7-Eleven’s Identity Crisis: Health Food Nuts or Junk Food Huts?

As 7-Eleven bulldoze their way into New York City, their PR machine is hard at work trying to reinvent the Texas-based cigarette/gas/beer chain as some type of healthy eating oasis for our “underserved” neighborhoods. No small feat considering 7-Eleven is synonymous with KFC bucket-sized sodas, perpetually rotating hot dogs and mashed potatoes served from a vending machine.

But what they tell the press and what they market through their website, social media accounts and that awful junk food app are two completely different things.

On the 7-Eleven website, a majority of the products featured are unhealthy to say the least: sugary energy drinks, Mountain Dew soda and unidentifiable fried things.

The 7-Eleven Facebook page isn’t much better. Of the 15 items shown, only 2 of them – water and fruit – are healthy.

If you’re looking to slip into a sugar coma, look no further than the 7-Eleven Twitter account. Wash down a pile of greasy mini-tacos and a candy bar with a bucket of Big Gulp! SO healthy!

And let’s not forget their GPS junk food locator app!

Of course local bodegas carry some of these items as well but they don’t use junk food and sugar as their main marketing message the way 7-Eleven does. In a time when childhood obesity – and adult obesity for that matter – is on the rise, do we really need 7-Eleven’s junk food shacks on every corner? Don’t our neighborhoods deserve better?

No 7-Eleven and Reverend Billy in Tompkins Square Park

‘No 7-Eleven’ and Reverend Billy from The Church of Stop Shopping took to Tompkins Square Park yesterday to spread some Localujah!

First there was the Community Wheel of Fortune [Video], a mash-up of sterile corporatization with entities like Stunkin’ Dobucks, Chase Blank, CVS Duane Raid, Denny McSubwhop and, of course, 7-Eleven. Kids from the neighborhood spun the wheel to convert these ubiquitous chain stores into neighborhood-friendly local businesses. They each won a new Stop 7-Eleven pin. Localujah!

Then there were the plays! In Converting NYC Bodegas to 7-Elevens [Video], a spokeswoman from 7-Eleven comes all the way to New York City from Texas with the help of her “corporate app map app” and speaks to a local bodega owner about converting his bodega to a shiny new 7-Eleven! The local bodega owner is shocked to learn his store is a “target” because the East Village is “underserved.” (He’s also puzzled by the spokeswoman’s interest in the North Village!)

The 7-Eleven spokeswoman explains the conversion process: The 7-Eleven corporate headquarters in the great state of Texas will subsidize the bodega turned 7-Eleven until all the local competition is dead, then eliminate any excess like, for example, the bodega owner’s new 7-Eleven franchise! What a plan!

In the other plays, 7-Eleven threatens to bring their own local color to the neighborhood, bright orange, green and red,  make a failed attempt at slam poetry, “Roses are Dead! Violets Suck! Indy Stores are Shit Outta Luck!,” and brag about their 48,000 locations worldwide. What culture! Unfortunately there was no mentioned of the infamous 7-Eleven mashed potato vending machine.

You can watch a roundup of the afternoon’s festivities here.

‘No 7-Eleven’ on Let’s Get Real with Chef Erica Wides

Rob Hollander and Bob Holman of ‘No 7-Eleven’ were guests on the Let’s Get Real with Chef Erica Wides in February discussing 7-Eleven’s aggressive plan to open 100 new locations in Manhattan.

During the hour long segment they discussed the ways large corporations like 7-Eleven destroy of our local market by targeting and infiltrating communities and how they primarily offer food-like products such as vending machine mashed potatoes – yes, there is such a thing.

Let’s Get Real – Episode 56 – 7-Eleven Is To The East Village What Pringles Are To Potatoes