July 14, 2025 • 47 mins
Ever thought about the history of the convenience store? Well now you never have to, because we're diving into the history of 7-Eleven, our favourite slinger of Slurpee's. So grab a very, very cheap coffee, a pie from the warmer, a 4L soft drink, and settle in for a tale that somehow ends with Sean buying a hat for $1 in 2025.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In 1927, four Texas ice
houses were strugglingwith the demand across the state
as cold drinks,perfect cocktails and crispy
doctor peppers was becoming moreand more popular.
As the four companiesmerged together,
they would starta chain of events
that would eventually gofrom giving people
blocks of frozen ice
to giant cups of frozensoft drinks
(00:20):
with everything else in between.
So grab a tank of fuel,a pack of chips,
and a big old Slurpee and strap
in as we go over the historyof the Southland Ice Company.
Nah! It’s 7-Eleven.
I got a prop!
Nice.
(00:47):
Or should I say,ice.
Ice ice bucket. Hello.
I bought this hat from an actual7-Eleven, and it was $1.50.
And the guy said,do you actually love 7-Eleven?
I said, for $1.50. Yeah, I do.
I've been very proud of itever since.
When all the sales tactic.
We love 7-Eleven.
(01:07):
Oh, he didn't say. Sure.He goes. Do you love 7-Eleven?
That was how he said it.
It was awesome.Who's fact checking today?
No, on their factchecking required.
I'm doing. It now.
If you want, you can factcheck yet,
but it's way more fun
when you two were just staringat me, completely intent
on whatever the hellI'm talking about.
We look at a cat, and that's.How you look at a cat.
Then you get yelled at.
Oh, is it fun for youwhen I don't know, I just
(01:30):
riffing constantly.Yes. Within reason.
However,I've structured my script
a bit better this time,so hopefully.
Will you say a bit more?
Yeah,we can get a bit more on track.
I have a bit more humorand he wants to my script.
Wow. Thanks.
Listeners just called us out.He's got humor.
Now, as in,my previous scripts are just.
Like pulling yourselfin. Like Ariel size 11.
(01:50):
It's just very uninteresting.Just making Comic Sans.
I've made it times,you remember. But I.
Mean. Can we can we just.
Made it Times New Roman.
But I can see it betterthis time, I don't care.
What did you say?
It don't make it past you.
Just rip off James Cameron.
Yes. I would be ripping offJames Cameron.
Hell, I'm Helvetica American.
All right. What'syour favorite Slurpee flavor?
(02:11):
Raspberry.
Okay.
What do you think mine is?
It's Coca-Cola.
I know, it's Coca-Cola.
I do love a good Cokeand Raspberry news.
What are what are the.
I don't even knowwhat the flavors are.
The three that matter, they're
Coke, raspberry,and the other one, blue.
Yeah, these is lemonade.
I don't, it's blue.
(02:32):
It doesn't matter what it is.It's blue.
It tastes like blue.
I don't care if anyone says
it's blue lemonade, blueraspberry, whatever. It's blue.
Anyway.
What's your favoriteflavor, boy?
Okay.
Not a big Slurpee drinker.
Not really.
I don't likewhen they do all the weird ones,
like sour Apple and stuff like.
No, there are.
This is one of the few places
where I believetradition matters.
(02:53):
They are long living flavorsfor a reason.
Let them.
Live.
Sadly,we don't have in Australia
one of the original two flavors
because it is a unpopular choicein Australia
as a whole of flavors. Blood.
No, we'll get to it.
I would say probably
the Leesburg BlueRaspberry flavor, the blue.
Yeah, I'm looking at it now.
(03:14):
They've got,
no sugar
orange, no sugar, watermelonpunch,
sugar. Kiwi, strawberry.
Sounds delicious.
No Slurpees. Are.
And sour.
Bubblegum, raspberry blueand whatever the other one is
that they want to haveat that time.
I'm sorry,
but if you go into a 7-Eleven
now, they do not have the coreflavors.
(03:35):
They have all the weirdo ones.
And then the cola one is many.
Melted and spinning.
Yeah, the cold one's not workingbecause it's
the only one anyone wantsbecause they walk in and go,
oh, what's all this?
And then they just get cola.I'm just going to.
Make 7-Eleven Slurpeesgreat again.
Damn straight. Okay, I'mgoing to Sutherland's website.
We've got to get that on.
We got sour blueberry,sour strawberry,
(03:55):
sour apple, garbage cola.
Good good sour passion.
Fruit garbage. Garbage.
Raspberry pineapple good.
Lychee garbage. Oh. Gripe good
I just like.
But again.
You only go into a 7-Eleven.There's four. Of them.
Oh my God, there'sanother five pages of it.
Whoa! Sour bubblegum.
So blue raspberry sourblackcurrant sour pineapple.
(04:18):
Sour lime. Vanilla.
Strawberry cream. Oh.
Boy. We've been overstrawberries and cream
on this podcast.I'm Guinness away on.
Twist mango and cream.
Mango,mango and cream is my favorite.
Worst. Fact checker ever.
Mango and cream sounds terrible.
You got mango and creamfor brains.
Do you not like a spa?
(04:39):
Yes, but that's a wastegoing. Cream.
That's a waste. A waste. Bar.
That's like going,
oh man, I really want a Slurpeethat tastes like a steak.
No lime bitters, cumquat.
I cannot try them for Paris
passionfruit,lime, mango, tropical.
Rubio.
(04:59):
What?
Strawberry.
There's a chop flavor.Strawberry. Choose.
Orange churn. Yes.
I have to cut all of this.
Lemon sherbet, candy canefizz. Tingle.
Marshmallow butterscotchball. Frame.
I just said be okay.
This is getting. Cut.Getting cut it just Bleep it.
Wild berry creme guava caramelapple pie.
Pina peach vanilla.
(05:21):
I can't keep editing this light
wash wash.
Wash wash wash.
Wish I wish what I wish
okay. Let's pause the podcast.
Where's the closest 7-Elevenokay I didn't see what five is.
I got them back with us.
No, wait. What's the matter?
Let's get on to the story.
Okay.
(05:41):
I okay,
starting off,I tried to include some titles.
You love titles.I do love a good title.
So wherethere's drinks, there's ice.
I think ice baby.
That's the last timewe're making that joke
this episode you. Were waiting.
For. It's already twiceI guarantee you.
It's not.
(06:02):
Anyway,in the beginning of the 20th
century, refrigeration methodswere few and far between.
The first homerefrigerators in the 1920s cost
around about 700 USD.
Which cartoon was itthat had the ice?
Oh, it was The Simpsonsat the Kwik-E-Mart.
They had, like the guy
that would go to the Arcticto get ice. Yes. Yeah.
It's also the son of frozen.
(06:23):
For the context of Ford, ModelT was $476.
Nice that I make a modelI used to know.
So for inflation, $700
is 13,000 USD in 2025.
That for a modelT. For a fridge.
All right okay.
For a model Tit'd be around about $8,000 us.
(06:45):
How's that though?
Can I just point out anyway.
13,000 USD for a fridge?
Yeah, that was whyeverybody had salted meats.
Yeah, it's mental.
With the high price
to keep things cool at home,ice houses
was still a very regular thing.
Head out,grab some fruit at the market.
Some full sugar.Doctor. Pepper at the pharmacy.
Pick up some tobacco.
Stop by the ice house for somefrozen water on the way home.
(07:08):
And in Texas.
Texas,after a few different ice houses
combined to formone of the big guys in the game,
the supplies companywas eventually born.
Yes, well, at the merge,it was pretty big.
So the merger ended upgiving the new formed company
eightdifferent manufacturing ice
warehouses and over 20 retailersalone across the Dallas area.
(07:29):
That's a lot I wanted.
The fridges are so expensive.Who big guys out there.
Who was in charge of,all access.
The Southland Ice Company.
Who was the head of that?
Was it Walter White?
It was not Walter White.
Anyway.
Oh, my God, no, damn it,that wasn't him.
No, it was it.
(07:50):
Anyway, although only selling.
On his name,
Vanilla Ice.
Although only selling ice.
Vanilla Ice for.
No, it was Vanilla Ice there.
Cut that in.
Anyway.
Although only selling
ice for one employee,they were selling dreams.
Nice. That's right. I'm 30.Since I met.
John Jefferson Green,a sapling employee began selling
(08:13):
basic groceryitems from his retail ice house.
This was then upgraded to himselling these items at 16
different locationsacross Dallas, because corporate
really liked that idea.
I thought it was pretty good.
The permission of one of thefounding directors of Southland
Ice was Joe C Thompson senior,
and he was the onethat was like, you know what?
(08:34):
This guy's got a great idea.
We're actually going to like,
roll this outacross all of Dallas.
Even though there were alreadysmall grocery stores
spread throughout.
Thompsonthought that the convenience
of sellingthese items get ready.
I wasn't ready.
Even though there were alreadysmall grocery stores
scatteredthroughout Dallas, Thompson
(08:54):
thought that the convenience
of selling these itemsat his ice houses
would reduce the needfor customers
to travelall the way to the markets
for basic itemsthat they could just
pick up on their way homewhile they were getting ice.
Thompson'sidea was an absolute smash hit,
and he eventually boughtthe Southland Ice Company
and turned it into the SouthlandCorporation.
In 1928, a Southland manager
(09:16):
went on holiday to Alaska,where they need lots of ice.
Yeah, obviously they needlots of awesome.
That manager came backwith a decorative totem pole.
Nice. A pretty tall one.
What, what native population didhe still have for them?
Didn't say. Cool.
They were. The Inuit. People.Probably could.
Could have been. Well,that's a broad term.
I'm not going to get into that.Okay.
(09:37):
They then set up that polein front of their store
because, you know, just why not?
Why don't random decorationin. Town.
Not in Texas. Yeah.
Just ask the Britishabout doing that.
Apparently,this became a pretty smart
marketing moveas people started associating,
the Southland Ice Companywith this totem pole.
Like, people thought,oh, like, I'll go to,
you know, like the guywith the totem pole.
(09:59):
There was only one store,but everyone was like.
I've got a totem pole,I've. Got the totem pole.
In a pretty short space of time,the rest of the company
became placing these totem polesat the rest of their locations
because they're like, well,everyone keeps thinking,
we've got this totem pole,so we're just going to do that.
And how easy is the marketto manipulate?
Yeah, in the 20s,
and it was even more successfulwhen they started doing that.
(10:19):
So they actually rebrandedthe stores to be called totems.
Cool.
Because you also toteyour groceries.
Yeah, you tote your grocerieshome.
Let'sbring that back. To item bags.
Not just.
Was gonna say theyliterally want us to do that.
Like, can we eat buying cod?
Can we change 7-Eleven to totes?
Well, change the name.
So around the timethat they started doing
(10:40):
these totem polesand rebranded as totem,
they also started selling fuelat the same time,
which is pretty cool.
Now, obviously.
You know,
Liam.
Obviously in Australiawe kind of associate
7-Eleven a lot.
If you're old enoughwith with fuel stations,
because for a long timethey were just fuel stations.
Yeah.
You'd be down in your Slurpee,Dodge a crackhead driving there.
Yeah. Blown upFalcon. Obviously.
(11:01):
Now I feel that'smore of a Queensland thing
because when I've beento Sydney, Melbourne, 7-Eleven,
is itjust little stores in the world?
Yes. But 15 years ago there werealso still mostly okay.
Yeah.
Like I said,if you're old enough
to sort of remember,like a long time ago.
Or if you're in Brisbane Citytoo. Yeah.
Just tiny or.
If you're in South Australia,nothing.
There is no 7-Elevenin South Australia.
(11:23):
That's because
I'm sure they've got some weirdocompany there instead.
They never market,they never will.
There's another competitorin that market that kind of.
Cheeky Tails franchise,7-Eleven in South Australia.
So they never had 7-Elevenat all.
And then around about the timeI moved there in 2010,
this guy started buyingall these different servos
specifically for him into onecompany called On the Run
(11:43):
and not to brag on 7-Elevencoastlands. Great.
I love 7-Eleven, but on the runis like they focus.
They don't do
the small locations that much,
but they make their petrolstations ridiculous.
Like Bucky's.
Yeah,like Bucky's like as you've seen
the one near my old houseis probably going to get caught.
The one in my old housewas where they had
the first Krispy Kremein South Australia, John,
which had like our buildingthe size of the servo
(12:05):
over the road,which was also the bakery.
Over the. Roadfor the whole state.
Sorry, it was across the carparkfrom it.
Yeah, it was ridiculous.
It was a no.
It's an almost.I'll find a photo of it later.
Anyway, moving back had cut Johnplaying with this thing.
It's just funny
you said over the road,and I pictured the store
being like a bridge overthe road. Not just past.
Yeah, not justthe other side of the road.
(12:27):
I don't know what mybrain with it. That's okay.
So with thewith the introduction of fuel,
they truly became America'sfirst convenience store.
And so I keep doing thisair quotation sort of thing.
By the timethe 20s came to an end,
with the directionof Joe Thompson at the helm,
the company had trainedall of its employees
in a standard systemso that all the customers,
regardless of location, received
(12:48):
the same level of customerservice.
Smart.
Up next,why is it always the 30s?
It just is.
Always the 30s but 1930s.
That seems like a practicethat was developed there
that has been adoptedindustry wide
like the standardpractice of service. Yep.
Got to keep it all the sameso that people know
(13:09):
what they're getting.
What the new decade arrived.
So too did the Great Depression.
Abu, 30s
Southland was not immune to thisand filed for bankruptcy,
eventually continuing throughreorganization and receivership.
How people always need Ice.
I know a Dallas bankerwho also help revive the company
by selling bondsat $0.07 on the dollar.
(13:30):
This, however, moved the company
to being controlledby a board of directors.
No longer
just a simple family ish companybeing the Thompson family,
another great wayto kill the blues.
Have no money.
Booze. Yeah.
With the repeal of prohibition,Southland Ice decided
to stock alcohol at its totemstores and sell lots of it.
That feels like a bad ideawhen you've got people
(13:54):
driving in
to get petrol and groceriesand then just
leaving with a bottle of booze.
You know, I'm very excitedthat prohibition.
Yeah.You make a very good point.
Let's, let's,let's fill up our vehicles
and then get alcohol.
I mean it like it very really.
It was like the 70s
before they banned drinkdriving in some place.
It's very convenient. Sure.
(14:16):
Okay, fine.
That's not working. All right.
I'm just going to stop doingthe air quotations.
I think there's like,I've heard of it before.
I made it twice episode.
Now the like TV interviewswith people being like,
who were they to tell melike a drink beer while driving?
Like, yeah, that.
Hindsight was.
A normal thing of.
Hindsight, as they say, is 2020.
Their vision was notbecause they were drunk. Yeah.
(14:38):
And they were drivingtwo ton of a steel square.
So they probably safeinside of it. Yeah.
No they're not,that's the thing.
But they weren'twearing seatbelts. No.
Any speed, no.
Crumple zones,no collapsible steering columns.
My bags, no seatbelt.
Yeah, yeah.I way bloody driving.
No traction controlsurvived. Yeah.
What about the 1 in 5 othersthat didn't.
Yeah.
It was actually about the sameas driving
(14:59):
in an actual steel boxwith nothing else inside it.
And then hitting something.Yeah.
And then you bounce around itlike a pinball.
And you've also got no seatbelts, so you're just.
Yeah, pinging around it.
All right.
I shouldn'thave made a comment yet.
I didn't realize how passionateI was about these.
I did not so jarring.
Dubbed up to the massinto WWE, into a massive army
(15:20):
trainingcamp. Was set up to save Dallas.
Who do you think providedall the ice
to the training camp?You're mate?
Yeah. Elsa.
Elsa? Yeah, definitely. Elsa.
That's the second frozen joke.
That's it.
Let it snow, baby.
Absolutely not.
Yep. Our gang over at the totemstores.
(15:40):
This gave a massive bump
in fundsto the struggling company
that had just pulled itselfout of the depression,
which helped pull it togetherfor its most ambitious rebrand.
That still sticks around today.
I mean. It sounds dumb.
They're selling frozen water
and they're makinga company out of it, but I,
I guess it would have been hard.People like.
Do it in your house back in and.
(16:01):
People like frozen water. Yeah.
It's fun, it's refreshing.
It's it's it's it's the cordialof the two of the 33.
Brand that stands todayis that 7-Eleven?
We get where we get 7-Eleven.
Almost getting their so 19. 712.
So in 1946
with dubbed up to over and donewith, people were spending
more money
like hand over foot to helpwith spending more money.
(16:22):
Totem stores all across Texaschanged their opening hours.
But you pay downno fate in this damn episode.
I let those dogs fuck anyway.
A ton of stores all across Texaschanged their opening hours
six, 7 to 10 six till 1015.
Yeah. Cool. Now 7 to 11.
Until 1015.
(16:42):
Absolutely ruined my joke. Yeah.
Big spacethere to tell the joke.
Nothing. It's called seven. 11.
Yeah, I. Think that'swhat it would. Be.
Seven days away.
Yeah. Seven days in the morning.
I assumed it was seven daysa week, 11 hours a day.
Seven days a week, sevenin the morning till 11 at night.
11 hoursa day for a convenience store.
That would be likenine till eight now.
(17:03):
One went out at nighttime in the 30s.
Dangerous. Where you're wrong.
Okay.
Everyone wentout and not done in the 30s.
This was massive for the companyand absolutely game
changing at the time.
With these new hours,the company changed
the name of stores to 7-Eleven,and all of the stores got
rebranded, updated and expandedbecause it was so popular.
(17:25):
I was like,oh my God, it's open.
I'm sitting at home,I'm doing nothing.
I can go to 7-Eleven.
And because it was soconvenient, they were like, ooh,
they put heaps of money into itand made them like fun.
Like, I meant it's like Macca'sright back.
As is the only thing open.You go to go to Macca's.
And in those days everythingwould have shot at like five.
Yep. So yep. 7-Eleven.
(17:46):
If 7-Eleven is open,you go in a 7-Eleven.
Yeah. You want a six pack?You want some ice?
Yeah.
You want to getabsolutely blasted
and drive home and endangereveryone else on the road at 11?
Yeah,it's like teenagers going home
washing their carswith nothing else to do.
These are not sponsoredby 7-Eleven.
After that, come comment.
Cheeky tails says noto drink drive.
They do say no to drink driving.
We say yes to responsibleownership of vehicles.
(18:09):
So John P Thompson,son of the previously mentioned
Joe C Thompson senior.
If I get them back to frontthroughout this episode,
I'm sorry. So you're up to Johnsimilar. We're up to John.
Yeah. John.
He landed himselfon the board of directors
in 1948, not at the top,but on the board of directors.
(18:29):
He's done very well in 1948,by the time the 50s had come
around, cars were everywhere,and John knew just what to do.
He got analysts to studytraffic patterns
and road developmentsto help guide
when new stores should be open.
Art should be openwhen new stores should be opened
and needed to be
the best business modelto maximize their convenience
(18:50):
across the country.
By the end of the 1950s,after the success of this plan,
John was now the vice president
and had expanded 7-Eleven storesbeyond the Longhorn Territory
into Pennsylvania, Virginia,and Maryland
in 1963, the South,the Southland in 1963.
Southland thenbegan buying other convenience
store locations
(19:11):
around the country,including Speedy Mart,
which was a California basedconvenience store location.
What are youwhat are you thinking?
Kwik-E-Mart? Yeah. Yeah,yeah. Is that. It's not.
No, it'snothing to do with that.
It's not a rip off of that.That's not.
Oh, I mean, Kwik-E-Martis also a thing here,
but it's quick, like,actually spelt properly.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(19:32):
This was the 60sbefore The Simpsons.
Kwik-E-Mart obviously.Yeah. I can still rip it off.
Yeah. Yeah, probably. But
just because it's the 60s.
Who loves the Kwik-E-Mart now?
Because they bought to.
Yeah, because they episode.
Yeah.
Because they bought.
Because they bought.
It. Yeah.
(19:54):
This kid on the train.
Speeding had 128 locationsacross California,
which was quite a lot.
Now they got to that sizenot by strategic,
not by strategic corporateshenanigans
of analyzing road data,but by franchising.
They had franchisesopen their stores.
So 7-Elevenwent, let's just do that.
(20:16):
So they startedmoving into the franchise
method of businessfor the whole company.
And once again,it absolutely took off.
It just kept going.
And they just kept
expanding and expanding,expanding and then buying more
smaller convenience companiesand getting bigger and bigger.
Also in 1962,after a particularly rowdy
game of foosball at the TexasLonghorn Stadium, one store
(20:37):
stayed open till dawn to satisfythe demand of the customers.
But did they rebrand the store?
No, they didn't rebrandthe store by.
Seven to.
Dawn, but it did in 1962.
Prompt them to open a few stores24 hours a day
and a few in Texas,and then in Las Vegas.
Yeah,that makes sense. Yes. Yeah.
And this is the first timewe get 24.
(20:58):
So this timewe get 24 seven in the 60s.
Like you think that's 24 seven.
So not in the 60sin Texas. Texas.
Now, it was during the 60sthat a 7-Eleven employee
noticed that the logo would looka little bit less aggressive
if allthe letters weren't capital.
Did you ever notice that.
(21:18):
I n I have seen. This lowercase?
I've seen the name.
What's the name?Just pointing it out.
The n is lowercase.
They decided that it wouldn'tlook so aggro
if one of the letterswas lowercase.
To be more whimsical.
I would have thoughtyou go with the e.
Uno and they're still doing itnow. It's amazing.
Yeah, in the 60s.
(21:39):
Next time you drive upto a 7-Eleven server,
have a look up at the signand go.
Oh, what do you meango in and get a Slurpee?
Hey, yeah.If you get a disappointing.
Flight,bring your own bucket day.
Well, funnythat next topic, frozen future.
Oh, don't go.
You like that? You love titles.
I like the titles.Thank you. Oh. That's it.
(22:16):
Anyway, in the
late 1950s, a dairyQueen operator began tinkering
with all parts of a car air
conditioning unit to freezedrinks, partially,
it wasn't necessarily his planto do it partially,
but he stopped us and said, hey,this is actually like, quite,
quite nice.
Like it's creates this sort ofslushy, edgy type stuff.
And after a lot of testing,it took him
five years to get it right. Wow.
(22:39):
The first Icees were createdand sold at Dairy Queens
across the country.
That's their sort of thing.
You know, they call it an icy.Now, it was very popular.
And he was like,well, I'm just going
to make lots of money for this.
So he patented it and sold it
and sold machinesall over the place.
7-Eleven went,oh yeah, we need that.
That soundsabsolutely fantastic.
(22:59):
So did you also create them?
So they weren't workinghalf the time?
Not necessarily.
So. In the 60s, 7-Elevenswooped in and in 1966,
they launched their gamechanging Slurpees.
Originally only availablein Coca-Cola flavored or cherry.
Like I said, not that popularas a flavor in Australia.
Yeah, Americanslove their cherry loved cherry.
(23:20):
Yeah, for everythingwe have over here, this
raspberry flavor,there's this cherry flavored.
Yeah, yeah. They love cherry.
We're all about vanilla.
In a way. Yeah.
They just love cherry flavored.
They're like, for us, cherryis a medication flavor for them.
It's not. It's a good flavor.
Someone mentioned that theirmedication isn't cherry flavor.
They have something familiar.
Strawberry.
I think back checkis going to stop looking cherry
(23:42):
stop looking stuff up now.
Now they did have two flavorsoriginally,
but they would very,
very quickly expandto every flavor
that you could ever wantand every flavor that you don't.
Want by.
Cumquat, like cumquat and and
and and peach creamand all these cream
mango cream sour cream.Give me some of that. Awful.
I want some mango.
(24:03):
Creamand all the sour versions of
the same flavor,which are just less good.
Anyway.
Again, you just need the three.
You just need high.
What? Yuck.
All right. Gross.
I don't want pastry flavoredSlurpee.
It's a blended fish flavoredSlurpee. Yum.
Yeah. What I actually want.
Is two flavors.One takoyaki flavored.
I just want that pure octopusbowl flavor in a Slurpee.
(24:26):
So in 1969.
Say it with me now.
Nice. Nice, nice. Oh, boo.
They opened theirfirst location, and, Oh,
a. Hey, this was theirfirst international 7-Eleven.
And it was a smash hit,
prompting even furtherinternational expansion.
And in 1973,after a joint venture
(24:49):
with the Itto Your Kadosupermarket franchise in Japan,
they launchedtheir first Japanese eatery.
Nice eatery.Yes, that's what they.
Yeah. Okay.
Because it was more focusedon that, less on the fuel.
Also to comefrom the excess of the 1970s,
what is fact checking somethingI just ask,
what is the medicine flavorin your country?
(25:09):
And it's like in the USwe have grape
bubblegum, mint,berry and lemon.
There you go. Don't. Yeah.
He gets antsy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Isn't that licorice?
Yeah, yeah. Yuck,I love licorice.
I like licorice.
I don't think it's a appropriateflavor for medicine.
I wouldn't be mad, but.
It just says usually it's cherryflavor. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
So also to come from the
(25:29):
excess of the 1970s was giantsoft drinks.
Does anyone ever heardthe Big Gulp?
Yes, yes, yes.
The big thing in the States.
Gulp.
32. Ounces.
Price 32oz.
That's 950ml.
That's a lot of drink. In a cup.
You know what's funny?A liter beer.
(25:52):
Run. A liter of soft drink.
Oh, insane. What are you doing?That's crazy.
Later.
Soft drinkthat you can just go and get
and just have all the time,you know, at a restaurant? Yeah.
There's no responsibleservice of soft drink.
Like it's not raised like that.
Sounds like a 1920kind of thinking. Yeah.
Liter of soft drink,no liter V8.
Yeah, absolutely.
(26:13):
When you just need thatmassive hit of high fructose
corn sirupto get you through the day.
It's the 70s now.
The overall soft drink salesdoubled in three months.
Yeah, because twicethe size of what they should be.
They say that it was 12ozbigger than their biggest size.
That's still really. Big.
Still 600and something mil. Yeah.
(26:34):
16 when you say it like that,that's just a 600 okay.
It's still.
Yeah. But 600 milk like that,that was their biggest.
That's still pretty big.
But if that was their biggestthing like like the Big Gulp
you knowthey make a double gulp.
What double gulp. So 64oz. Yeah.
So this is saying though it's.
Not quite 64 I think theythey lessened it to 60.
Eight peoplenot just pissing their pants.
I know.
(26:54):
So this is saying thatat the time, Coca-Cola had a 16
U.S fluid ouncewhich is 470 mil. Yep.
And the largest fountaindrink available
at the time was McDonald's,with a 2580 mil.
So what company?
Not you.
To Macca's, it's McDonald's.
McDonald's, not McDonald's.
(27:15):
Back, back back, man.
Daniel's McDonald's.
Like a Big Mac. Sorry, Rachel.
Why? What are you doing?
Well, of course it back.
Don't don't correct me on that.
You can go sit on a big gulp.
Fact checker strikes again.
Anyway, so sit on a big gulp.
Oh, that.
With all of this sugar
(27:36):
and high fructose corn sirup,the crash was coming.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no.
So after purchasing auto partscompany.
Just hang on.You said there was a double go.
Yeah. What was the sizeof the double go?
Think that
it was supposed to be 64,but they lessened it a bit.
Yeah, yeah,but I had the super Big gulp.
Super Big Gulp.
And then that was the DoubleGulp.
(27:57):
1.3. Yeah.
And then there'salso the standard gulp.
And then followed by the 64Fluid and Double Coke.
It's too big. Lighter.
Just a 50.
There you go.
Just I'll bet there was protest.
That's it. Thatbut think that's force.
That's a 14 ounce reduction.
That's about half.
It's a pint.
Yeah.Like that's a pint less so.
(28:18):
And then light
and then eventually as limitedturn offerings
as the extreme gulpand the team gulp.
Conversely, 7-Eleven alsointroduced the little Big Gulp.
Yeah, originallysimply called the gulp,
which was 22fl oz or 650 mil,
and at 128 US fluid
ounces or 3800ml.
(28:39):
But Team Gulp remainsthe largest fan offering
in the world.
I don't think nearlyfour liters.
See, the thing is, everything.
Everyone's everyonethat's really invest invested
like, oh, well, you can buybottles that at that big,
you can put a lid on a bottleand put it in your fridge.
The found drink, onthe other hand, is like,
I have to finish this.
What year did that come out?
(28:59):
The familydouble, triple gulp. Team gulp.
Team gulp. Yeah.
Sounds like a lot.
Last yearthat was started is 1918.
They go
because I think you can pointto the downfall of civilization.
You can point to thatas the moment where it began.
That sounds about the same timethat Pizza Hut
started doing The Big Foot,
and Little Caesars started doingthe Super Big pizza as well.
(29:20):
I'll watch.I'll clearly Cheetos.
I watch a lot of like, YouTubeon fast food chains and things.
It is interesting.
Anyway, soafter purchasing an auto
parts companyand an oil provider, cool.
Southlandwas beginning to struggle
with the size and the diversityof the company.
Cracks in the managementstarted to form, and rumors
(29:42):
of a hostile takeoverwere starting to swirl around
like the top ofa perfect Slurpee. Slurpee?
The almost nailed it.
It was a well-crafted joke.
It was delivered mediocrity.
So I had to patch.
Sean, you see, I'm parched.
It sounds like you could dowith a Slurpee family.
(30:03):
Triple gulp, big boy.
Team. Gulp. So?
So after purchasingan auto parts company
and an oil provider,
Southlandwas beginning to struggle
with the size and the diversityof the company.
Cracks in the managementstarted to form, and rumors
of a hostile takeoverwas starting to swirl around.
Like the top of a perfectSlurpee.
(30:23):
Wow, you got thaton the first time.
Yeah. I'm right. Don't ruin it.
Right. Delivery.
Sean, it's like we've had.So much criticism.
The first in the lastepisode, you.
Almost said like.
Like you've rehearsed it before.
Once before?Yeah, that was like.
It was really well done.
Are we goingto have our first walkout?
Not live.
But youwalked out the other day.
I was so thirsty.
(30:45):
That was different.
So anyway, flawless delivery.
Solid. Good job to.
Avoid a corporate takeoverfrom a Canadian rich guy.
The Thompson family beganturning the company back
into a private venture by buyingout its public shareholders.
This seemedlike a pretty solid plan.
Like in the current economy.It was pretty good.
They take out the loansnecessary.
(31:06):
They buy everythingexcept it's the 80s.
I ain't no money.
No money.
Well there was moneyat the time.
And a $5.2 billion management
buyout occurred,which is a lot of money.
And assuming that the company
is going to be doing good,you know, you can take that crap
to the bankand you're going to success and,
you know, have success.
(31:27):
John Thompsonsenior or John Thompson,
now, the chairman of 7-Elevenwas now back in control
at the helm. He's back.What could possibly go wrong?
1987 was going to be the bestyear at the stock market ever.
Right.
Boom. Yeah. Yeah.
Stock market crash. Spaghetti.
With enormous company debtfrom the buyout, 7-Eleven
(31:50):
had to sell off its auto partsdivision.
Hundreds of store locations.
And these were eventually turnedinto rival convenience stores.
Extra blow.
And sadly, the final nail inthe coffin for its origin story.
It sold off its ice division.Oh, no.
At that point,
it still had an ice divisionproducing ice for the company
and then having icein the stores.
(32:11):
Now it's just stockingbells and polar ice.
Yeah, PolarIce and Ipswich Ice Company
and whatever else they got.
But at the time still in-house,strong together like 7-Eleven.
Right. Again. Sadly,
sadly,this wasn't enough though.
And in 1990,Southland filed for bankruptcy
in order to transfer70% of the company
(32:33):
to its Ocado,its Japanese affiliate.
With all said and done, in 1991,after a $430 million cash
influx from its Ocado,
the Thompson family,the founding fathers
of the United States of Slurpee,only retained 5%.
United Slips of America.
I got myself with that.
They only retained5% of the company, which is.
(32:57):
That's like, still okay for.
Measly.Yeah, but like, you still own.
Yeah.
But thanks to the peoplethat own
the rest of it are a gigantic.
Yeah, but it still ownedsome of it. It's not like it.
Oh, it's spread a little bit.
It's like one man ownsthe rest of it.
Yeah. It's like, oh. Hey, guys,thanks for showing up.
Yeah, yeah.
I you know what?
I'd be happy owning 5% or seven.
Well this this says thatin this 1st of December 2023,
(33:21):
Japanese parent company7-Eleven international.
Yes. Bought out the 752Australian stores for 1.7
billion. Yes. Yeah, well.
With the mass buyout,Miss Satoshi Ito
now became the presidentof Southland in 1991.
He was the head of Ito Yukata.
Although he's creditedfor revolutionizing Japanese
shopping, his stint as presidentwould be short
(33:44):
on account of his companyhigher ups
getting involved withracketeering run by the Yakuza.
Not the Yakuza.
Yeah,
some of the paymentsto the Yakuza
even apparently came directlyfrom Masatoshi Ito's wife.
Oh, man.
Yeah,he denied everything, of course,
but he still stepped down
from the presidencyto save the company.
Now, I didn't do anything,but I'm still going to head out.
(34:06):
That sounds
eerily familiar to you.
An episode we covered two weeksago to full two episodes ago.
Which one?
Watergate. Watergate? Yeah.
Except in anyway.
Except he kind of, like,had to admit that he did it.
There was recordings of it.
So with all of that sordidand they're like,
all right, let's clean upour act.
(34:26):
Expansion was the nameof the game for the 90s.
And by the time we got to theturn of the millennium, 7-Eleven
had 25,000 storesacross the globe.
That's a few.
That. Yeah, it's true.
With all this camethe next big rebrand in 1999.
SAP unofficially changedthe company's name
to 7-Eleven incorporated.
(34:48):
As the stores were nowall that it was doing, it
no longer had the ice division,no longer had the auto parts
or the oil company.
It was just doing the 7-Elevenstores.
In 2007, 7-Eleven surpassedthe monolith that is McDonald's
to become the largest franchiseby number of locations
in the world, with storesin over 25 countries.
(35:09):
That's about to askhow does it compare to Macca's?
Yeah, moja.
That's wild.
And me and McDonald'sgot smaller
when it removedall those Russian stores.
But yeah, it's another story
now without the familybackground
of the company anymoreand so many stores
to contend with, some scandalsstarted to develop.
Oh really?
Yeah,a big one was in Australia 2015.
It was discovered
the franchise ownerswere not paying
(35:31):
their international workerscorrectly
and threatening them withdeportation if they spoke up.
This was a big deal. Big deals.
After a series of articlescame out,
startingwith the Sydney Morning Herald,
the company was forcedto pay over $173
million in backwages to workers,
not including damages,legal fees and everything else.
(35:52):
That kicked offa whole bunch of companies
doing that, theirliking and finding stuff.
My company did it.
They were like, all right, we wegot bought and they went, oh,
guys,your payroll looks a bit weird.
And they went through a
looked at it and they had to paya lot of money.
A lot of money, a lot of money.Yeah.
Also in 2015,7-Eleven had its first ever
(36:13):
bring your own Cup dayfor Slurpees.
Sounds like a really whimsicalidea, doesn't it?
It was a genius strategyto sell both Slurpees.
To peoplewalking with skis on wheels.
Yeah, well, no, that was okay.
That's fine, that's fine.
But as usual, people took itway too far.
Fans bringing everythingfrom musical instruments
to toilets to the storeto fill them.
(36:34):
This then requiredsome moderation.
As with cut out boardswith a hole in the middle
representing if it couldfit through that hole, you can.
You can fill it up.
So what you do is you bring ahollowed out telegraph pole
and you just slide it through,right through.
Keep going.
But why a toilet?
Like I know it wasn't on.
I know, I know, itcame. From the I.
(36:55):
Know I want to wash my poo.
I want to see great flavor.
I know it camefrom the hardware store.
Like I didn't pull it out ofthe house.
Is good for it. But.
It's okay.
What part of the toiletyou filling up?
Are you filling up the cisternor you're filling up the bowl?
The picture I saw was the bowl.
Yeah, I assume that they, like,plug in.
It's got to be a new toilet,right?
Yeah.
It would look like a new toilet.
(37:16):
Again. A new toiletis pretty expensive.
So there mustbe bleach in a toilet. Yeah.
The next
the next big controversy
unfortunately, was also aroundinternational workers.
Oh no.
In 2018, the USImmigration Service or ice.
Ice baby.
Back.
It's secure.
(37:36):
It's I know itall comes back around.
It comes back to us.They write funny.
They write it nearly 100 storesacross the United States,
and they found 21 peoplethat had been hired
illegally as undocumentedworkers.
The franchise ownershad their contracts
torn up, and the storestaken from them. Oof.
In 2019,California attempted to ban
(37:57):
the sale of soft drinksbigger than 600 mils.
Oh, no.
This could have been the endof the Big Gulp as we know it.
Because there was also lawslike this
popping up all over the place.
Like it was the like,you'll like, man, Rudy Giuliani
tried to do a similar thing,like in New York City.
They called itthe Anti-Big gulp law.
It didn't end up panning outbecause they in New York in
(38:18):
particular, they made it like
some sort of state regulation,seven
levels of national companiesand the fine,
fortunately for 7-Eleven,but not for everybody's bodies
or teeth.
The law was struck down,so fans of oversize
soft drinks could keep enjoying
their Slurpees and small deskbins, helmets, blender jugs
and mixing bowls.
Just not toilets.
(38:39):
No ID, no toilets, no motels.
Yeah, it's all right.
Down the toilet. Up with drinks?Yeah.
Don't disconnect your toiletfrom the house.
And fill it up with the Slurpee.Bring it.
Hopefully with bleach.
Plug the back of it.
Drive all the way to 7-Eleven.
Bribed the 7-Eleven employeeto let you bring a toilet in.
Fill up your toiletwith Slurpee,
and then drink the Slurpee.
(39:00):
Just don't do this.
Don't do it on with itin the post.
Toilet Slurpee time line.
That's not a worldI want to live in.
7-Eleven operates over 84,000
locations across the globe,
with as much varietyin a small space as possible.
We've seen all the amazing foods
that come out of 7-Elevenin Japan, with social media
(39:22):
now really prompting that
also has its contract withKrispy Kreme to hand out stale
glazed donuts to Uber driversin the middle of the night,
except South Australia,because that's with on the run.
Sorry.
Even more
recently, 7-Eleven Australiahas a milkshake and smoothie
machine built into each store
that can do everythingrobotically.
And it's not bad.
(39:42):
Yeah,I had the milkshake. Right?
You got a smoothie because dairyand it was pretty good.
They seem like the kind of thingthat would be fine.
It seems the perfect thing
because the 7-Eleven operatordoesn't have to do anything.
Yeah. Machine does it all.
About the 7-Eleven hot dog.
7-Eleven hot dog.
7-Eleven Glizzy. Yeah.
Then there's what theysometimes have fresh fruit.
(40:03):
Yeah. I've got sandwiches.
They do the super cheap coffees.
The coffee is not horrible.
I don't mind the pie selectionfrom time to time.
Yeah, it's not bad.
They used to do.
And for those that rememberthe mid 2000,
they had like a cheese and baconsausage roll,
which they still donow, but it's much smaller.
But it was, it was hefty.It was probably like.
(40:23):
That since.
It's probablyas wide as like a can
but like a little bit longer.And it was a big fade.
I'm trying to think the lasttime I stepped into a 7-Eleven.
Yeah, I don't go in therevery often anymore.
I go regularly becauseI enjoy the fuel lock feature.
Yeah. And it's a good feature.
And also
becausewhen I've got Bonnie in the car
when she was little, I could payfrom my phone and fill up.
(40:44):
I know you can do thatwith other servers.
I'm not havingmore than one app.
I don't care, I don't careabout the price now.
I don't care about the price
difference enough to be like,oh, Mobile's $0.02.
Trayvon's 7-Eleven.
I just don't want to have biggerapps on my phone.
If it's $0.20 cheaper, I'm gonethere.
$0.20 is a big difference.
There are also a few 7-Elevennear my house.
In fact,there's one in either direction
(41:05):
if I'm going away from my housetowards anyway, I.
Have onefairly close to my place.
I think the last I mighthave been in a 7-Eleven boys
when we were in Sydney.
Wow. Really?
That was like.
That was like nine years ago.
Was it like 2012?
That was like 13 years ago.
And what do we go into 7-Elevenfor that?
(41:26):
After we did that
massive walk in, we weren't
looking to buy somethingvery specific.
Deodorant, was it?
Deodorant had been,
we went for a walk and got lost.
Oh, yeah.
And this is
just as, like, GoogleMaps was starting to be a thing.
And we ended up like an hour
and a half awayfrom where we needed to be nice.
It was a long walk.
So the Iowa building nowmy favorite building in Sydney.
(41:48):
Now, if you're a big fanof 7-Eleven, like I am,
so I love 7-Eleven.
Comment on the socials.
What your favorite thingis to get from the store.
Is it fuel?
Is it stale donuts? Slurpees?
Or do you like to getthe prepackaged ice cups
that you can
then fill up with iced coffeefrom the machine,
which I think personallyis the coolest thing.
Slurpees.
(42:09):
What's the point of this? It'sSlurpees.
Well, either way, comment.
What your favorite thingis to get from 7-Eleven.
You never know what it might be.
Get readyto cut crack from the dealer
in the side of the building.
I've never been to a
7-Eleven and thought,gee, I'm unsafe here.
You never know.
They're always really brightand they're always fairly clean.
They never have the nightservice window.
(42:30):
They're always just. Open.They always open. Inside.
They're very bright and right.
That is what I do remember from.
Don't you disparage seven.No, I'm sorry.
If you're heading back from,like,
Ashgrove towards the city,there's a 7-Eleven,
and then there's a BP downthe street.
The 7-Eleven is openall the time.
The worker doesn't carewho you are.
He's got headphones in.
He doesn't give a shit. He'stalking to his mates.
The BP down the street,not service only. Sorry.
(42:51):
You can't have anything.
You got to pay for your fuel
and every timeI go to the 7-Eleven, it's fine.
It's normal peoplegetting stuff.
I go to the BP on the offchance.
It's one really sketchy dudepaying for his fuel
and buying smokesat one in the morning.
Yeah. Why am I in Ashgroveat one in the morning?
Who knows?But it seems to be a regular.
Sketchy guy by one.
Sketchy guy on smoke.Looking for us.
Oh, gasp it turns.
(43:12):
Yeah.
Looks like it's looking to geta score of arson insurance.
Yeah.
So that'sthe history of 7-Eleven in.
A bag not a cop.
It's a surprisingly interestinghistory.
It is. It is.For a convenience. Store.
It's something that weeveryone knows.
Yeah,everyone knows what 7-Eleven is.
I'm like you said,you think. You say 7-Eleven.
You think of Slurpee? Yep.And you know what? You.
(43:33):
You know what?
Aside from my parents,everyone loves heaven alone.
My parents. Alex, I love it.
And is itthe end of their streets?
Yeah. Yeah,
but they also have, like,traditionally,
they've had pretty dodgy fueluntil the mobile
deal.
They had pretty dodgy fuel.Yeah.
But yeah, it's like it'sjust one of those things.
It's such a day today colloquialism for like,
(43:56):
fast convenience stores or fuel.
Fuel stations.
Yeah. But it's just got sucha fascinating history.
I think I looked it up.
It had a current marketcap of 38.3 billion.
Gigantic. Yeah.
Absolutely gigantic.
Invest in 7-Eleven.
Now it's 10.44%. Below.
Now it's time to bath. Yep.
Do not take financial advicefrom Cheeky Towels.
(44:19):
Cheeky towels doesin fact say yes to 7-Eleven.
But we are nota financial podcast.
That doesn't meanwe can't be right.
Very like the disclaimer
when you call the insurancecompany,
it's like we are creditedto provide advice on products
that we sell.
Yeah, this. Does not necessarilymean this, this this this.
(44:40):
This. Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah.What do you think?
History 7-Eleven.Fun. What's good I enjoyed that.
I write at seven out of 11.
That's not a good writing.
I wasn't bad.
Is not bad.
I mean, we didn't have a punt.
We didn't have a traditionalpuns. Was bad.
He said, let it snow.
(45:00):
I thought that was the punthat we started.
Did I, did I?
When he said, no more frozenjacks. Yeah. Like let it snow.
All right, that's fair.
Sorry, a pun.That's a reference.
Anyway. Good story.
Enjoyed it.
Bring your toilet in,
fill it up with some icydrink and let's go.
Sean. No, I took a garbage bin.
That teakettle says noto toilets.
Inflatable poo.
(45:22):
Yeah, that was used. Yeah.
It's good.
That's good.
Oh, I think I seen a gumboot.
Someone did a gumball. America.
Some random thingsthat didn't make the episode,
which I haveenough battery that. Yeah.
A couple of the stores in 2007actually
rebranded as Kwik-E-Mart for thefor The Simpsons Movie.
Yeah, I went full hour,and I know that Apu
has been canceled, but, like,that's that's at 727.
(45:45):
It was.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was,you know, it was pop culture.
Apu has been canceled.
They got rid of those.
Not on with. Her in the past.
I put a pedal on.
The is it. It's not. No,it hasn't been for a while.
There was a thing about ita while back.
Who's running the Kwik-E-Mart?They decide to go.
They just don'tgo to the Kwik-E-Mart.
I, okay, yeah.
The only thing I knowabout The Simpsons
(46:06):
lightlyis a bit of a controversy,
because apparentlythey killed much.
No. They didn't.
They showed herit. Was a future episode. I
you just go click baited. Oh,
All right. Well, good.
We'll see you in a fortnight.History 711.
Thanks for listening, guys.
Good night.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
(46:26):
If you'd like to see
supplemental imagesrelated to our episodes
or to interactwith us about our episodes,
hit us up on at Cheeky Tales
Pod on Instagram, Facebookand YouTube.
You can
watch our episodes on YouTubeor listen to them on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts,or ever. You get your podcasts.
In 1927, four Texas ice
houses were strugglingwith the demand across the state
as cold drinks,perfect cocktails and crispy
doctor peppers was becoming moreand more popular.
As the four companiesmerged together,
they would starta chain of events
that would eventually gofrom giving people
blocks of frozen ice
to giant cups of frozensoft drinks
(00:20):
with everything else in between.
So grab a tank of fuel,a pack of chips,
and a big old Slurpee and strap
in as we go over the historyof the Southland Ice Company.
Nah! It’s 7-Eleven.
I got a prop!
Nice.
(00:47):
Or should I say,ice.
Ice ice bucket. Hello.
I bought this hat from an actual7-Eleven, and it was $1.50.
And the guy said,do you actually love 7-Eleven?
I said, for $1.50. Yeah, I do.
I've been very proud of itever since.
When all the sales tactic.
We love 7-Eleven.
(01:07):
Oh, he didn't say. Sure.He goes. Do you love 7-Eleven?
That was how he said it.
It was awesome.Who's fact checking today?
No, on their factchecking required.
I'm doing. It now.
If you want, you can factcheck yet,
but it's way more fun
when you two were just staringat me, completely intent
on whatever the hellI'm talking about.
We look at a cat, and that's.How you look at a cat.
Then you get yelled at.
Oh, is it fun for youwhen I don't know, I just
(01:30):
riffing constantly.Yes. Within reason.
However,I've structured my script
a bit better this time,so hopefully.
Will you say a bit more?
Yeah,we can get a bit more on track.
I have a bit more humorand he wants to my script.
Wow. Thanks.
Listeners just called us out.He's got humor.
Now, as in,my previous scripts are just.
Like pulling yourselfin. Like Ariel size 11.
(01:50):
It's just very uninteresting.Just making Comic Sans.
I've made it times,you remember. But I.
Mean. Can we can we just.
Made it Times New Roman.
But I can see it betterthis time, I don't care.
What did you say?
It don't make it past you.
Just rip off James Cameron.
Yes. I would be ripping offJames Cameron.
Hell, I'm Helvetica American.
All right. What'syour favorite Slurpee flavor?
(02:11):
Raspberry.
Okay.
What do you think mine is?
It's Coca-Cola.
I know, it's Coca-Cola.
I do love a good Cokeand Raspberry news.
What are what are the.
I don't even knowwhat the flavors are.
The three that matter, they're
Coke, raspberry,and the other one, blue.
Yeah, these is lemonade.
I don't, it's blue.
(02:32):
It doesn't matter what it is.It's blue.
It tastes like blue.
I don't care if anyone says
it's blue lemonade, blueraspberry, whatever. It's blue.
Anyway.
What's your favoriteflavor, boy?
Okay.
Not a big Slurpee drinker.
Not really.
I don't likewhen they do all the weird ones,
like sour Apple and stuff like.
No, there are.
This is one of the few places
where I believetradition matters.
(02:53):
They are long living flavorsfor a reason.
Let them.
Live.
Sadly,we don't have in Australia
one of the original two flavors
because it is a unpopular choicein Australia
as a whole of flavors. Blood.
No, we'll get to it.
I would say probably
the Leesburg BlueRaspberry flavor, the blue.
Yeah, I'm looking at it now.
(03:14):
They've got,
no sugar
orange, no sugar, watermelonpunch,
sugar. Kiwi, strawberry.
Sounds delicious.
No Slurpees. Are.
And sour.
Bubblegum, raspberry blueand whatever the other one is
that they want to haveat that time.
I'm sorry,
but if you go into a 7-Eleven
now, they do not have the coreflavors.
(03:35):
They have all the weirdo ones.
And then the cola one is many.
Melted and spinning.
Yeah, the cold one's not workingbecause it's
the only one anyone wantsbecause they walk in and go,
oh, what's all this?
And then they just get cola.I'm just going to.
Make 7-Eleven Slurpeesgreat again.
Damn straight. Okay, I'mgoing to Sutherland's website.
We've got to get that on.
We got sour blueberry,sour strawberry,
(03:55):
sour apple, garbage cola.
Good good sour passion.
Fruit garbage. Garbage.
Raspberry pineapple good.
Lychee garbage. Oh. Gripe good
I just like.
But again.
You only go into a 7-Eleven.There's four. Of them.
Oh my God, there'sanother five pages of it.
Whoa! Sour bubblegum.
So blue raspberry sourblackcurrant sour pineapple.
(04:18):
Sour lime. Vanilla.
Strawberry cream. Oh.
Boy. We've been overstrawberries and cream
on this podcast.I'm Guinness away on.
Twist mango and cream.
Mango,mango and cream is my favorite.
Worst. Fact checker ever.
Mango and cream sounds terrible.
You got mango and creamfor brains.
Do you not like a spa?
(04:39):
Yes, but that's a wastegoing. Cream.
That's a waste. A waste. Bar.
That's like going,
oh man, I really want a Slurpeethat tastes like a steak.
No lime bitters, cumquat.
I cannot try them for Paris
passionfruit,lime, mango, tropical.
Rubio.
(04:59):
What?
Strawberry.
There's a chop flavor.Strawberry. Choose.
Orange churn. Yes.
I have to cut all of this.
Lemon sherbet, candy canefizz. Tingle.
Marshmallow butterscotchball. Frame.
I just said be okay.
This is getting. Cut.Getting cut it just Bleep it.
Wild berry creme guava caramelapple pie.
Pina peach vanilla.
(05:21):
I can't keep editing this light
wash wash.
Wash wash wash.
Wish I wish what I wish
okay. Let's pause the podcast.
Where's the closest 7-Elevenokay I didn't see what five is.
I got them back with us.
No, wait. What's the matter?
Let's get on to the story.
Okay.
(05:41):
I okay,
starting off,I tried to include some titles.
You love titles.I do love a good title.
So wherethere's drinks, there's ice.
I think ice baby.
That's the last timewe're making that joke
this episode you. Were waiting.
For. It's already twiceI guarantee you.
It's not.
(06:02):
Anyway,in the beginning of the 20th
century, refrigeration methodswere few and far between.
The first homerefrigerators in the 1920s cost
around about 700 USD.
Which cartoon was itthat had the ice?
Oh, it was The Simpsonsat the Kwik-E-Mart.
They had, like the guy
that would go to the Arcticto get ice. Yes. Yeah.
It's also the son of frozen.
(06:23):
For the context of Ford, ModelT was $476.
Nice that I make a modelI used to know.
So for inflation, $700
is 13,000 USD in 2025.
That for a modelT. For a fridge.
All right okay.
For a model Tit'd be around about $8,000 us.
(06:45):
How's that though?
Can I just point out anyway.
13,000 USD for a fridge?
Yeah, that was whyeverybody had salted meats.
Yeah, it's mental.
With the high price
to keep things cool at home,ice houses
was still a very regular thing.
Head out,grab some fruit at the market.
Some full sugar.Doctor. Pepper at the pharmacy.
Pick up some tobacco.
Stop by the ice house for somefrozen water on the way home.
(07:08):
And in Texas.
Texas,after a few different ice houses
combined to formone of the big guys in the game,
the supplies companywas eventually born.
Yes, well, at the merge,it was pretty big.
So the merger ended upgiving the new formed company
eightdifferent manufacturing ice
warehouses and over 20 retailersalone across the Dallas area.
(07:29):
That's a lot I wanted.
The fridges are so expensive.Who big guys out there.
Who was in charge of,all access.
The Southland Ice Company.
Who was the head of that?
Was it Walter White?
It was not Walter White.
Anyway.
Oh, my God, no, damn it,that wasn't him.
No, it was it.
(07:50):
Anyway, although only selling.
On his name,
Vanilla Ice.
Although only selling ice.
Vanilla Ice for.
No, it was Vanilla Ice there.
Cut that in.
Anyway.
Although only selling
ice for one employee,they were selling dreams.
Nice. That's right. I'm 30.Since I met.
John Jefferson Green,a sapling employee began selling
(08:13):
basic groceryitems from his retail ice house.
This was then upgraded to himselling these items at 16
different locationsacross Dallas, because corporate
really liked that idea.
I thought it was pretty good.
The permission of one of thefounding directors of Southland
Ice was Joe C Thompson senior,
and he was the onethat was like, you know what?
(08:34):
This guy's got a great idea.
We're actually going to like,
roll this outacross all of Dallas.
Even though there were alreadysmall grocery stores
spread throughout.
Thompsonthought that the convenience
of sellingthese items get ready.
I wasn't ready.
Even though there were alreadysmall grocery stores
scatteredthroughout Dallas, Thompson
(08:54):
thought that the convenience
of selling these itemsat his ice houses
would reduce the needfor customers
to travelall the way to the markets
for basic itemsthat they could just
pick up on their way homewhile they were getting ice.
Thompson'sidea was an absolute smash hit,
and he eventually boughtthe Southland Ice Company
and turned it into the SouthlandCorporation.
In 1928, a Southland manager
(09:16):
went on holiday to Alaska,where they need lots of ice.
Yeah, obviously they needlots of awesome.
That manager came backwith a decorative totem pole.
Nice. A pretty tall one.
What, what native population didhe still have for them?
Didn't say. Cool.
They were. The Inuit. People.Probably could.
Could have been. Well,that's a broad term.
I'm not going to get into that.Okay.
(09:37):
They then set up that polein front of their store
because, you know, just why not?
Why don't random decorationin. Town.
Not in Texas. Yeah.
Just ask the Britishabout doing that.
Apparently,this became a pretty smart
marketing moveas people started associating,
the Southland Ice Companywith this totem pole.
Like, people thought,oh, like, I'll go to,
you know, like the guywith the totem pole.
(09:59):
There was only one store,but everyone was like.
I've got a totem pole,I've. Got the totem pole.
In a pretty short space of time,the rest of the company
became placing these totem polesat the rest of their locations
because they're like, well,everyone keeps thinking,
we've got this totem pole,so we're just going to do that.
And how easy is the marketto manipulate?
Yeah, in the 20s,
and it was even more successfulwhen they started doing that.
(10:19):
So they actually rebrandedthe stores to be called totems.
Cool.
Because you also toteyour groceries.
Yeah, you tote your grocerieshome.
Let'sbring that back. To item bags.
Not just.
Was gonna say theyliterally want us to do that.
Like, can we eat buying cod?
Can we change 7-Eleven to totes?
Well, change the name.
So around the timethat they started doing
(10:40):
these totem polesand rebranded as totem,
they also started selling fuelat the same time,
which is pretty cool.
Now, obviously.
You know,
Liam.
Obviously in Australiawe kind of associate
7-Eleven a lot.
If you're old enoughwith with fuel stations,
because for a long timethey were just fuel stations.
Yeah.
You'd be down in your Slurpee,Dodge a crackhead driving there.
Yeah. Blown upFalcon. Obviously.
(11:01):
Now I feel that'smore of a Queensland thing
because when I've beento Sydney, Melbourne, 7-Eleven,
is itjust little stores in the world?
Yes. But 15 years ago there werealso still mostly okay.
Yeah.
Like I said,if you're old enough
to sort of remember,like a long time ago.
Or if you're in Brisbane Citytoo. Yeah.
Just tiny or.
If you're in South Australia,nothing.
There is no 7-Elevenin South Australia.
(11:23):
That's because
I'm sure they've got some weirdocompany there instead.
They never market,they never will.
There's another competitorin that market that kind of.
Cheeky Tails franchise,7-Eleven in South Australia.
So they never had 7-Elevenat all.
And then around about the timeI moved there in 2010,
this guy started buyingall these different servos
specifically for him into onecompany called On the Run
(11:43):
and not to brag on 7-Elevencoastlands. Great.
I love 7-Eleven, but on the runis like they focus.
They don't do
the small locations that much,
but they make their petrolstations ridiculous.
Like Bucky's.
Yeah,like Bucky's like as you've seen
the one near my old houseis probably going to get caught.
The one in my old housewas where they had
the first Krispy Kremein South Australia, John,
which had like our buildingthe size of the servo
(12:05):
over the road,which was also the bakery.
Over the. Roadfor the whole state.
Sorry, it was across the carparkfrom it.
Yeah, it was ridiculous.
It was a no.
It's an almost.I'll find a photo of it later.
Anyway, moving back had cut Johnplaying with this thing.
It's just funny
you said over the road,and I pictured the store
being like a bridge overthe road. Not just past.
Yeah, not justthe other side of the road.
(12:27):
I don't know what mybrain with it. That's okay.
So with thewith the introduction of fuel,
they truly became America'sfirst convenience store.
And so I keep doing thisair quotation sort of thing.
By the timethe 20s came to an end,
with the directionof Joe Thompson at the helm,
the company had trainedall of its employees
in a standard systemso that all the customers,
regardless of location, received
(12:48):
the same level of customerservice.
Smart.
Up next,why is it always the 30s?
It just is.
Always the 30s but 1930s.
That seems like a practicethat was developed there
that has been adoptedindustry wide
like the standardpractice of service. Yep.
Got to keep it all the sameso that people know
(13:09):
what they're getting.
What the new decade arrived.
So too did the Great Depression.
Abu, 30s
Southland was not immune to thisand filed for bankruptcy,
eventually continuing throughreorganization and receivership.
How people always need Ice.
I know a Dallas bankerwho also help revive the company
by selling bondsat $0.07 on the dollar.
(13:30):
This, however, moved the company
to being controlledby a board of directors.
No longer
just a simple family ish companybeing the Thompson family,
another great wayto kill the blues.
Have no money.
Booze. Yeah.
With the repeal of prohibition,Southland Ice decided
to stock alcohol at its totemstores and sell lots of it.
That feels like a bad ideawhen you've got people
(13:54):
driving in
to get petrol and groceriesand then just
leaving with a bottle of booze.
You know, I'm very excitedthat prohibition.
Yeah.You make a very good point.
Let's, let's,let's fill up our vehicles
and then get alcohol.
I mean it like it very really.
It was like the 70s
before they banned drinkdriving in some place.
It's very convenient. Sure.
(14:16):
Okay, fine.
That's not working. All right.
I'm just going to stop doingthe air quotations.
I think there's like,I've heard of it before.
I made it twice episode.
Now the like TV interviewswith people being like,
who were they to tell melike a drink beer while driving?
Like, yeah, that.
Hindsight was.
A normal thing of.
Hindsight, as they say, is 2020.
Their vision was notbecause they were drunk. Yeah.
(14:38):
And they were drivingtwo ton of a steel square.
So they probably safeinside of it. Yeah.
No they're not,that's the thing.
But they weren'twearing seatbelts. No.
Any speed, no.
Crumple zones,no collapsible steering columns.
My bags, no seatbelt.
Yeah, yeah.I way bloody driving.
No traction controlsurvived. Yeah.
What about the 1 in 5 othersthat didn't.
Yeah.
It was actually about the sameas driving
(14:59):
in an actual steel boxwith nothing else inside it.
And then hitting something.Yeah.
And then you bounce around itlike a pinball.
And you've also got no seatbelts, so you're just.
Yeah, pinging around it.
All right.
I shouldn'thave made a comment yet.
I didn't realize how passionateI was about these.
I did not so jarring.
Dubbed up to the massinto WWE, into a massive army
(15:20):
trainingcamp. Was set up to save Dallas.
Who do you think providedall the ice
to the training camp?You're mate?
Yeah. Elsa.
Elsa? Yeah, definitely. Elsa.
That's the second frozen joke.
That's it.
Let it snow, baby.
Absolutely not.
Yep. Our gang over at the totemstores.
(15:40):
This gave a massive bump
in fundsto the struggling company
that had just pulled itselfout of the depression,
which helped pull it togetherfor its most ambitious rebrand.
That still sticks around today.
I mean. It sounds dumb.
They're selling frozen water
and they're makinga company out of it, but I,
I guess it would have been hard.People like.
Do it in your house back in and.
(16:01):
People like frozen water. Yeah.
It's fun, it's refreshing.
It's it's it's it's the cordialof the two of the 33.
Brand that stands todayis that 7-Eleven?
We get where we get 7-Eleven.
Almost getting their so 19. 712.
So in 1946
with dubbed up to over and donewith, people were spending
more money
like hand over foot to helpwith spending more money.
(16:22):
Totem stores all across Texaschanged their opening hours.
But you pay downno fate in this damn episode.
I let those dogs fuck anyway.
A ton of stores all across Texaschanged their opening hours
six, 7 to 10 six till 1015.
Yeah. Cool. Now 7 to 11.
Until 1015.
(16:42):
Absolutely ruined my joke. Yeah.
Big spacethere to tell the joke.
Nothing. It's called seven. 11.
Yeah, I. Think that'swhat it would. Be.
Seven days away.
Yeah. Seven days in the morning.
I assumed it was seven daysa week, 11 hours a day.
Seven days a week, sevenin the morning till 11 at night.
11 hoursa day for a convenience store.
That would be likenine till eight now.
(17:03):
One went out at nighttime in the 30s.
Dangerous. Where you're wrong.
Okay.
Everyone wentout and not done in the 30s.
This was massive for the companyand absolutely game
changing at the time.
With these new hours,the company changed
the name of stores to 7-Eleven,and all of the stores got
rebranded, updated and expandedbecause it was so popular.
(17:25):
I was like,oh my God, it's open.
I'm sitting at home,I'm doing nothing.
I can go to 7-Eleven.
And because it was soconvenient, they were like, ooh,
they put heaps of money into itand made them like fun.
Like, I meant it's like Macca'sright back.
As is the only thing open.You go to go to Macca's.
And in those days everythingwould have shot at like five.
Yep. So yep. 7-Eleven.
(17:46):
If 7-Eleven is open,you go in a 7-Eleven.
Yeah. You want a six pack?You want some ice?
Yeah.
You want to getabsolutely blasted
and drive home and endangereveryone else on the road at 11?
Yeah,it's like teenagers going home
washing their carswith nothing else to do.
These are not sponsoredby 7-Eleven.
After that, come comment.
Cheeky tails says noto drink drive.
They do say no to drink driving.
We say yes to responsibleownership of vehicles.
(18:09):
So John P Thompson,son of the previously mentioned
Joe C Thompson senior.
If I get them back to frontthroughout this episode,
I'm sorry. So you're up to Johnsimilar. We're up to John.
Yeah. John.
He landed himselfon the board of directors
in 1948, not at the top,but on the board of directors.
(18:29):
He's done very well in 1948,by the time the 50s had come
around, cars were everywhere,and John knew just what to do.
He got analysts to studytraffic patterns
and road developmentsto help guide
when new stores should be open.
Art should be openwhen new stores should be opened
and needed to be
the best business modelto maximize their convenience
(18:50):
across the country.
By the end of the 1950s,after the success of this plan,
John was now the vice president
and had expanded 7-Eleven storesbeyond the Longhorn Territory
into Pennsylvania, Virginia,and Maryland
in 1963, the South,the Southland in 1963.
Southland thenbegan buying other convenience
store locations
(19:11):
around the country,including Speedy Mart,
which was a California basedconvenience store location.
What are youwhat are you thinking?
Kwik-E-Mart? Yeah. Yeah,yeah. Is that. It's not.
No, it'snothing to do with that.
It's not a rip off of that.That's not.
Oh, I mean, Kwik-E-Martis also a thing here,
but it's quick, like,actually spelt properly.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(19:32):
This was the 60sbefore The Simpsons.
Kwik-E-Mart obviously.Yeah. I can still rip it off.
Yeah. Yeah, probably. But
just because it's the 60s.
Who loves the Kwik-E-Mart now?
Because they bought to.
Yeah, because they episode.
Yeah.
Because they bought.
Because they bought.
It. Yeah.
(19:54):
This kid on the train.
Speeding had 128 locationsacross California,
which was quite a lot.
Now they got to that sizenot by strategic,
not by strategic corporateshenanigans
of analyzing road data,but by franchising.
They had franchisesopen their stores.
So 7-Elevenwent, let's just do that.
(20:16):
So they startedmoving into the franchise
method of businessfor the whole company.
And once again,it absolutely took off.
It just kept going.
And they just kept
expanding and expanding,expanding and then buying more
smaller convenience companiesand getting bigger and bigger.
Also in 1962,after a particularly rowdy
game of foosball at the TexasLonghorn Stadium, one store
(20:37):
stayed open till dawn to satisfythe demand of the customers.
But did they rebrand the store?
No, they didn't rebrandthe store by.
Seven to.
Dawn, but it did in 1962.
Prompt them to open a few stores24 hours a day
and a few in Texas,and then in Las Vegas.
Yeah,that makes sense. Yes. Yeah.
And this is the first timewe get 24.
(20:58):
So this timewe get 24 seven in the 60s.
Like you think that's 24 seven.
So not in the 60sin Texas. Texas.
Now, it was during the 60sthat a 7-Eleven employee
noticed that the logo would looka little bit less aggressive
if allthe letters weren't capital.
Did you ever notice that.
(21:18):
I n I have seen. This lowercase?
I've seen the name.
What's the name?Just pointing it out.
The n is lowercase.
They decided that it wouldn'tlook so aggro
if one of the letterswas lowercase.
To be more whimsical.
I would have thoughtyou go with the e.
Uno and they're still doing itnow. It's amazing.
Yeah, in the 60s.
(21:39):
Next time you drive upto a 7-Eleven server,
have a look up at the signand go.
Oh, what do you meango in and get a Slurpee?
Hey, yeah.If you get a disappointing.
Flight,bring your own bucket day.
Well, funnythat next topic, frozen future.
Oh, don't go.
You like that? You love titles.
I like the titles.Thank you. Oh. That's it.
(22:16):
Anyway, in the
late 1950s, a dairyQueen operator began tinkering
with all parts of a car air
conditioning unit to freezedrinks, partially,
it wasn't necessarily his planto do it partially,
but he stopped us and said, hey,this is actually like, quite,
quite nice.
Like it's creates this sort ofslushy, edgy type stuff.
And after a lot of testing,it took him
five years to get it right. Wow.
(22:39):
The first Icees were createdand sold at Dairy Queens
across the country.
That's their sort of thing.
You know, they call it an icy.Now, it was very popular.
And he was like,well, I'm just going
to make lots of money for this.
So he patented it and sold it
and sold machinesall over the place.
7-Eleven went,oh yeah, we need that.
That soundsabsolutely fantastic.
(22:59):
So did you also create them?
So they weren't workinghalf the time?
Not necessarily.
So. In the 60s, 7-Elevenswooped in and in 1966,
they launched their gamechanging Slurpees.
Originally only availablein Coca-Cola flavored or cherry.
Like I said, not that popularas a flavor in Australia.
Yeah, Americanslove their cherry loved cherry.
(23:20):
Yeah, for everythingwe have over here, this
raspberry flavor,there's this cherry flavored.
Yeah, yeah. They love cherry.
We're all about vanilla.
In a way. Yeah.
They just love cherry flavored.
They're like, for us, cherryis a medication flavor for them.
It's not. It's a good flavor.
Someone mentioned that theirmedication isn't cherry flavor.
They have something familiar.
Strawberry.
I think back checkis going to stop looking cherry
(23:42):
stop looking stuff up now.
Now they did have two flavorsoriginally,
but they would very,
very quickly expandto every flavor
that you could ever wantand every flavor that you don't.
Want by.
Cumquat, like cumquat and and
and and peach creamand all these cream
mango cream sour cream.Give me some of that. Awful.
I want some mango.
(24:03):
Creamand all the sour versions of
the same flavor,which are just less good.
Anyway.
Again, you just need the three.
You just need high.
What? Yuck.
All right. Gross.
I don't want pastry flavoredSlurpee.
It's a blended fish flavoredSlurpee. Yum.
Yeah. What I actually want.
Is two flavors.One takoyaki flavored.
I just want that pure octopusbowl flavor in a Slurpee.
(24:26):
So in 1969.
Say it with me now.
Nice. Nice, nice. Oh, boo.
They opened theirfirst location, and, Oh,
a. Hey, this was theirfirst international 7-Eleven.
And it was a smash hit,
prompting even furtherinternational expansion.
And in 1973,after a joint venture
(24:49):
with the Itto Your Kadosupermarket franchise in Japan,
they launchedtheir first Japanese eatery.
Nice eatery.Yes, that's what they.
Yeah. Okay.
Because it was more focusedon that, less on the fuel.
Also to comefrom the excess of the 1970s,
what is fact checking somethingI just ask,
what is the medicine flavorin your country?
(25:09):
And it's like in the USwe have grape
bubblegum, mint,berry and lemon.
There you go. Don't. Yeah.
He gets antsy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Isn't that licorice?
Yeah, yeah. Yuck,I love licorice.
I like licorice.
I don't think it's a appropriateflavor for medicine.
I wouldn't be mad, but.
It just says usually it's cherryflavor. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
So also to come from the
(25:29):
excess of the 1970s was giantsoft drinks.
Does anyone ever heardthe Big Gulp?
Yes, yes, yes.
The big thing in the States.
Gulp.
32. Ounces.
Price 32oz.
That's 950ml.
That's a lot of drink. In a cup.
You know what's funny?A liter beer.
(25:52):
Run. A liter of soft drink.
Oh, insane. What are you doing?That's crazy.
Later.
Soft drinkthat you can just go and get
and just have all the time,you know, at a restaurant? Yeah.
There's no responsibleservice of soft drink.
Like it's not raised like that.
Sounds like a 1920kind of thinking. Yeah.
Liter of soft drink,no liter V8.
Yeah, absolutely.
(26:13):
When you just need thatmassive hit of high fructose
corn sirupto get you through the day.
It's the 70s now.
The overall soft drink salesdoubled in three months.
Yeah, because twicethe size of what they should be.
They say that it was 12ozbigger than their biggest size.
That's still really. Big.
Still 600and something mil. Yeah.
(26:34):
16 when you say it like that,that's just a 600 okay.
It's still.
Yeah. But 600 milk like that,that was their biggest.
That's still pretty big.
But if that was their biggestthing like like the Big Gulp
you knowthey make a double gulp.
What double gulp. So 64oz. Yeah.
So this is saying though it's.
Not quite 64 I think theythey lessened it to 60.
Eight peoplenot just pissing their pants.
I know.
(26:54):
So this is saying thatat the time, Coca-Cola had a 16
U.S fluid ouncewhich is 470 mil. Yep.
And the largest fountaindrink available
at the time was McDonald's,with a 2580 mil.
So what company?
Not you.
To Macca's, it's McDonald's.
McDonald's, not McDonald's.
(27:15):
Back, back back, man.
Daniel's McDonald's.
Like a Big Mac. Sorry, Rachel.
Why? What are you doing?
Well, of course it back.
Don't don't correct me on that.
You can go sit on a big gulp.
Fact checker strikes again.
Anyway, so sit on a big gulp.
Oh, that.
With all of this sugar
(27:36):
and high fructose corn sirup,the crash was coming.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no.
So after purchasing auto partscompany.
Just hang on.You said there was a double go.
Yeah. What was the sizeof the double go?
Think that
it was supposed to be 64,but they lessened it a bit.
Yeah, yeah,but I had the super Big gulp.
Super Big Gulp.
And then that was the DoubleGulp.
(27:57):
1.3. Yeah.
And then there'salso the standard gulp.
And then followed by the 64Fluid and Double Coke.
It's too big. Lighter.
Just a 50.
There you go.
Just I'll bet there was protest.
That's it. Thatbut think that's force.
That's a 14 ounce reduction.
That's about half.
It's a pint.
Yeah.Like that's a pint less so.
(28:18):
And then light
and then eventually as limitedturn offerings
as the extreme gulpand the team gulp.
Conversely, 7-Eleven alsointroduced the little Big Gulp.
Yeah, originallysimply called the gulp,
which was 22fl oz or 650 mil,
and at 128 US fluid
ounces or 3800ml.
(28:39):
But Team Gulp remainsthe largest fan offering
in the world.
I don't think nearlyfour liters.
See, the thing is, everything.
Everyone's everyonethat's really invest invested
like, oh, well, you can buybottles that at that big,
you can put a lid on a bottleand put it in your fridge.
The found drink, onthe other hand, is like,
I have to finish this.
What year did that come out?
(28:59):
The familydouble, triple gulp. Team gulp.
Team gulp. Yeah.
Sounds like a lot.
Last yearthat was started is 1918.
They go
because I think you can pointto the downfall of civilization.
You can point to thatas the moment where it began.
That sounds about the same timethat Pizza Hut
started doing The Big Foot,
and Little Caesars started doingthe Super Big pizza as well.
(29:20):
I'll watch.I'll clearly Cheetos.
I watch a lot of like, YouTubeon fast food chains and things.
It is interesting.
Anyway, soafter purchasing an auto
parts companyand an oil provider, cool.
Southlandwas beginning to struggle
with the size and the diversityof the company.
Cracks in the managementstarted to form, and rumors
(29:42):
of a hostile takeoverwere starting to swirl around
like the top ofa perfect Slurpee. Slurpee?
The almost nailed it.
It was a well-crafted joke.
It was delivered mediocrity.
So I had to patch.
Sean, you see, I'm parched.
It sounds like you could dowith a Slurpee family.
(30:03):
Triple gulp, big boy.
Team. Gulp. So?
So after purchasingan auto parts company
and an oil provider,
Southlandwas beginning to struggle
with the size and the diversityof the company.
Cracks in the managementstarted to form, and rumors
of a hostile takeoverwas starting to swirl around.
Like the top of a perfectSlurpee.
(30:23):
Wow, you got thaton the first time.
Yeah. I'm right. Don't ruin it.
Right. Delivery.
Sean, it's like we've had.So much criticism.
The first in the lastepisode, you.
Almost said like.
Like you've rehearsed it before.
Once before?Yeah, that was like.
It was really well done.
Are we goingto have our first walkout?
Not live.
But youwalked out the other day.
I was so thirsty.
(30:45):
That was different.
So anyway, flawless delivery.
Solid. Good job to.
Avoid a corporate takeoverfrom a Canadian rich guy.
The Thompson family beganturning the company back
into a private venture by buyingout its public shareholders.
This seemedlike a pretty solid plan.
Like in the current economy.It was pretty good.
They take out the loansnecessary.
(31:06):
They buy everythingexcept it's the 80s.
I ain't no money.
No money.
Well there was moneyat the time.
And a $5.2 billion management
buyout occurred,which is a lot of money.
And assuming that the company
is going to be doing good,you know, you can take that crap
to the bankand you're going to success and,
you know, have success.
(31:27):
John Thompsonsenior or John Thompson,
now, the chairman of 7-Elevenwas now back in control
at the helm. He's back.What could possibly go wrong?
1987 was going to be the bestyear at the stock market ever.
Right.
Boom. Yeah. Yeah.
Stock market crash. Spaghetti.
With enormous company debtfrom the buyout, 7-Eleven
(31:50):
had to sell off its auto partsdivision.
Hundreds of store locations.
And these were eventually turnedinto rival convenience stores.
Extra blow.
And sadly, the final nail inthe coffin for its origin story.
It sold off its ice division.Oh, no.
At that point,
it still had an ice divisionproducing ice for the company
and then having icein the stores.
(32:11):
Now it's just stockingbells and polar ice.
Yeah, PolarIce and Ipswich Ice Company
and whatever else they got.
But at the time still in-house,strong together like 7-Eleven.
Right. Again. Sadly,
sadly,this wasn't enough though.
And in 1990,Southland filed for bankruptcy
in order to transfer70% of the company
(32:33):
to its Ocado,its Japanese affiliate.
With all said and done, in 1991,after a $430 million cash
influx from its Ocado,
the Thompson family,the founding fathers
of the United States of Slurpee,only retained 5%.
United Slips of America.
I got myself with that.
They only retained5% of the company, which is.
(32:57):
That's like, still okay for.
Measly.Yeah, but like, you still own.
Yeah.
But thanks to the peoplethat own
the rest of it are a gigantic.
Yeah, but it still ownedsome of it. It's not like it.
Oh, it's spread a little bit.
It's like one man ownsthe rest of it.
Yeah. It's like, oh. Hey, guys,thanks for showing up.
Yeah, yeah.
I you know what?
I'd be happy owning 5% or seven.
Well this this says thatin this 1st of December 2023,
(33:21):
Japanese parent company7-Eleven international.
Yes. Bought out the 752Australian stores for 1.7
billion. Yes. Yeah, well.
With the mass buyout,Miss Satoshi Ito
now became the presidentof Southland in 1991.
He was the head of Ito Yukata.
Although he's creditedfor revolutionizing Japanese
shopping, his stint as presidentwould be short
(33:44):
on account of his companyhigher ups
getting involved withracketeering run by the Yakuza.
Not the Yakuza.
Yeah,
some of the paymentsto the Yakuza
even apparently came directlyfrom Masatoshi Ito's wife.
Oh, man.
Yeah,he denied everything, of course,
but he still stepped down
from the presidencyto save the company.
Now, I didn't do anything,but I'm still going to head out.
(34:06):
That sounds
eerily familiar to you.
An episode we covered two weeksago to full two episodes ago.
Which one?
Watergate. Watergate? Yeah.
Except in anyway.
Except he kind of, like,had to admit that he did it.
There was recordings of it.
So with all of that sordidand they're like,
all right, let's clean upour act.
(34:26):
Expansion was the nameof the game for the 90s.
And by the time we got to theturn of the millennium, 7-Eleven
had 25,000 storesacross the globe.
That's a few.
That. Yeah, it's true.
With all this camethe next big rebrand in 1999.
SAP unofficially changedthe company's name
to 7-Eleven incorporated.
(34:48):
As the stores were nowall that it was doing, it
no longer had the ice division,no longer had the auto parts
or the oil company.
It was just doing the 7-Elevenstores.
In 2007, 7-Eleven surpassedthe monolith that is McDonald's
to become the largest franchiseby number of locations
in the world, with storesin over 25 countries.
(35:09):
That's about to askhow does it compare to Macca's?
Yeah, moja.
That's wild.
And me and McDonald'sgot smaller
when it removedall those Russian stores.
But yeah, it's another story
now without the familybackground
of the company anymoreand so many stores
to contend with, some scandalsstarted to develop.
Oh really?
Yeah,a big one was in Australia 2015.
It was discovered
the franchise ownerswere not paying
(35:31):
their international workerscorrectly
and threatening them withdeportation if they spoke up.
This was a big deal. Big deals.
After a series of articlescame out,
startingwith the Sydney Morning Herald,
the company was forcedto pay over $173
million in backwages to workers,
not including damages,legal fees and everything else.
(35:52):
That kicked offa whole bunch of companies
doing that, theirliking and finding stuff.
My company did it.
They were like, all right, we wegot bought and they went, oh,
guys,your payroll looks a bit weird.
And they went through a
looked at it and they had to paya lot of money.
A lot of money, a lot of money.Yeah.
Also in 2015,7-Eleven had its first ever
(36:13):
bring your own Cup dayfor Slurpees.
Sounds like a really whimsicalidea, doesn't it?
It was a genius strategyto sell both Slurpees.
To peoplewalking with skis on wheels.
Yeah, well, no, that was okay.
That's fine, that's fine.
But as usual, people took itway too far.
Fans bringing everythingfrom musical instruments
to toilets to the storeto fill them.
(36:34):
This then requiredsome moderation.
As with cut out boardswith a hole in the middle
representing if it couldfit through that hole, you can.
You can fill it up.
So what you do is you bring ahollowed out telegraph pole
and you just slide it through,right through.
Keep going.
But why a toilet?
Like I know it wasn't on.
I know, I know, itcame. From the I.
(36:55):
Know I want to wash my poo.
I want to see great flavor.
I know it camefrom the hardware store.
Like I didn't pull it out ofthe house.
Is good for it. But.
It's okay.
What part of the toiletyou filling up?
Are you filling up the cisternor you're filling up the bowl?
The picture I saw was the bowl.
Yeah, I assume that they, like,plug in.
It's got to be a new toilet,right?
Yeah.
It would look like a new toilet.
(37:16):
Again. A new toiletis pretty expensive.
So there mustbe bleach in a toilet. Yeah.
The next
the next big controversy
unfortunately, was also aroundinternational workers.
Oh no.
In 2018, the USImmigration Service or ice.
Ice baby.
Back.
It's secure.
(37:36):
It's I know itall comes back around.
It comes back to us.They write funny.
They write it nearly 100 storesacross the United States,
and they found 21 peoplethat had been hired
illegally as undocumentedworkers.
The franchise ownershad their contracts
torn up, and the storestaken from them. Oof.
In 2019,California attempted to ban
(37:57):
the sale of soft drinksbigger than 600 mils.
Oh, no.
This could have been the endof the Big Gulp as we know it.
Because there was also lawslike this
popping up all over the place.
Like it was the like,you'll like, man, Rudy Giuliani
tried to do a similar thing,like in New York City.
They called itthe Anti-Big gulp law.
It didn't end up panning outbecause they in New York in
(38:18):
particular, they made it like
some sort of state regulation,seven
levels of national companiesand the fine,
fortunately for 7-Eleven,but not for everybody's bodies
or teeth.
The law was struck down,so fans of oversize
soft drinks could keep enjoying
their Slurpees and small deskbins, helmets, blender jugs
and mixing bowls.
Just not toilets.
(38:39):
No ID, no toilets, no motels.
Yeah, it's all right.
Down the toilet. Up with drinks?Yeah.
Don't disconnect your toiletfrom the house.
And fill it up with the Slurpee.Bring it.
Hopefully with bleach.
Plug the back of it.
Drive all the way to 7-Eleven.
Bribed the 7-Eleven employeeto let you bring a toilet in.
Fill up your toiletwith Slurpee,
and then drink the Slurpee.
(39:00):
Just don't do this.
Don't do it on with itin the post.
Toilet Slurpee time line.
That's not a worldI want to live in.
7-Eleven operates over 84,000
locations across the globe,
with as much varietyin a small space as possible.
We've seen all the amazing foods
that come out of 7-Elevenin Japan, with social media
(39:22):
now really prompting that
also has its contract withKrispy Kreme to hand out stale
glazed donuts to Uber driversin the middle of the night,
except South Australia,because that's with on the run.
Sorry.
Even more
recently, 7-Eleven Australiahas a milkshake and smoothie
machine built into each store
that can do everythingrobotically.
And it's not bad.
(39:42):
Yeah,I had the milkshake. Right?
You got a smoothie because dairyand it was pretty good.
They seem like the kind of thingthat would be fine.
It seems the perfect thing
because the 7-Eleven operatordoesn't have to do anything.
Yeah. Machine does it all.
About the 7-Eleven hot dog.
7-Eleven hot dog.
7-Eleven Glizzy. Yeah.
Then there's what theysometimes have fresh fruit.
(40:03):
Yeah. I've got sandwiches.
They do the super cheap coffees.
The coffee is not horrible.
I don't mind the pie selectionfrom time to time.
Yeah, it's not bad.
They used to do.
And for those that rememberthe mid 2000,
they had like a cheese and baconsausage roll,
which they still donow, but it's much smaller.
But it was, it was hefty.It was probably like.
(40:23):
That since.
It's probablyas wide as like a can
but like a little bit longer.And it was a big fade.
I'm trying to think the lasttime I stepped into a 7-Eleven.
Yeah, I don't go in therevery often anymore.
I go regularly becauseI enjoy the fuel lock feature.
Yeah. And it's a good feature.
And also
becausewhen I've got Bonnie in the car
when she was little, I could payfrom my phone and fill up.
(40:44):
I know you can do thatwith other servers.
I'm not havingmore than one app.
I don't care, I don't careabout the price now.
I don't care about the price
difference enough to be like,oh, Mobile's $0.02.
Trayvon's 7-Eleven.
I just don't want to have biggerapps on my phone.
If it's $0.20 cheaper, I'm gonethere.
$0.20 is a big difference.
There are also a few 7-Elevennear my house.
In fact,there's one in either direction
(41:05):
if I'm going away from my housetowards anyway, I.
Have onefairly close to my place.
I think the last I mighthave been in a 7-Eleven boys
when we were in Sydney.
Wow. Really?
That was like.
That was like nine years ago.
Was it like 2012?
That was like 13 years ago.
And what do we go into 7-Elevenfor that?
(41:26):
After we did that
massive walk in, we weren't
looking to buy somethingvery specific.
Deodorant, was it?
Deodorant had been,
we went for a walk and got lost.
Oh, yeah.
And this is
just as, like, GoogleMaps was starting to be a thing.
And we ended up like an hour
and a half awayfrom where we needed to be nice.
It was a long walk.
So the Iowa building nowmy favorite building in Sydney.
(41:48):
Now, if you're a big fanof 7-Eleven, like I am,
so I love 7-Eleven.
Comment on the socials.
What your favorite thingis to get from the store.
Is it fuel?
Is it stale donuts? Slurpees?
Or do you like to getthe prepackaged ice cups
that you can
then fill up with iced coffeefrom the machine,
which I think personallyis the coolest thing.
Slurpees.
(42:09):
What's the point of this? It'sSlurpees.
Well, either way, comment.
What your favorite thingis to get from 7-Eleven.
You never know what it might be.
Get readyto cut crack from the dealer
in the side of the building.
I've never been to a
7-Eleven and thought,gee, I'm unsafe here.
You never know.
They're always really brightand they're always fairly clean.
They never have the nightservice window.
(42:30):
They're always just. Open.They always open. Inside.
They're very bright and right.
That is what I do remember from.
Don't you disparage seven.No, I'm sorry.
If you're heading back from,like,
Ashgrove towards the city,there's a 7-Eleven,
and then there's a BP downthe street.
The 7-Eleven is openall the time.
The worker doesn't carewho you are.
He's got headphones in.
He doesn't give a shit. He'stalking to his mates.
The BP down the street,not service only. Sorry.
(42:51):
You can't have anything.
You got to pay for your fuel
and every timeI go to the 7-Eleven, it's fine.
It's normal peoplegetting stuff.
I go to the BP on the offchance.
It's one really sketchy dudepaying for his fuel
and buying smokesat one in the morning.
Yeah. Why am I in Ashgroveat one in the morning?
Who knows?But it seems to be a regular.
Sketchy guy by one.
Sketchy guy on smoke.Looking for us.
Oh, gasp it turns.
(43:12):
Yeah.
Looks like it's looking to geta score of arson insurance.
Yeah.
So that'sthe history of 7-Eleven in.
A bag not a cop.
It's a surprisingly interestinghistory.
It is. It is.For a convenience. Store.
It's something that weeveryone knows.
Yeah,everyone knows what 7-Eleven is.
I'm like you said,you think. You say 7-Eleven.
You think of Slurpee? Yep.And you know what? You.
(43:33):
You know what?
Aside from my parents,everyone loves heaven alone.
My parents. Alex, I love it.
And is itthe end of their streets?
Yeah. Yeah,
but they also have, like,traditionally,
they've had pretty dodgy fueluntil the mobile
deal.
They had pretty dodgy fuel.Yeah.
But yeah, it's like it'sjust one of those things.
It's such a day today colloquialism for like,
(43:56):
fast convenience stores or fuel.
Fuel stations.
Yeah. But it's just got sucha fascinating history.
I think I looked it up.
It had a current marketcap of 38.3 billion.
Gigantic. Yeah.
Absolutely gigantic.
Invest in 7-Eleven.
Now it's 10.44%. Below.
Now it's time to bath. Yep.
Do not take financial advicefrom Cheeky Towels.
(44:19):
Cheeky towels doesin fact say yes to 7-Eleven.
But we are nota financial podcast.
That doesn't meanwe can't be right.
Very like the disclaimer
when you call the insurancecompany,
it's like we are creditedto provide advice on products
that we sell.
Yeah, this. Does not necessarilymean this, this this this.
(44:40):
This. Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah.What do you think?
History 7-Eleven.Fun. What's good I enjoyed that.
I write at seven out of 11.
That's not a good writing.
I wasn't bad.
Is not bad.
I mean, we didn't have a punt.
We didn't have a traditionalpuns. Was bad.
He said, let it snow.
(45:00):
I thought that was the punthat we started.
Did I, did I?
When he said, no more frozenjacks. Yeah. Like let it snow.
All right, that's fair.
Sorry, a pun.That's a reference.
Anyway. Good story.
Enjoyed it.
Bring your toilet in,
fill it up with some icydrink and let's go.
Sean. No, I took a garbage bin.
That teakettle says noto toilets.
Inflatable poo.
(45:22):
Yeah, that was used. Yeah.
It's good.
That's good.
Oh, I think I seen a gumboot.
Someone did a gumball. America.
Some random thingsthat didn't make the episode,
which I haveenough battery that. Yeah.
A couple of the stores in 2007actually
rebranded as Kwik-E-Mart for thefor The Simpsons Movie.
Yeah, I went full hour,and I know that Apu
has been canceled, but, like,that's that's at 727.
(45:45):
It was.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was,you know, it was pop culture.
Apu has been canceled.
They got rid of those.
Not on with. Her in the past.
I put a pedal on.
The is it. It's not. No,it hasn't been for a while.
There was a thing about ita while back.
Who's running the Kwik-E-Mart?They decide to go.
They just don'tgo to the Kwik-E-Mart.
I, okay, yeah.
The only thing I knowabout The Simpsons
(46:06):
lightlyis a bit of a controversy,
because apparentlythey killed much.
No. They didn't.
They showed herit. Was a future episode. I
you just go click baited. Oh,
All right. Well, good.
We'll see you in a fortnight.History 711.
Thanks for listening, guys.
Good night.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
(46:26):
If you'd like to see
supplemental imagesrelated to our episodes
or to interactwith us about our episodes,
hit us up on at Cheeky Tales
Pod on Instagram, Facebookand YouTube.
You can
watch our episodes on YouTubeor listen to them on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts,or ever. You get your podcasts.
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