7-Eleven Redefines Convenience With Half-Hour Delivery

Instacart and 7-Eleven have expanded their partnership to an additional 4,000 U.S. store locations, enabling the nation’s largest convenience retailer to offer half hour deliveries to roughly 60 million households.

“7-Eleven strives to be the world’s leader in convenience, which means giving customers what they want, when, where and how they want it,” said Raghu Mahadevan, 7‑Eleven SVP and head of digital. “Customers on Instacart can now benefit from thousands of products to be delivered from a 7-Eleven store to their door in 30 minutes or less.”

7-Eleven began its relationship with Instacart last September with a pilot program involving 750 stores in select metro areas. Consumers can choose from thousands of products including pantry staples, household items, alcohol, snacks and over-the-counter medications in 33 states and Washington D.C. In addition, customers in California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New York and Ohio Washington D.C. can also have alcohol delivered in as little as 30 minutes. The companies plan to scale alcohol delivery to more states and stores over the coming months.

“As more people turn to Instacart to help put food on their tables, we’ve seen customer demand for convenience retailers increase over the last year, with convenience orders on Instacart up by more than 350% since last August,” Chris Rogers, VP of retail at San Francisco-based Instacart. “To meet this growing demand, we’re proud to expand with 7-Eleven to nearly 6,000 stores, and give customers across the country access to thousands of essential goods they can now have delivered from the store to their door in as fast as 30 minutes.”

The move is the latest example of how the definition of convenience continues to be transformed and comes amid the ongoing transformation of 7-Eleven’s physical presence. The new battleground for convenience revolves around how quickly products can be delivered to shoppers, whether that is at home or an alternative location. Traditionally, convenience was driven by the size and physical location of retailers’ stores because the proximity to shoppers and accessibility is what makes convenience stores convenient. 

As the definition of convenience now includes a dimension of delivery, and more importantly, delivery speed, 7-Eleven is pressing on it proximity advantage with the acquisition of the 3,800 unit Speedway chain from Marathon Petroleum. The $21 billion deal, the largest in 7-Eleven’s history, recently closed and increases the company’s footprint from roughly 9,800 location in the U.S. and Canada, to roughly 14,000 locations, including an expanded presence in the Midwest and along the East Coast.