Hacker News Reader

Comment by grozzle | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Japanese convenience store sandwiches are that much better than those from Spar, Mace, Tesco, Boots etc in the UK and Ireland, so I have to wonder how bad things are back home for the presumably American intended audience when all these kinds of articles invariably start with something about how shocking it is to even contemplate eating 7-11 food.

(Also a bit out of date, the tax is now 10% and must be included in the price printed on the product or shelf.)

View on HN

I get egg salad sandwiches at gas stations pretty often.

My friends are appalled, but nothing is wrong with the sandwich.

Certain types of jobs I've worked (construction, lawn care), the guys make heavy use of gas station meal options (hot dogs especially).

Which gas station has the best egg salad sandwich?

Where I am, Cumberland Farms and Seasons are pretty good.

I don't buy them often enough to notice any trends, sorry. They all seem about the same. Sometimes a corner seems stale or something.

I was under the impression they're just delivered on a truck from a third party. I don't think the station (or brand of station) makes them.

I love SuperAmerica hot dogs!

My favorite are at CircleK. It's not the hot dog necessarily, but the nice ones have a good, fresh toppings center. It has coleslaw, and that's my favorite to put on top.

lol, thank you for posting this. I love those gas station egg salad sandwiches and any time I buy one with friends present I always get roasted.

I must also share, "how it's made - pre-packaged sandwiches": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_hnmHWEcg

This video has always fascinated me because this particular factory appears to operate "just in time" for many clients. Always wondered if it's just this one place making all these types of gas station sandwiches in America.

I like getting prepackaged sandwiches at my local grocery store. They're usually fresh and are more likely to have better turnover than a gas station. If you splurge a little the deli-counter sandwiches are usually good too.

eh! There's a certain amount of snobbishness in a lot of these articles. Sure, some of them are probably justified in their disgust, but let's not paint with a broad brush. The midwest has a regional(?) gas station chain called Kwik-Trip and I think their hot foods (fried chicken, potato puffs, etc.) are delicious. Never tried their sandwiches but they look pretty good.

Don't know what that says about me, but I really don't care :-)

Kwik-Trip is regional. They have a bunch in Wisconsin, but I haven’t seen any in Ohio.

Kwik Trip's the best gas station in town for hot food, bagged milk, and bananas. It seems to be working; most people I know prefer to go there over other local convenience stores.

Casey's (based in Iowa) has been moving into Kwik Trip's territory in the last few years, but despite Casey's bright, clean stores and some excellent gummi pizza slice candies, Kwik Trip is still king.

Casey's sandwiches (made fresh, to order) are surprisingly good and so's their pizza.

I'd heard about their pizza but not the sandwiches, interesting!

Kwik Trip has basically been taking over Minnesota, even though we have plenty of Casey’s. It’s incredible how many they’re building.

Pret a Manger is something I look forward to when travelling in the states. We don't have them where I live but they have that same appeal this article alludes to. If that adds anything to the understanding.

The only problem is that a Pret sandwich in the US is about 8x as expensive as a full meal from a Japanese gas station.

Have you been to a 7-11 in the US? I would be quite shocked to hear anyone contemplate eating much of the food if they could afford not to. Nothing at _all_ like the ones in Japan.

The way my parents tell it, 7-11 was actually decent in the US in the 90s. Set up an international division with quality goods; then the P&E thing happened where the international division got sold off and the US operation was stripped to bare bones and it's never been the same since.

Funny enough, it was bought by a Japanese company "Ito-Yokado".

Note that 7-11 in Japan and 7-11 in the US don't share anything beyond the logo. They have been completely separate businesses since forever.

Most of the US that I know of there are regional convenience stores with decent enough food. I'll take a Wawa sandwich over anything in the article.

UK supermarket sandwiches are horribly mediocre and look nothing like what's pictured in the article.

The triangle sandwich of the UK high street is its own unique thing. It’s not particularly good, but it is culturally distinct. I have a soft spot for them. Tuna and sweetcorn; cheese and pickle: these are cultural artifacts.

A kiosk at the railway station in Germany will serve you an objectively good sandwich. Why doesn’t someone globalize the EU railway kiosk?

Probably because fresh quality produce costs less on the continent.

This said, Upper Crust is that attempt.

eh. Seem on a par, to me. per jnsie's comment elsewhere on this page, perhaps it's just England / the mainland that has bad ones, they're good north and south of the border in Ireland.

As someone with extensive UK sandwich experience, and extensive experience of being victim to sandwiches in the article, bad UK train station sandwiches win hands-down.

If you thought the bread was bad, the bread of the Lawson, 7-11, FamilyMart et al is far worse: Anemic, textureless, tasteless. I have no idea how the author could consider 'chewy' as an adjectivein describing it.

Fillings are an odd affair. Personally I prefer jam over an out of season strawberry. Fillings are also nothing as appetising as mentioned in the article. A sliver of tasteless ham, trimmed exactly to be on price target with perhaps one half leaf of iceberg lettuce. The port cutlet option nothing like mentioned, more like a few lumps of mainly breadcrumb, the off piece of meat.

Hitting a very narrow price range is what these sandwiches are all about. A very very narrow price band. This in true end to end supply chain, and is what Japanese convenience stores Excel at. No produce is on the shelves for a few hours. The microwave rice and noodle dishes are similarly precisely engineered. That there are three and three quarter mushrooms in your dish is no rounding error, that's the exact amount there's supposed to be based on all the costs and associated costs of three and three quarter mushrooms.

Saviour your decidedly mediocre UK train station sandwich. You could have far worse. You could have a Lawson or 7-11 one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com