Dive Brief:
- 7-Eleven’s North American stores saw a 6% year-over-year drop in foot traffic for the fiscal first quarter, according to parent company Seven & i’s earnings presentation.
- That made five straight quarters of traffic losses. The impact was largely offset by larger baskets, according to the presentation.
- These losses come as 7-Eleven seeks to tighten up its operations and finances ahead of a planned IPO in the second half of 2026.
Dive Insight:
7-Eleven’s foot traffic slowdown ranged from a loss of 3.6% to 8% during fiscal 2024, the latter of which occurred during an outage from cybersecurity firm Cloudstrike in July.
7-Eleven isn’t alone in its foot traffic declines. While U.S. retail traffic overall was up in the second quarter of 2025, that came amid irregularities like a late Easter and some shoppers making purchases ahead of expected tariffs, according to data from Colliers Retail Market Intelligence, that produced fewer customer visits.
“Recovering customer traffic is being a major challenge for the time being,” said Chief Financial Officer Yoshimichi Maruyama during Seven & i’s earnings call.
The company is notably looking to improve traffic by adding more Raise the Roost Chicken & Biscuits and Laredo Taco Company restaurants in its stores. Sites with QSRs see more than 50% higher traffic on average, according to the earnings presentation. 7-Eleven plans to add 50 QSRs to its network in fiscal 2025.
While traffic remains a sore point, Seven & i officials saw positives in many parts of the company’s broader plans to improve operations, including growing delivery and adding more private label items.
“In overseas convenience store operations, although the growth in same-store sales remained sluggish, the effects of the measures have been positive,” said Maruyama. “Profit increased due to improvement of gross profit margin and control of SG&A expenses.”
Seven & i’s overseas convenience store business, which includes North America, saw EBITDA in line with expectations and net income, which exceeded the company’s plan. North American stores saw a 5.3% increase in basket size and 18.3% boost in same-store delivery sales in fiscal Q1, according to the presentation.
