7-Eleven Struck Back Against an Owner Who Took a Day Off
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
As a business owner, I do empathize with him. He wants to be his own boss and make his own hours, but he still needs to keep his commitment or he needs to dissolve it the right way.
As a customer - this would be piss me off so much. There is a 24 hour fitness that I used to go to that closed at 10 pm. HOW IS THAT OKAY?? (this was years ago and still gets me worked up) This is just like that - he wants all the advantages of the franchise but isn't willing to uphold their brand. What's next? He doesn't like the coffee they source because he thinks it is too strong so he waters it down??
We, here at our office desks, are quick to demand that this store or that service is open 24/7.
The guy needed a day off. Go somewhere else and get your chocolate bar.
If he wants a day off then he should take a day off - I don't think 7-11 is setting his working hours or vacation days, but they do expect him to manage his store the way he's agreed to.
That is straight from the FAQ on their franchise site, so they do think it is part of the brand - despite the history of their name, which I'll admit I didn't know - and thank you for the TIL moment.
They care that he closed the store not that he took the day off.
"Man loses franchising rights after violating core aspect of the franchise brand" doesn't have the same ring to it I guess.
The entire point was that as a small franchise owner he has to work 24/7 on the clock every day of the week due to the company off-loading all of the risk and issues onto the owner. You don't see a problem with a company mandating that their employees work every single hour of every single day?
That's not the entire point of being a small franchise owner at all. He is allowed to have and has employees. He is supposed to run a schedule of them to keep the business staffed around the clock. That doesn't mean he has to personally be there for every single hour that it's open! How absurd.
>off-loading all of the risk and issues onto the owner.
There is no offloading of all risk and issues to the business owner. All risk and issues are already inherently the owners. That's what it means to be a business owner. It's how they earn their share of the venture. If things work out you can earn a lot more money than as an employee. If things don't then you crash and burn. That's what you signed up for when you created or bought a business.
>You don't see a problem with a company mandating that their employees work every single hour of every single day?
Sure I do. That's in no way what happened here though. He isn't the employee of 7 Eleven. He is a business owner who has leased their brand in exchange for agreeing to certain terms. He gets more customers because people trust that his business, as a 7 Eleven, will be open all of the time and in exchange he has to be open all of the time. And again, they don't want him personally there 24/7. Just his business open.
An article that was posted to HN last year [1] profiled several convenience store franchise holders who, it sounded like, weren't making enough money to afford employees.
After all, if your country has 1.5 jobs per job seeker, raising wages; and you're only making $20 an hour of sales on the overnight shift, you're going to be losing money on that shift.
Of course, you might argue that a business that marginal should just close down - but if you spent $$$$ setting up, stocking and advertising the store, which might have seemed a good investment before another store opened nearby cutting into your sales, the decision to close down might not be an easy one.
It also says that 7-11 has an "area-dominant strategy" where, essentially, having a high density of franchise stores is their business strategy. That's in contrast to many franchises that include an area of exclusive territory, so there's one successful franchise rather than two struggling ones.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/27/national/behind...
So what, we should adjust the laws, break the contracts and make everyone else jump hoops around him and give him special treatment because he has to make a difficult decision? This is not kindergarten, this is business.
That's their whole shtick. If the owner didn't like it he could have opened a normal grocery store. No one forced him to go to 7-11.
The issue isn't necessarily that they're open 24/7. It's that they offload all of the risk and management of that onto their franchises. If a local 7-Eleven has trouble hiring people to work late night shifts, then the expectation is that the owner is supposed to work it 24/7. You MUST be open 24/7 every single day of the year and as the article demonstrates, shutting down for even a day means losing everything.
I'm not surprised to see people on HN defend such incredibly hostile and toxic work environments, but I am disappointed. Why don't you try working such hours and see how things work out for you and your family?
Yes, that's how franchises work, if they have a requirement in the franchise agreement, you have to keep it. If you don't like it, don't buy the franchise.
In a world where billions of things happen every day, how does a garden-variety franchisee contract dispute in Japan become an article in the New York Times?
This feels like an American MLM scam, just tuned to be actually profitable for the "owner" under normal conditions and therefore sustainable.
(Is this normal for legitimate American etc. franchises too, or is this specific to Japan's setup?)
They had trouble with francisees offering their own menus, having dirty restaurants and more...
Their trick was to become a real estate company who owned the land, and then lease to the franchisee. If there was any problem, they had complete control over the franchise.
That said, as a customer the whole POINT of 7-11 is to be always open. (although I wonder what stores are still open 7am-11pm instead of 24 x 7)
Depending on your local laws, the nearby supermarket might have been selling below cost, so it might not be as huge a pricing discrepancy as you imagine.
In McDonald's the Franchisee's have several different organizations they can join to represent themselves and bring grievances to to corporation. Cost of product is almost always a focus and you'd never be in a situation where you could buy product for cheaper anywhere else due to their scale. It's all about who has the leverage in the situation. I will say that reading that 7-11 offered to buy back all product is a very gracious move on their part. They had no incentive to help him out of the situation he no longer wanted to be in.
Mostly, this guy doesn't seem like an "owner" in the traditional sense to me - he seems to be unable to stock his shelves with inventory from other sources, and he certainly seems unable to set his own hours. He sounds like his work is directed by 7-Eleven. Another common scammy aspect of MLMs is convincing you that you're a small business owner on the path to future profits when you're one of many pawns of the actual business.
OP pretty directly implied it.
My hope was to have a conversation about whether the franchise model is bad in ways that have overtones of scams, or whether MLMs are only scams by virtue of the MLM bit and not because of any of the other behavior that is often called scammy, or any such thing, but apparently that was too much to ask.
Purchasing unrefundable stock is not inventory loading. It does not “resemble an MLM” in a meaningful way - you might as well say that any company that offers a recruiting bonus to employees resembles an MLM.
If you want to talk about predatory business practices, there’s plenty of it around in the franchise model. When you keep saying “like an MLM” you sound like you think these attributes are specific to MLMs.
Also, I find something incredibly cozy about my city going to sleep at night. Almost nothing is open, not even most convenience stores, and I just find that so cozy.
Calling medicine that is potentially life-saving purchases at 3am "trivial" is unnecessarily cruel even for HN. Yes, 7-Eleven sells a lot of medicine that can save someone's life that they might not "stock up on" because they have insufficient money to stock up on every possible medicine and plan for every possible event.
In reality, those who work those shifts are often people who don't have much of a choice where to work, much less which hours they're assigned. Sometimes managers will be nice and keep you on a regular shift so you develop a sane sleep schedule -- not usually.
Just like working on holidays, I don't bemoan anyone who wants to eat fast food, or the workers who want to make a little more money. But let's not ignore that these workers' economic situations are different than ours and usually much more dire, so talking about what they "want" can't really be divorced from the systems that keep them in relative (and actual) poverty.
There is room for a night time economy based around the people and services that run while you sleep in your standard schedule. Big cities wouldn't be possible without the efforts of people on AM heavy schedules.
In Germany you can't work on Sundays. I always wanted to work on Sundays as a student, Fridays and Saturdays were worse, since that's the only days where most social gatherings happen.
On the news I hear people saying they don't want to force people to work on Sundays. I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, not everybody is the same.
I even agree we need limits. But how about limiting it to working 5 days a week, instead of picking an arbitrary day where you can't work.
Not earning is worse.
Try that in Australia and you'll find yourself in a rental car with no petrol, in the middle of no where with no food!
I find it mind blowing, and pretty damning of the culture of shame in Japan that the number of work related suicides is more than double the amount of work related hospitalizations. How doesn't this get more attention?