After expanding its 7Now delivery service with a subscription option for unlimited free deliveries, 7-Eleven has beefed up its quick commerce capabilities by buying a startup.
7-Eleven has reportedly purchased San Antonio-based delivery startup Skipcart, according to a report in The Information that quoted anonymous sources.
Irving-based 7-Eleven didn’t respond to a request to confirm the acquisition and share details. Skipcart also didn’t respond.
Skipcart moved its headquarters to downtown San Antonio from Boerne in April and said it would hire 100 people, according to a report in the San Antonio Express-News. Skipcart at the time said it had 25 employees, 50 contractors working in development jobs and a call center and 150,000 drivers, who are also independent contractors.
The company crowdsources drivers and makes deliveries for grocers, retailers and restaurants, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest.
Similar to competitor DoorDash and Uber Eats, Skipcart’s customers are mostly restaurants and include Whataburger, Chuy’s and Freebirds. It has a growing list of retailers, according to its website.
7-Eleven, GameStop, AutoZone, Albertsons and United Supermarkets are customers, and in July Skipcart added Shopify, which runs the e-commerce platforms for almost 2 million small businesses.
Quick-service, or 30-minute or less deliveries, are a growing segment of the e-commerce business, and 7-Eleven has been building its capabilities under the 7Now brand, which it combined with its 7-Eleven Rewards program. Quick commerce sales reached $20 billion to $25 billion in 2021, according to estimates from Coresight Research.
Competitors also have been expanding to more cities, and Gopuff has made Dallas a priority.
7-Eleven has made major acquisitions of convenience store brands to increase its store count to more than 14,000 in recent years, but it has developed most of its own technology or partnered with delivery services such as DoorDash.
Buying Skipcart may help it not only with technology but geographically with its acquisiton of 3,900 Speedway stores from Marathon. Last month, 7-Eleven cut its corporate workforce by 880 people from both its Irving headquarters and in Ohio as part of a reorganization after its $21 billion purchase of Speedway.
