7-11 were great for the 5 minutes their CEO actually cared about making customers happy and brought in innovations that literally forced nearly every other convenience store to consolidate into a mega chain into order to stay in business:

- aggressive expansion of corporate-owned stores

- very clean and modern toilets with a “free to use” policy

- vertical integration: nearly every product became 7-11 branded.

- better quality of food in general, especially hot items

- fresh coffee, brewed to order

Of course, they fired that guy for a penny pincher and the quality took a dramatic nosedive to the point that shitty 7-11 products are a meme now. Things like bentos with a bottom that curves upwards to make it look like there is more product than there really is, sandwiches with filling only in side the visible from the shelf, shrinking onigiri, or “strawberry pulp” that is literally a picture of strawberry pulp printed onto the cup.

Nearly all of the other brands consolidated into Famima, and now Famima is competing on quality to take advantage of the situation. It was amazing how quickly they got their act together when they realized what was going on at 7.