It isn't often that I get to travel to mainstream places.

Way down in lower Manhattan at the corner of John and Pearl (near the South Street Sea Port)

7-Eleven is about to open the first of their "Next Gen" stores.

I'm here to setup the kiosks and kitchen systems.

Getting ready to open...

Its as sexy as a convenience store gets.

A little Warhol influence tries to make a kitchy neighborhood vibe.

Instead of having Amazon ship your stuff to your door where [in NYC] your neighbor will steal it, have it shipped to your local convenience store.
Cool idea.
As you chill with your custom mocha and free wifi, take in some news and weather.

Subway system alerts are new to me.
Never thought about that before.

We open and people head straight to the kitchen area for a specialty coffee.

The rest of the offering is pretty trendy - and supportive of this NYC burb.

By the time 11am rolls around and the free Slurpees start pouring, the line of customers snakes through the store.

A fair amount of people hang around to order some fresh food from the kitchen.
It was a top-secret project. It was about a week before the trade magazines caught wind of it, but it made quite a stir once that finally hit.
Yeah, I know I serve a strange subsegment of retail, but I've learned to dig it.