(C) 2019, Christian Cassidy
October 8, 1969, Winnipeg Free Press
Recently, some Winnipeg 7-Elevens, including Ellice and Arlington and Ellice and Maryland, have reduced their operating hours from 24 hours a day down to 5 am to midnight. This is pretty close to the 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. the stores had 50 years ago when the chain first came to Winnipeg.
Here's a look back at the opening of the first 7-Eleven stores in Winnipeg 50 years ago and its battle to remain a 24-hour chain.
Winnipeg's first Sev on Dale Boulevard, Charleswood (Google Street View)
John P. Thompson, president of the Dallas, Texas based Southland Corporation, announced in April 1969 that its 7-Eleven convenience store chain would enter the Canadian market later that year with stores in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg. It had already scouted some locations and set up a Canadian subsidiary to run them.
The chain would use the same custom-designed 2,000 square foot store as many of its 3,000 or so U.S. locations. The layout and product selection, which contained groceries such as a fresh produce section but no fresh meat, would be identical at each outlet which was part of the convenience for customers.
October 28, 1969, Winnipeg Free Press
Southland Corporation partnered with local development company Ruttan Investment Corporation to acquire land and build the stores on their behalf. The locations were then leased to franchisees.
The first Winnipeg site chosen was on Dale Boulevard in Charleswood as part of the first phase of development of the Westdale Shopping Centre. It was opened by Charleswood mayor Arthur Moug on October 27, 1969. (Stores in Alberta opened earlier that summer, so this wasn't Canada's first 7-Eleven.)
Stores under construction as of December 1969 were: 772 Mountain Avenue at Arlington Street and 438 St Anne's Rd at Sadler Avenue. In 1970, new stores were added at 55 Nassau in the 55 Nassau Apartment block and at 1393 Henderson Highway at Sutton Avenue.
55 Nassau is interesting as it was the only store not in a stand-alone building. It proved unprofitable and in 1973 was closed. Southland turned the space into "sandwich factory" making up to 900 sandwiches a day for shipment to 7-Eleven and Mac's Milk stores around the city.
Residential tenants complained about the smell of meat and condiments and it turned out that the factory didn't have the proper zoning to operate there. It received a warning from the city but continued to churn out sandwiches until the company was slapped with a $1,000 fine in 1974. Soon after, the factory was moved on to a new location.
Top: Winnipeg store locations in 1972. Bottom: "select stores" in October 1978
In 1971, at least seven new stores came on board. They included: 411 Aberdeen Avenue at Salter Street, 3021 Ness Avenue at Mount Royal Street; 244 Dalhousie Drive at Silverstone Avenue; 815 Ellice Avenue at Arlington Street; St. Mary's Road at St. Michael's Road; Portage Avenue at Woodbridge and Main at Bannerman. (By the end of 7-Eleven's first decade in Winnipeg it boasted around 40 locations.)
Initially, the stores were open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day except Christmas Day. The staffing compliment for each store was small enough to fly below the radar of Manitoba’s Lord’s Day Act.
By October 1972, there were more than twenty 7-Eleven stores in Greater Winnipeg and eight of them stayed open 24-hours. It was a risky proposition as the robbery rate was high. By that time, just nine months into the year, there had already been at least 11 overnight hold-ups at 7-Eleven stores.
The general manager of the Econo chain of convenience stores from Ontario said Winnipeg was one of its worst cities for overnight robberies with eight holdups at their stores by that point. Mac’s Milk tried a six-month experiment of having one of its stores stay open overnight, but ended it after the store was robbed three times.
Still, 7-Eleven continued to expand its 24-hour format. By March 1976, 27 of its 37 Winnipeg stores operated around the clock whilst the other ten were open from 8 a.m. to midnight or 1 a.m.. (At the time, 7-Eleven had 110 Canadian stores.)
The general manager of the Econo chain of convenience stores from Ontario said Winnipeg was one of its worst cities for overnight robberies with eight holdups at their stores by that point. Mac’s Milk tried a six-month experiment of having one of its stores stay open overnight, but ended it after the store was robbed three times.
Still, 7-Eleven continued to expand its 24-hour format. By March 1976, 27 of its 37 Winnipeg stores operated around the clock whilst the other ten were open from 8 a.m. to midnight or 1 a.m.. (At the time, 7-Eleven had 110 Canadian stores.)
Dec 18, 1970, Winnipeg Free Press
The Winnipeg Police department certainly noticed the overnight stores. It took a six-month sample of data in 1975 that showed 37% of its calls to convenience stores for criminal matters took place between the hours of midnight and 8 a.m.. These 320 or so calls were a strain on its overnight service and police chief Norm Stewart recommended to the Police Commission that there be an overnight curfew for convenience stores.
7-Eleven bristled at the recommendation and district manager Dan Daley appeared at a Police Commission meeting in March 1976 to argue that such a ban would throw hundreds of people out of work at the 37 stores that operated overnight. (Daley told a reporter later that summer that the chain did "about a third" of its business between midnight and 8 a.m..)
As for the security concerns, Daley said that at four of its stores there were security guards on weekends and that they had a security patrol to check on stores at night. He added that its Dallas headquarters was in the midst of putting together a robbery reduction plan that would soon be rolled out to all of its nearly 6,000 North American outlets.
Daley's assurances appear to have bought the chain a reprieve from the Police Commission forwarding the motion to council for a vote.
Later that summer, Southalnd printed thousands of postcards that were left at the tills of 7-Eleven stores. The cards were addressed to city council with a pre-printed message urging councillors to allow the stores to stay open overnight. Customers just had to add their names.
Ray Johnson in Winnipeg in 1980 (G. Bird, Winnipeg Tribune)
The roll-out of the company's robbery prevention plan took place in June 1976. It included signage on store doors indicating that no more than $35 was kept in the till at any one time and that clerks cannot open the safe. They also removed posters from store windows to so that the interiors could be better seen at night, provided better staff training and other measures that the company did not want to share with the media.
One year later, in June 1977, 7-Eleven held a robbery prevention seminar to show police and the media what improvements had been made. It rented space at the Convention Centre, had a Calgary-based public relations firm come make the formal presentation and flew in high profile former U.S. criminal-turned-security-consultant Ray Johnson who helped its U.S. headquarters draft its robbery prevention program.
The gist of their message was that since its implementation a year earlier the robbery prevention plan reduced the number of robberies at its stores by 67%.
Not everyone was impressed. One item some officers spoke out against at the meeting was the claim that a minimum amount of money was kept in the till, noting that robbers knew that wasn't true and routinely made off with hundreds of dollars at each hold-up.
The presentation again took the issue of an overnight ban off the political front burner.
January 17, 1978, Winnipeg Tribune
In January 1978 there were 23 overnight 7-Eleven stores and some service station chains, such as Shell, had begun opening their own 24-hour convenience stores.
That same month, the issue of overnight stores popped up on the agenda of city council's environment committee. Police and city councillors were dealing with an increasing number of complaints from fed-up neighbours about "gangs of youths" gathering at the stores late at night and causing disturbances. (The noise bylaw fell under the environment committee, so they were asked to look into it.)
7-Eleven found a champion at city hall in the form of the city environment commissioner David Henderson. He produced a report for the committee's January meeting which concluded that there was no need for a ban. He wrote that owners had made "considerable efforts" to reduce crime, be it disorderly conduct or robberies, and that between the powers of bylaw officers and police there was already enough legislation in place to handle any situation.
At the January 16, 1978 meeting of the committee Henderson defended his report in person. He pointed out that in recent years the city had been reducing funding to churches and community centres that ran late night programming for teens, so the fact that they were hanging out at convenience store parking lots shouldn't be a surprise. "It may be that we have only ourselves to blame for this," he told councillors.
Henderson said that stores had done what they can to prevent some types of crime and agreed with 7-Eleven's legal counsel, who also appeared at the meeting, that in this case store managers were as much the victims of "rowdyism" as area residents.
The committee voted not to support a ban, but did ask bylaw officials and police to monitor complaints and report back to them in six months.
January 31, 1980, Winnipeg Tribune
Despite the fact that the police still supported an overnight ban the issue appears to have faded in importance as the months and years went on. This wasn't because the problems associated with overnight stores suddenly disappeared, but due to the number of new 24-hours stores that opened in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
To keep up with their competitors, the big gas station chains redeveloped many of their properties to include 24-hour convenience stores which, in turn, prompted other convenience store chains, such as Mac's, to open more 24-hour locations to compete with them. The genie was out of the bottle and fighting multiple national chains over a ban would be a futile battle.
On the robbery front, 7-Eleven officials and Ray Johnson were back in town in January 1980 to show off a new piece of technology that was being installed in its Winnipeg stores. The Timed Access Cash Controller, or TACC-1, solved the issue of stores keeping too much cash on hand through the night. Employees could now deposit large bills and call up change as it needed which made robbing a 7-Eleven much less lucrative for robbers.
In light of the recent closure of the 7-Eleven on William Avenue at Isabel and the reduction in hours at its two Ellice Avenue stores, the words of 7-Eleven lawyer William Palk at that January 1978 environment committee meeting resonate. He was asked if the chain might close or eliminate the overnight hours at stores where crime was the worst. He replied: "there could come a point where it would be impossible to stay open, but we want to be the judge of that."
I guess 2019, 41 years later, is that point.
Source: Slurpee.ca
Slurpees likely appeared in Canadian stores as soon as they opened in 1969. According to a feature article in the Fort Worth (Texas) Star Telegram that also ran in the Winnipeg Free Press in September 1996, Southland began working on their own version of an iced soda drink in 1966 and by 1967 had "Slurpee" machines in all of its American stores.
It can only be assumed that by 1969 they had made it to Canada, though no mention of the drink can be found in local newspaper stories until 1980.
Also in September 1996, likely as a local follow-up to the Star Telegram piece, Free Press reporter Randy Turner did a story on the Slurpee market in Winnipeg. He was surprised to find that the average number of Slurpees sold per store in North America was about 4,500 per month, but in Winnipeg it was 6,800.
In 1999, 7-Eleven began their "Slurpee Capital" marketing campaign and, yes, Winnipeg still tops the sales charts 20 years later.
Today, 7-Eleven has nearly 67,000 locations worldwide including 11,600 in North America
Related:
Farewell Mac's Milk West End Dumplings
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