7-Eleven's arrival in Winnipeg 50 years ago

© 2019, Christian Cassidy (updated 2024)

 October 8, 1969, Winnipeg Free Press

Recently, some Winnipeg 7-Elevens, including the Ellice at Arlington store and the Ellice at Maryland store, have reduced their operating hours from 24 hours a day down to 5 a.m. to midnight. This is close to the 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. the stores had fifty 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 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 a "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 to a new location.

Top: Winnipeg store locations in 1972. Bottom: "select stores" in October 1978

At least seven new stores opened in 1971. 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 for Christmas Day. The staffing complement 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 and 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 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, Southland Corporation 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 could not open the store's safe. They also removed posters from store windows so that the interiors could be better seen at night, provided better staff training, and included 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 to 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 company claimed that since its implementation 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

There were 23 overnight 7-Eleven stores by January 1978 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 that concluded 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.

Henderson defended his report in person at the environment committee's January 16, 1978 meeting. 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 could to prevent some types of crime and agreed with 7-Eleven's legal counsel, who also appeared at the meeting, that store managers were as much the victims of "rowdyism" as area residents.

The committee voted not to support a ban but asked bylaw officials and police to monitor complaints and report back to them in six months.

January 31, 1980, Winnipeg Tribune

Even though 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 disappeared, but due to the sheer number of new 24-hour 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 and international retail chains for 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 needed which made robbing a 7-Eleven less lucrative.

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 41 years later in 2019 is that point.

2024 7-Eleven Update: That Ellice at Maryland store closed in 2020 and news came in August 2024 that up to ten more Winnipeg 7-Elevens could close by the end of the year due to violence and theft.

Also in August 2024, news came that Alimentation Couche-Tard has made an estimated $30 USD bid to buy 7-Eleven from its now Japanese corporate owners. Couche-Tard operated the Mac's Milk chain of stores in English Canada before rolling them into their Circle K brand a few years back. For more on that chain, see my post Farewell Mac's Milk.

Source: Slurpee.ca

SLURPEE BONUS: You can't write about 7-Eleven in Winnipeg and not include something about Slurpees !

Slurpees likely appeared in Canadian stores as soon as they opened in 1969. According to a September 1996 feature article in the Fort Worth (Texas) Star Telegram that also ran in the Winnipeg Free Press, 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.

Since the first Canadian stores followed the format of the American ones, it is likely that they included Slurpee machines as well, though no mention of the drink can be found in ads or 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.