Dallas-based 7-Eleven offers behind-the-scenes tour to few media outlets

by Teresa Gubbins

Gaining entry into the food-production facility of Dallas-based 7-Eleven may not be as difficult as penetrating the Pentagon, but it's no cakewalk, either. For a few hours on Monday April 21, 7-Eleven's marketing department opened a few doors for a media tour, to showcase its bakery, sandwich-making, and distribution facilities at its commissary in Lewisville.

Representatives from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, D Magazine, Fox 4, and Pegasus News (inexplicably, the Dallas Morning News declined) spent two hours observing the facilities while 7-Eleven managers described the systems and processes in place to assemble and deliver food to stores.

According to the company's statement, more than 5,500 7-Eleven stores across the U.S. and Canada place and receive daily orders for prepared foods and bakery products from local third-party commissary kitchens and bakeries based in the very neighborhoods of the stores they serve. These market areas include: Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Boston, Chicago, South Bend, Philadelphia, Delaware, New Jersey, Long Island, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, Tidewater and Northern areas of Virginia, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Reno-Lake Tahoe, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Portland, and Seattle. In Canada, markets served by similar facilities are Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnepeg and Toronto."

In Dallas, the partner companies are Bakery Express, which produces donuts, cookies, and brownies; and Prime Deli, which takes raw materials such as lettuce, cheese, and bread and makes sandwiches and other pre-prepared foods.

Bakery Express was all about conveyors, transporting rows of donuts, eclairs, cinnamon twists, etc. through rising, baking, sugar-sprinkling, and icing. Is this a good time to mention that glazed and chocolate-frosted donuts are among the most popular items sold? Ingredients were simple but required lots of labor and attention. The converse is true at Prime Deli, where the cost lies in the ingredients -- bread, lettuce, meat, etc. -- and all they do is assemble them.

There are 13 commissary facilities that make fresh food for 7-Eleven stores in the U.S., with 19 combined distribution centers that delivery food to the stores daily.