Here's a question to ponder: Why aren't American convenience stores already like Japanese convenience stores? I distrust cultural explanations because humans are basicly the same everywhere. Given the choice, quite a lot of people would prefer a Japanese-style 7-Eleven over an average American convenience store. I think this is the key:
> Challenges include the difficulty of transporting fresh food to locations in the United States far from city centers. In Japan, the average convenience store receives multiple fresh-food deliveries per day. [...] In the United States, Mr. Dacus said, fresh food often means hot food that can be frozen and cooked on site, eliminating the need for multiple daily deliveries.
Japan is a much more urbanized country, with more foot traffic to support impulse stops to buy a snack. Even outside of pedestrianized areas, it's a shorter trip to get supplies from a central regional location to individual stores.
My local high-quality American convenience store chain is QuikTrip. If you go to their Wikipedia page and check the map of their stores, you'll see they have stores in Arizona and stores in the Carolinas, but they have no truly rural locations. It's all islands surrounding major metro areas. This suggests that the transport time from some central distributor is a major factor in where they put stores.
No stores anywhere in my state (that I know of) do this, and I don't remember seeing it done in all my travels. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't think it's very common.
Here's a question to ponder: Why aren't American convenience stores already like Japanese convenience stores? I distrust cultural explanations because humans are basicly the same everywhere. Given the choice, quite a lot of people would prefer a Japanese-style 7-Eleven over an average American convenience store. I think this is the key:
> Challenges include the difficulty of transporting fresh food to locations in the United States far from city centers. In Japan, the average convenience store receives multiple fresh-food deliveries per day. [...] In the United States, Mr. Dacus said, fresh food often means hot food that can be frozen and cooked on site, eliminating the need for multiple daily deliveries.
Japan is a much more urbanized country, with more foot traffic to support impulse stops to buy a snack. Even outside of pedestrianized areas, it's a shorter trip to get supplies from a central regional location to individual stores.
My local high-quality American convenience store chain is QuikTrip. If you go to their Wikipedia page and check the map of their stores, you'll see they have stores in Arizona and stores in the Carolinas, but they have no truly rural locations. It's all islands surrounding major metro areas. This suggests that the transport time from some central distributor is a major factor in where they put stores.
https://archive.ph/2025.09.09-040842/https://www.nytimes.com...
The same America where food has to be locked in supermarkets?
No stores anywhere in my state (that I know of) do this, and I don't remember seeing it done in all my travels. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't think it's very common.
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