Maybe if Starbucks just sold Slurpees and Big Gulps, they wouldn't be shuttering 600 locations throughout the U.S. and A. -- including novelist Brendan McNally's favorite Lower Greenville location. Because GlobeSt.com this morning brings news that Dallas-based 7-Eleven, Inc. is looking to expand the brand by hitting the 300-location milestone in the DFW alone by year's end.
Doesn't really have far to go; there are already 245 locations around town, all .2893 of a mile from your place of residence. Says the man with the plan for local domination, it'll happen "through acquisitions, ground-up and franchise opportunities." Speaking of writers with a love-hate relationship with chains, sociologist and author Grant McCracken once had this to say about thanking the heavens: A 7-Eleven is "a shrine to processed food, bad service, aesthetics without mercy, design without shame." But what's his point? --Robert Wilonsky