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Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died
- L_Rahman 4mo agoI learned today that 7/11 in Japan wasn't a pure licensing play but a technology enabled business model disruption of large grocery stores and mom-and-pop convenience stores. The launch of 7/11 Japan introduced: franchising, JIT inventory management, and centralized POS terminals to the Japanese retail market. The linked article explains this in more detail.
- ranger_danger 4mo agoHere's a fascinating video I enjoyed that explains how their business model worked (only) in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EH4VmxMAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EH4VmxMAo
- dboreham 4mo agoWondering if there's a better reference article for this. The current link goes to a page with so many adverts that I saw no actual content on my phone screen.
- ranger_danger 4mo agoNo ads here on desktop or mobile with ublock origin.
- satvikpendem 4mo agoThe fact that people in the current year still don't use ad blockers baffles me. Even on mobile, use Firefox with uBlock Origin and/or DNS66 or AdAway for OS wide blocking, or even just set dns.adguard-dns.com in your phone DNS settings.
- ssl-3 4mo agoIt is bizarre, isn't it? My web experience has been broadly cleansed of ads for about as long as we've had a web to experience. These days, Firefox on Android indeed works great, and so does uBlock Origin. It's a superb combination on the desktop, and also on my pocket supercomputer. On iOS, I browse with Safari and the free AdGuard extension (from the app store) does quite well. These mobile browsers even work well for watching videos on Youtube without inserted ads. They accomplish this cleansing at the cost of at most a few minutes of my time to set them up when a new device comes into the mix. It's a fantastic bargain. People have choices, and I don't know why anyone would choose to see ads.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 4mo agoevery time I have to deal with a stock Chrome on stock Windows, I marvel at the amount of outright abuse normies are able to endure.
- hnlmorg 4mo ago[flagged]
- RigelKentaurus 4mo agoOn our last couple of Japan trips, we would walk into 7/11s for an inexpensive coffee, an egg or fruit sandwich, and also do some treasure-hunting for co-branded items with Muji/Uniqlo or others. It became a short and meaningful part of our routine. We loved the convenient locations and fantastic service at all their stores. Well done, Suzuki-san!
- irjustin 4mo agoYT channel @japaneats is easily my favorite for seeing what's available in 7-11 japan.
- rjh29 4mo agoThey are expensive by Japanese standards. Assuming you're American, you're benefitting massively from the exchange rate.
- adventured 4mo agoIt's not the exchange rate. It's 30 years of economic destruction and currency devaluation as the end result of horrific spending policies. If Japan doesn't right the ship, they'll sink into middle income territory over the next 30 years. Poland and Greece are now just slightly below them in GDP per capita - and Lithuania is above them (unthinkable circa the mid 1990s). Realistically Japan is very close to being a second tier economy. It's quite plausible that Croatia and Latvia will pass them on GDP per capita over the next decade. 7-11 Japan would be relatively inexpensive for the citizens of any affluent nation, because Japan is so much poorer than it used to be.
- wahnfrieden 4mo agoConvenience stores have gotten more expensive but they've always been an expensive option in Japan. It's always been much cheaper to go to grocery stores or other such alternatives to get the same items.
- rjh29 4mo ago7/11 is still 30-50% more expensive than the supermarkets, so irrespective of how affluent people are, it's a poor choice. I used 'exchange rate' because not only is the yen weak, but the USD seems pretty strong - I guess it depends on where in the US you are from, but as a Brit, US feels expensive to me, Japan feels cheap, ergo Americans must find Japan even cheaper than I do.
- firefax 4mo agoI ate a lot 7/11 onigiri as a poor grad student exploring Tokyo on a long layover once... they're truly wonderful little stores. (They also are one of the few places you can use an ATM, very useful given how cash based Japan is) He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face. Rest in power sir.
- decimalenough 4mo agoThis is a bit out of date. These days basically any ATM allows foreign cards, just in time for Japan to finally switch to electronic payments in a big way (in particular PayPay).
- Larrikin 4mo agoMost let you use them, the post office and 7-11 had the lowest fees
- ak217 4mo agoYes. The payments landscape has shifted pretty dramatically in Japan over just the past 3 years. It used to be that you had to worry about getting cash, IC cards, refilling said IC cards, going to an actual bank with your passport, etc. Now all you need is an iPhone (although I hear Android phones from outside Japan still can't use suica).
- nyx 4mo agoI was in Japan recently and did find that my non-Japanese Pixel phone wasn't allowed to use the mobile Suica app, even though the hardware supports it. Some nerds on XDA figured out the mechanism preventing it[0], and if you're rooted it seems like you can run a Magisk module to patch the region check in the PixelNfc component[1]. I guess it's down to licensing for the FeliCa smart card system or something? I will say, as a privacy person, I'm pretty jealous of the ubiquity of IC card payments there. You can buy the card at a kiosk with zero KYC and top it up with cash at the same kiosk. Since it's a stored-value system, it works offline, and you get the convenience of paying with a card with nearly all of the anonymity of paying with cash. [0] https://xdaforums.com/t/global-pixel-device-unlock-felica-suica-pasmo-payment-root-required.4706218/ https://xdaforums.com/t/global-pixel-device-unlock-felica-su... [1] https://github.com/jjyao88/unlock-felica-pixel https://github.com/jjyao88/unlock-felica-pixel
- satvikpendem 4mo agoI wonder how 7/11 in the US will change now that the Japanese version bought out the US version. Will we actually have hot and prepared food like Japan? I doubt it, seems the supply chain infrastructure just isn't there.
- soared 4mo ago7/11 has always had hot pizza, fried chicken, rollers, etc in my area?
- mgiampapa 4mo ago7/11 Japan has been running the stores in Hawaii for ages, just look there.
- kelnos 4mo agoThe stores in Hawaii are certainly nicer and more full-featured than the ones on the US mainland, but the stores in Japan and Taiwan are still light-years ahead.
- Larrikin 4mo agoIt's been fully owned by the Japanese company for over 20 years
- m463 4mo agoI was in 7/11 in the US and they sell egg sandwiches. coincidence?
- jmward01 4mo agoHaving spent a significant amount of time in Japan, 7/11 there is an experience the rest of the world needs to know.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoAlternate link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/asia/711-japan-founder-dies-intl-hnk https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/asia/711-japan-founder-dies-i... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48263423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48263423) NYT Obit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/toshifumi-suzuki-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/toshifumi-suzuki...
- dreamcompiler 4mo agoI almost never go to a 7/11 in the US but every time I go to Japan I visit a 7/11 at least once a day. No matter where you are in Japan there's likely a 7/11 within walking distance and besides the usual assortment of drinks and snacks you can get quick full meals there of high quality. https://thisis-japan.com/7-eleven-japan-guide-2025/ https://thisis-japan.com/7-eleven-japan-guide-2025/
- Klonoar 4mo agoConbini meals only register as "high quality" to you because your comparison point (e.g, American 7-11) is an abysmal excuse for food. The food is, in reality, not that special.
- rjh29 4mo agoThe first few years in Japan I loved combini food because of the novelty. Then you realise it's still processed crap loaded with chemicals and usually nutritionally poor (lots of rice, very little veg or protein) barely better than supermarket "ready meals" (or bento/souzai) and more expensive. It's the honeymoon effect I guess.
- klausa 4mo agoThis hot take, along with the "oh you can get better chicken than FamiChiki almost anywhere in Japan", drives me _nuts_, even as I live in Tokyo. Yes! There are better options available if I want to sit down for a meal, or even just wait for a couple of minutes for someone to fry me a piece of chicken to order. That's _not the point_! Both the SEJ meals, and FamiChiki, are _fantastic_ for what they are — available in literally tens of thousands of locations across the country, and available _instantly_, 24/7. They're both _not that special_ if you compare them to a "real" restaurant (though, and I will die on this hill, FamiChiki is hands-down better than a good ~80% of chicken I would get in a restaurant in my home country; but that's a somewhat different conversation). But if you compare them with convenience store meals available elsewhere in the world (especially in the broadly understood West), they still _are_ pretty damn special. (And don't get me started on the 7-11 frozen pizzas from Da Isa. Those, reheated in a Balmuda also clear a good 75% of "real" pizzerias back home, and not because pizzerias in Berlin or Warsaw are particularly bad!)
- arjie 4mo agoThe local stores in Japan and Taiwan are really nice. 7/11 and Family Mart are these pleasant places where you can see schoolchildren sitting chatting and eating. That’s not something you’d see in San Francisco. You’ll see adults with children sometimes at Whole Foods, which is nice, but unattended children not so much.
- UncleOxidant 4mo ago> but unattended children not so much. But that's down to larger cultural differences. Japanese schoolchildren probably get less supervision overall than their US counterparts.
- AznHisoka 4mo agoI’ve seen little children take the subway alone in Japan. Its a completely different environment
- vkou 4mo agoOr walk home from school, or the playground, or wherever they are going from, through the middle of what in any NA city would be described as 'downtown', and would get CPS dispatched on speed-dial.
- ShinTakuya 4mo agoFor what it's worth, this is commonplace in Australia too. I feel like you're describing a general safe country thing. I've lived in Japan so I know it's probably one of the safest places in the world, but I feel like what this thread describes is more US/Canada/some Euro countries being particularly dangerous, and not Japan being uniquely safe.
- vkou 4mo agoCanada is not particularly dangerous, but it has a horrible case of being drowned out by American culture (which strongly influences Canadians' subjective perceptions of their environs), and having the same kind of problematic urban planning as the United States.
- thr1owaway9621 4mo agoJapanese 7-11 is a fascinating story. Here is decent video on Youtube that goes into the history of the company, and why 7-11s are so different in the US and Japan (tldr: it's the core culture/infrastructure differences): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EH4VmxMAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EH4VmxMAo
- kmbl 4mo ago> The company's forays into Internet marketing began with a bookselling partnership with Softbank and a book wholesaler in 1999; most books are paid for and picked up at local Seven-Elevens. The next year he engineered a $375 million partnership with NEC, Nomura Research, and Sony, called 7-dream.com, that promised to offer 100,000 products and services over the Internet. I was living in Japan around 2008 and remember buying concert tickets and picking them up a conbini after purchasing online. I don't remember whether it was a 7 Eleven or Lawsons, but maybe it was a result of this.
- ronnier 4mo agoMany don't realize 711 was started in Dallas, Texas (by Joe C. Thompson). 711 is an interesting part of American and Japan culture
- TurdF3rguson 4mo agoPour out a little Big Gulp.
- paradiseluck 4mo agoMight be appropriate with a Pokari sweat or 196, but would love to try a Japanese take on big gulps.
- Svip 4mo agoApparently, the three 7-Eleven stores with the highest revenue are all located in Denmark[0], two of which are located at Copenhagen Central. [0] https://www.retailnews.dk/article/view/1178986/6000_kunder_om_dagen_gor_den_danske_7eleven_til_nummer_et_i_verden https://www.retailnews.dk/article/view/1178986/6000_kunder_o... (Danish)
- krial 4mo agoDoesn’t surprise me. Had a layover in Copenhagen and they charged $7 for a coke.
- QGeometry 4mo agoI lived in a city with the highest density of 7-11s per capita. There was a 7-11 at almost every street corner. 7-11s in the US are day and night from those in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Can you imagine you could pay your utility bills, print documents, fax and even have a full wifi cafe experience all under one roof? In Japan, Lawson is probably more popular though.
- amd_dev 4mo ago[flagged]
- dilawar 4mo agoI was amused today when Morty was praising 7-eleven in s0901.
- akoboldfrying 4mo agoI read the entire article, including such gems as > Suzuki was always known for being hard on staff and I'm left wondering: Why is any of this interesting to someone who is not in Mr. Suzuki's family or circle of friends?
- sumedh 4mo agoCan confirm what others have posted, i tried some random snacks/sweets in some of the 711 stores in Japan and they were really good, for some reason I was not expecting it to be so good.