Dive Brief:
- 7-Eleven on Wednesday announced its new 7Now Gold Pass subscription delivery service, according to a company press release.
- Subscribers can spend $5.95 per month to access over 3,000 items including hot food, drinks, household items and groceries for delivery.
- Customers can expect orders in about 30 minutes and will be able to track their delivery in real time through the company's app, 7Now. Shoppers with orders of at least $10 will receive additional benefits including the option to select a free product.
Dive Insight:
Subscribers to the 7Now Gold Pass can look forward to Slurpees, taquitos and basic grocery items without an added delivery fee as 7-Eleven further encroaches on the restaurant space.
The convenience store first introduced delivery through its app, 7Now, in 2018. The company teamed up with Postmates and DoorDash for on-demand ordering in May 2020, then formed a partnership with Instacart later that year, as it continued to grow its delivery services. Increasing those options followed a larger trend of delivery apps offering essential products, including groceries, during the first year of the pandemic.
Last year, the c-store took a swing at the QSR category when it opened an Evolution Store prototype featuring two restaurants.
"Today's opportunity is in the QSR space, and we are responding by aggressively rolling out restaurants across the country — both in Evolution Stores and beyond," 7-Eleven EVP and Chief Operating Officer Chris Tanco said in April.
Offering a subscription service could help deepen 7-Eleven's customer loyalty and strengthen its value proposition compared to nearby restaurants.
"Our 7NOW Gold Pass subscription delivery service brings convenience to a whole new level, giving our customers the ability to order what they want, when they want it — and now as often as they want without an added delivery fee," Raghu Mahadevan, 7-Eleven's chief digital officer, said in a statement.
As a segment, convenience stores have boosted delivery efforts in an effort to gain market share. Foxtrot Market was founded in Chicago as a delivery-only convenience store, then opened a number of brick-and-mortar locations while still offering about 1,000 SKUs for delivery within an hour. Rival Gopuff, which launched retail sites in New York City last fall, delivers products through micro-fulfillment centers and has an average delivery time of around 20 minutes, according to the company's senior vice president of business, Daniel Folkman.
Faster and more efficient delivery is going to continue to be in demand, especially for younger generations, according to Anne Mezzenga, co-founder of Omni Talk. "Whether you're a grocery retailer or a convenience store retailer, you have to be putting some level of testing dollars or R&D efforts towards figuring out how instant delivery can be done in your business," she said in an earlier interview with Retail Dive.
The lines between restaurant, c-store and grocery delivery continue to blur, as well. In August, DoorDash launched its DoubleDash feature, which allows users to add items from nearby c-stores to their restaurant delivery order without extra delivery fees or order minimums. DoubleDash is available at 7-Eleven, as well as Walgreens, Wawa, QuickCheck and DashMart.
