09/02/2026
Tomorrow! Join us at Buddy's for a night of trivia fun starting at 7pm!
A Hint from our host@natelesher : The company now known as 7-Eleven has a history of being ahead of the curve. Back in 1927, when its founders ran the Southland Ice Company in Texas, an executive recognized the potential of selling basic provisions like milk and bread alongside the ice blocks essential to households before refrigerators were common. With a little company restructuring, the first convenience store chain was up and running. (The name was changed to 7-Eleven, a reference to the hours of operation, in 1946.)
In 1963, 7-Eleven opened its 1,000th store, but a more significant milestone in the convenience store realm was also about to happen. Around this time, according to Oh Thank Heaven!: The Story of the Southland Corporation, one store near the University of Texas campus in Austin became unusually busy in the hours after a school football game, to the point that employees never had a chance to shut the doors for the night. When the situation unfolded again after the next football game, the company's brain trust saw a potentially transformative moment for the business and opened 24-hour shops near Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Meanwhile, another 24-hour experiment was unfolding at a 7-Eleven near the Strip in Las Vegas, a move that increased profits and had the unexpected side effect of deterring burglaries. Eventually, both 7-Eleven and its competitors realized that it wasn't just the amped-up college students and gamblers who sometimes needed a 24-hour pit stop, paving the way for the proliferation of these ever-open outposts to provide soda, chips, and a range of other goodies to help folks everywhere make their way through the night.
