Seven-Eleven Japan to Start Full-Fledged Delivery Service

May 11, 2018

Tokyo- Seven-Eleven Japan Co. said Thursday it will fully start a service to deliver goods from its convenience stores to customers' homes, workplaces and elsewhere in as soon as two hours.

In the new service, customers choose nearby Seven-Eleven stores and place orders for goods available there through smartphones.

A subsidiary of transport company Seino Holdings Co. delivers the ordered products to locations instructed by the customers.

Customers choose from one-hour delivery time slots between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

To use the service, customers need to place at least 1,000 yen in orders each time. The delivery fee stands at 216 yen, but no such fee is charged for orders worth 3,000 yen or more. Only cash payment is accepted for the time being.

Seven-Eleven Japan plans to introduce the delivery service across the country after examining potential demand.

The unit of Seven & i Holdings Co. is testing the service in Sapporo, Hokkaido's capital. The trial will be expanded throughout the northernmost prefecture by August next year.

"This is a service only Seven-Eleven can offer, as we have some 20,000 stores across the country," President Kazuki Furuya said.

Key targets of the service are child-rearing families and elderly people who find it hard to go shopping.

Convenience store operators are eager to fight online shopping malls including Amazon.com Inc. by utilizing their store networks in the real world.

Lawson Inc. runs a service in some areas that allows customers to place orders via smartphones for vegetables, meat and other products that are not usually sold at its stores and collect them at store counters. Jiji Press