As a retail giant with over 85,000 stores worldwide, 7-Eleven has been leading innovations in the convenience store industry since its establishment. Since entering the Chinese market in 1992, it has laid out 4,639 stores across the country through standardized operations. Its product structure, with fresh food accounting for over 30%, and 24-hour service model have made it a benchmark in the convenience store industry.
As the first ray of morning sunlight penetrates the glass curtain walls in Lujiazui, Shanghai, the Dr. Coffee F20 fully automatic coffee machine at 7-Eleven Convenience Store has completed self-inspection, preparing the first cup of freshly ground coffee for office workers during the morning rush hour.
Behind this F20 lies the explosive growth of China's convenience store coffee market — the scale of China's ready-to-drink coffee market is expected to reach 180 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 8%-10%, among which convenience store channels contribute nearly half of the sales volume.
This time, we conducted on-site visits to multiple 7-Eleven chain convenience stores in Shanghai, covering core scenarios from stores in popular tourist attractions to high-traffic subway stations. By observing the actual operation of the stores up close, we deeply analyzed how the Dr. Coffee F20 addresses industry pain points through technological innovation and creates a "freshly ground coffee profit loop" for chain convenience stores like 7-Eleven.
China's chain convenience stores are undergoing a profound transformation from "selling products" to "selling scenarios", and the coffee category has become a key driver of this transformation. Industry data shows that leading brands have successfully driven a significant increase in average customer spending through combined scenarios such as "breakfast + coffee" and "afternoon tea + coffee". The coffee business has become a core engine for convenience stores to increase revenue. However, behind this prosperity, the industry generally faces three major pain points:
1、Operational efficiency bottlenecks amid soaring labor costs
2、The conflict between standardized quality and personalized demands
3、The imbalance between equipment maintenance and large-scale expansion
Stores of chain convenience store brands like 7-Eleven in core business districts face enormous rent and labor cost pressures. Traditional freshly ground coffee requires operation by professional baristas, which increases additional labor input; the limited store space makes the volume and production capacity of equipment a difficult contradiction to reconcile; the 24-hour operation model places extreme demands on equipment stability, and any failure may cause significant revenue losses. Equipment downtime is not uncommon in the industry — a 7-Eleven store in the US once had to take its coffee machine out of service due to hygiene issues, directly affecting normal operations.
Under the pressure of professional coffee brands expanding to lower-tier markets, the gross profit margin of convenience store coffee is facing challenges. How to maintain profitability under the dual pressure of price wars and quality wars has become an important issue for convenience store operations. The application of intelligent equipment points out the direction of technological breakthrough for the industry, which can significantly improve the efficiency of coffee services.
Through precise temperature control and pressure adjustment, the coffee made by the Dr. Coffee F20 always maintains a stable flavor. The equipment adopts a dual grinding system with multiple grinding degree adjustments, and is equipped with a metal brew group to ensure the extraction quality of each cup of coffee. For chain brands, this standardization capability means that a unified coffee experience can be replicated across numerous stores, which is also a quality guarantee that chain convenience store brands like 7-Eleven value particularly.
This is crucial for national chain brands like 7-Eleven — their stores are distributed in cities at different levels, and traditional after-sales services struggle to ensure response speed. Dr. Coffee addresses this problem through the "intelligent early warning + regional service stations" model. The built-in fault diagnosis system of the equipment can provide early warnings, and with the service network covering major cities across the country, it fulfills the service commitment of efficient response.
In response to the "flavor matrix" strategy of convenience stores, which requires equipment to support diversified coffee production and stable quality output, the F20 can flexibly set a variety of basic recipes.
The dual bean hopper design can hold coffee beans from different origins at the same time, allowing stores to flexibly launch differentiated products, such as specialty options like Yunnan bean Americano and Colombian bean Latte;
The adjustable milk foam system can precisely control the density of hot and cold milk foam, providing a hardware foundation for product innovation. Store staff can quickly make adjustments through the operation interface to accurately match local tastes. This flexibility allows 7-Eleven to quickly launch limited-edition products such as Sakura Latte and Iced Coconut Coffee, precisely catering to Gen Z's pursuit of fresh experiences;
If the F20 is matched with Dr. Coffee's P30 powder dispenser and SC10 electronic refrigerator, it can form a comprehensive DIY beverage system — Dr. Coffee F22. The P30 powder dispenser can accurately dispense powders such as chocolate powder and matcha powder, while the SC10 electronic refrigerator ensures the low-temperature storage of fresh milk. The three work together to realize the functions of "one-click production of milk coffee, powder-brewed drinks (such as hot cocoa and Vanilla Latte), and hot/cold milk foam".
