drones will be dropping orders off with an Uber Eats driver who will finish the delivery, using them for even part of the process can save significant time, which means the $21 dollar hamburger would theoretically reach your door in a much fresher state.

Interestingly, Uber Eats’ other drone delivery test is with McDonald’s, the polar opposite of haute cuisine. But testing with two such extremes makes sense. As I wrote recently:

Whichever is more successful in terms of both quality of the food when it finally arrives at your door step as well as overall customer satisfaction with the experience, will tell Uber a lot about where to bet its hand in the upcoming drone delivery race.

Now if they could just figure out how to drone-drop haute burgers to my next beach trip . . .

The mycusini chocolate 3D printer

Impractical Cooking Fun for the Whole Family
Back in the world of at-home culinary devices, Mike Wolf dug into an impractical-but-so-cool activity for the kitchen: 3D printing chocolate.

The mycusini printer functions much like other 3D printers, only in this case it dispenses chocolate layer by layer. The device is expected to ship to backers by the end of 2019. Sadly for Mike and other U.S. fans of choco-printing, mycusini will only be available in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand initially.

Statesiders might instead look to McCormick’s new gimmick: a grill integrated with a DJ system that changes tracks based on what you’re cooking. As Catherine Lamb wrote this week, the SUMR HITS 5000 grill “links pre-recorded music and sounds to a weight-sensitive condiment tray and the grill itself. So when you pick up the hot sauce or flip your veggie burger, new sound bites play from a speaker presumably embedded somewhere inside the grill.”

While the SUMR HITS 5000 grill probably won’t be making it on checklists of any serious grillers, it could at the very least provide a few entertaining moments for upcoming summer BBQs this year. Throw in an order of delivery Slurpees, and you have yourself a legit party.

Until next time,

Jenn

7-Eleven Launches Scan & Pay Pilot to Keep Up with Amazon Go

Storied convenience store chain 7-Eleven launched a new Scan & Pay pilot program today that lets shoppers use their mobile phone for self-checkout.

The new feature launched in 14 Dallas area 7-Eleven stores, and the press materials describe the Scan & Pay process as follows:

  • Install the 7-Eleven app on the Android or iOS phones and register for the 7Rewards loyalty program
  • While shopping, customers scan the barcodes of items they want to purchase
  • Customers put their purchased items into clear plastic bags at the Scan & Pay station
  • Customers can pay using Apple or Google Pay or a traditional debit or credit card at a Scan & Pay station
  • Once they pay, customers scan a QR code that appears on the confirmation screen at the Scan & Pay station and show it to the cashier as they leave

The press release was a little vague on details: Is the Scan & Pay station separate from the checkout line? What if the cashier is busy as you try to leave? Do Slurpees have a barcode?

So I reached out to 7-Eleven for more details. But even with further clarification, it’s easy to see that Amazon Go is light years ahead of its competition when it comes to cashierless checkout, and putting the “convenience” in convenience store.

7-Eleven’s Scan & Pay is reminiscent of Walmart’s “Scan and Go” feature in more than just naming conventions. Both require the use of mobile phones to manually scan items that you want to purchase. Amazon Go, on the other hand lets shoppers walk in, grab something and walk out.

Both Walmart and 7-Eleven are large, legacy corporations and getting them to turn into a digital future is like asking an aircraft carrier to come about. It takes time. Amazon Go’s have the advantage of just now rolling out and only have five locations, so they can be architected from the ground up to accommodate all of the high-tech gadgets and gizmos required to create a truly frictionless shopping experience.

Will customers find convenience in 7-Eleven’s Scan & Pay scenario? We’ll soon find out, as the company plans to expand the service into more cities next year.