Turmoil In The Leadership Ranks

7-Eleven has a lot of work to do before it’s ready to debut on Wall Street. Currently, a transition team of co-CEOs are leading the company following the retirement of Joseph DePinto at the end of last year, after 20 years at the helm.

Stan Reynolds, who’s been with the company since 1997, rising to president in 2023, and Doug Rosencrans, on board since 2010 and COO since 2022, will share the top job until a permanent replacement is found.

Since DePinto’s departure, SEI has experienced a leadership brain drain across critical corporate functions. Senior vice president of operations, Tony Harris, left the company in February and chief merchandising officer, Jesus Delgado-Jenkins, followed shortly after.

Rosencrans will be assuming the responsibilities in the interim, leading C-Store Dive to speculate, “Rosencrans’ growing responsibilities make him a possible front-runner to become 7-Eleven’s next CEO.”

However, Hawksnest Group’s John B.R. Long begs to differ from his vantage point as C-suite executive recruitment advisor for over 30 years and author of Hire Without Ego. The co-CEO structure is usually done when there isn’t a clear CEO-in-Waiting,” he shared.

In the meantime, Rosencrans is stretched thin, juggling an increased number of responsibilities, especially after leaders in SEI’s marketing department have also headed for the door.

Mario Mijares, vice president of marketing, loyalty and monetization, left earlier this month, as did Marissa Eddings, the head of brand, advertising, media, in-store marketing and 7-Eleven’s in-house creative agency. Mijares had been with the company since 2020 and Eddings for eight years.

7-Eleven needs an IPO to fuel its transformation plans, but it also needs a stable leadership team to carry it forward, which is shaky at best. Note: SEI did not respond to my request for comment by publication time.

In announcing DePinto’s retirement, Stephen Dacus, president and CEO of Seven & i Holdings said, “Our goal is to further advance our transformation efforts, unlock SEI’s full potential, redefine convenience, and bring the 7-Eleven experience to even more customers across the North American market.”

Since then, the goalpost has moved farther away.

Playing Catch Up

With the IPO pushed to fiscal 2027 “at the earliest,” the company stated, it’s got more than executive slots to fill. It’s got to get on the front foot when it comes to food services.

Foodservice sales have exploded in the convenience store sector over the past two decades, rising from 12% of in-store sales in 2004 to nearly 30% in 2024 and 40% of gross margin—compared with fuel at 65% of sales but only 11% gross profit, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.

While 7-Eleven doesn’t report product-specific sales, its transformation plan hinges on rolling out large-format stores with more space for foodservice and private-label. However, it has lagged behind more aggressive, faster-moving competitors. Shell ranked number four on NRF’s top 50 fastest-growing retailers list in 2025, with U.S. revenues up 27% after acquiring Timewise (Landmark) and Brewer Oil stores. QuikTrip (up 11%), BP America’s ampm (9%) and Wawa (8%) also made the list.

In addition, a number of major convenience store chains got a head start in food. For example, Wawa opened Wawa Food Stores to sell its milk in the 1960s, only adding fuel in 1994—Forbes reports privately-owned Wawa generated $18.6 billion in 2025. Sheetz also had its roots in diary before moving into fuel—it generated $11 billion last year, according to Forbes. Rutter’s, Cumberland Farms (owned by EG America) and KwikTrip had a similar food-to-fuel trajectory.

“The historical model for convenience, particularly in the U.S., is you use fuel to attract people to your location,” shared Shell’s global manager of convenience retailing operations Richard Garcia with Nielsen NIQ. “That is absolutely changing to the store becoming the destination and while they’re there, you hope they might buy fuel.”

7-Eleven’s Transformation On Simmer

7-Eleven didn’t lean into foodservice in a serious way until 2024, when it introduced its “New Standard” store format in Allen, TX, though at the time, it had just over 1,000 stores featuring one of its quick-service-restaurant banners, including Raise the Roost, Laredo Taco Company and Speedy Café.

The new standard format has a larger footprint, more custom food and beverage offerings, in-store seating and expanded merchandise. In 2025, 7-Eleven announced plans to open 1,300 new stores, most in the new standard format, as well as to double the number of stores with QSRs to 2,100 by 2030.

At the time, then-president Reynolds reported that its food-forward stores deliver 18% higher daily average sales per store than its system average and the company expects the new standard design to generate a 45% higher average sales per store day once the sites mature.

Yet, the scale of the transformation is daunting. Converting thousands of legacy stores to a food-forward model to keep in line with the industry's direction of change will require the capital an IPO would unlock. Only then can 7-Eleven complete its transformation from a place to fill up the tank and grab a cup of coffee and a snack to the kind of destination that Shell’s Garcia described, where a customer comes in for food and convenience and might just top off the gas tank as an afterthought.

On a side note, Circle K owner, Canada-based Alimentation Couche-Tard, attempted to acquire Seven & i in 2024. This prompted antitrust concerns that both number one 7-Eleven and number two Circle K would be forced to divest “hundreds, if not thousands of stores to satisfy antitrust regulators,” according to CSP Daily News.

At the time, Seven & i said it had identified some 2,000 or more overlapping stores that could be shed and Couche-Tard had also compiled a list of stores for possible divestiture. This had numerous smaller operators ready to pick up the pieces.

“I know the acquisition of convenience stores is a better return on investment rather than building new stores,” said Terry Monroe, president and founder, American Business Brokers & Advisor.

In June 2025, Couche-Tard withdrew its acquisition proposal, but the bid underscored just how 7-Eleven’s sheer size and aging store base have become liabilities in an industry redefining itself around food and convenience. For 7-Eleven the transformation it envisions can’t happen on operating cash flow alone—it needs the capital infusion an IPO would provide to keep the company from falling further behind competitors already shaping the future of the convenience store industry.

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