OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Is the Chicago area ready for a giant Slurpee and an enormous hen? Is anyone?
The first public display of the marriage of 7-Eleven Inc. and White Hen Pantry since the Dallas-based company purchased the venerable Chicago-area chain in August will be a sizable one. A float in this week's nationally televised McDonald's Chicago Thanksgiving Day Parade will feature a costumed Slurpee and mascot-sized hen.
The display will be White Hen and 7-Eleven folks together doing something that benefits the communitya visible [image-nocss] manifestation of the cooperation and the integration, public relations director Margaret Chabris told CSP Daily News.
The participation in the parade follows 7-Eleven's deal with the Chicago White Sox to have their home night games begin at 7:11 p.m. And Chabris promised more such publicity moves, as 7-Eleven Inc. surges ahead with nationwide store upgrades, in-store signage reduction, its own brand of gasoline and decides in the coming months how to most effectively combine the 7-Eleven and White Hen brands.
Nancy Smith, who is leading the 13-member integration teamhalf of whom have taken the task on full-timesaid other than White Hen's foodservice acumen, she has been most taken with the chain's close ties to its customers. They have a very good relationship with most of the communities they do business with, said Smith, who was vice president of 7-Eleven's Great Lakes division before the White Hen purchase. The franchise owner is involved in their community, and the operations group and the marketing group in the White Hen office has done a really nice job of helping the franchisee, enabling them to be able to get involved with chambers of commerce and local events.
She added, They really have had the opportunity to really be that strong regional player and really be that hometown favorite, or have a strong hometown background because they're based here in Chicago. And I think they've leveraged that very well. Their strength in the community and how their individual operator has kind of embraced that is very impressive.
Smith said as of mid-November 7-Eleven has had several meetings with White Hen franchisees to offer them a future as a 7-Eleven franchisee. None had signed on, but it was very early, she said, adding that 7-Eleven will honor the White Hen franchise agreements if any choose to not join 7-Eleven.
Many White Hen franchisees have a tremendous amount of tenure, said Smith, so the stiffest challenge may simply be convincing them that change can be good. Changes could include rebranding, remodeling and a switch to 7-Eleven's proprietary retailer initiative system (RIS) for SKU management.
Three years down the road, four years down the road, the pole sign, the store, the brand in Chicago, will be 7-Eleven, Smith said. Inside of that, we're going to be talking to customers about what they value at White Hen, what they value at 7-Eleven. What can we learn from the White Hen fresh-food program? Is there a brand inside White Hen that we can continue to use? All those kinds of questions we don't have nailed down yet, so I can't tell you that White Hen brand is totally going away, because today I don't know that.
She concluded, Squinting down the road, I think it'll be the 7-Eleven pole sign up front, but could there be something else that the customers told us they really value that we hang onto; I think that's very possible.
[For more on how 7-Eleven is changing its stores, watch for the January issue of CSP magazine.]
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