DALLAS – 7-Eleven has a plan to increase its local presence, adding more than 75 locations in North Texas within three years, the Dallas Business Journal reports. The convenience store chain also will open 550 U.S. stores and around 4,000 locations across the world.
“We’ve really positioned ourselves for this,” said CEO Joe DePinto. “We have a strong balance sheet, real estate values are down, and a lot of other retailers aren’t growing right now, so there’s a lot of real estate available that would have been cost-prohibitive in the past.”
“We’re seeing a lot of good opportunities for growth,” added Dan Porter, 7-Eleven’s vice president of real estate and new store development. “With the market being what it is, landlords want a national, [solid] credit tenant, and we bring that to the table. In today’s environment, they want someone they can trust to pay the bills every month.”
Last year, the number of U.S. convenience stores dropped about 1,000 to reach 144,875 — only the third time in 15 years that store count declined, said Jeff Lenard, NACS spokesman. This year, NACS expects store counts to remain steady or only slightly down.
Now that companies have cash and relatively little debt, convenience stores are positioned to grow, said Lenard. “With 7-Eleven and other companies, we’re seeing that since they have a clean balance sheet and they have some capital, they’re able to either acquire stores in distress very economically, or build their own new stores.”