I'm in California -- I love the konbinis in Japan, and while 7-Eleven's recent announcements to offer more konbini-like food and experience sounds great, I fear it's going to fall far short of the mark because I think it's a combination of ingredients, supply chain, and employee processes and practices. Like, all those things need to be on point to deliver a quality onigiri or egg salad sandwich, and I don't have a whole lot of confidence in the US-based 7-Elevens to deliver without massive changes.
(And to be clear, I don't think there has been any mention of onigiri appearing at US-based 7-Eleven, they have have announced better/different prepared sandwich offerings)
Same here as well.
Part of the charm of konbinis (and Japan to an extent) is the friendly atmosphere. Foods are fresh (delivered daily and inventory churn is consumer friendly) and people working at these places (despite being not high-paying) have higher level of care of how customers are treated. 7-11 here by comparison are... definitely not that.
Sure they're ~120 JPY-240JPY. But it wouldn't be the same price. Plus would they really sell them in the USA?
Same for more of the other options, I don't see it really happening. There's a reason hotdogs, nachos and whatever else they offer in USA is the norm. That's what the market takes and settles on and even then, it's over $5.
I think in many metros they could have a market esp if they did some sort of anime tie in.
But then again there are alternatives, e.g. Chipotole which I think is the only mainstream popular segment of rice in a meal to taco bell.
That’s how bad food inflation has been. It’s challenging at this point to get a lunch cheaper than C$15.