The parent company of convenience store giant 7-Eleven is cutting nearly 900 corporate jobs at the chain's Texas headquarters as well as at Speedway's corporate office in Ohio in a restructuring process tied to its $21 billion acquisition of the Speedway business.
Seven & I Holdings Co., the world’s largest convenience store retailer and parent company of 7-Eleven, purchased Speedway's 3,800 stores in the United States and Canada in 2020 from Marathon Petroleum Corp. Not long after the deal closed, 7-Eleven sold 293 retail gas stations across 20 states after regulators said the deal violated antitrust laws. With the deal, the Japan-based parent of 7-Eleven operates about 9,000 stores in the United States, making it the largest convenience store chain in the country.
The deal also put the convenience store giant, known for its Slurpee and Big Gulp brands, on the path to integrating the Speedway business with the company founded in Dallas nearly a century ago as an icehouse selling bread, milk and eggs for customers on the run. Today, gas demand, which accounts for a big part of 7-Eleven's business, is projected to slow as high prices and supply chain disruptions further affect the industry.
"We are just over a year into our integration process following the $21 billion Speedway acquisition and have made significant progress," a 7-Eleven spokesperson told CoStar News in an emailed statement. "As with any integration, our approach includes assessing our combined organization structure."
As a result of the integration, the company has reduced its workforce by 880 associates who worked in support centers and field support operations in Irving, Texas, and in Enon, Ohio, the spokesperson said. The integration process, slowed by COVID-19, is now complete, according to the company, which added it is "finalizing the go-forward organization structure" for its combined business.
"These decisions have not been made lightly, and we are working to support impacted employees, including providing career transition services," the 7-Eleven spokesperson added.
The spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions from CoStar News about how many employees were affected at each office or if this would affect its corporate office footprint.
At its headquarters in Irving, 7-Eleven has a 325,000-square-foot office building, which was constructed for the company in 2016 for its 1,250 employees at the time. The company moved to Irving from its former headquarters in downtown Dallas with the help of economic incentives from the city of Irving. Speedway's headquarters in Enon, along Speedway Drive, is nearly 140,000 square feet.
7-Eleven leases its office space in Irving, which is in Cypress Waters, a master-planned development by Dallas-based Billingsley Co. Speedway's office building in Ohio is owned by Marathon Petroleum, according to CoStar data.
Meanwhile, demand for gas is expected to slow with supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine and high prices further affecting the industry already reeling from the impacts of the pandemic, according to the International Energy Agency. The agency recently downgraded its gas demand growth in the coming years in part because of weaker economic activity, the agency's report stated.