The parent, or 7 and I Holdings, sorry, the parent company of 7-Eleven told it’s investors in their own earnings report exactly what’s happening. And this is in their words, personal consumption began to soften, particularly among low income households as inflation continued away on spending. That’s not an analyst on cable news. That’s the company operating 13,000 convenience stores, telling its shareholders what the registered data is showing. Look, if you don’t want your company to be a part of this, or you want to learn how to crush it in this, I’m gonna put a link down to the profit, the business profit accelerator, and I’m gonna teach you something called FRAP, and it’s going to change everything.

Because the fact of the matter is that these stores that are closing, because quite frankly, money doesn’t exist anymore with their current customers. By the end of this video, you’re going to understand what consumers stopped buying, and why it’s not coming back anytime soon, which American cities are being hit hardest, right? Now, by name, what happens to the property values in school districts when a retail corridor goes dark, and what it means for the neighborhood that you actually live in. Whether you ever set foot in a 7-Eleven or not, it matters. You see, nobody drives to a convenience store on purpose.

You actually are just cruising and you just want a snack, like one of these, right? But now it’s starting to look like this. The convenience store business model runs on what economists call discretionary friction. The spend that happens because you’re already there, you’re getting fuel, you need to go get some air in your tires, and you don’t have a few dollars that aren’t spoken for. Nielsen IQ actually confirmed the collapse that’s happening right now in that actual behavior. 33% of consumers visiting convenience stores, less often, is happening right now before our eyes. One in two cities right now are dealing with these high prices and seeing less and less store foot traffic, because people just don’t have the money.

Convenience store sales are declining in both dollars and volume, and that was reported back in 2025. Prepared food, the category that the industry is best known for is now down to 2%. NACS confirmed transaction counts inside the store are now flat at best. Unit sales down across the top 10 in store categories. Convenience stores saw double the traffic decline of the broader food service industry. But here’s the data point that really tells the deeper story. Upside analyzed 10 billion retail transactions across 21,000 retailers found that a clean split is happening. Households that are earning below $75,000 spent 80 or 18% less at convenience stores year over year.

Households earning above $75,000 a year spent 9% more on fuel and 52% more at convenience stores. The convenience store didn’t die. It fractured along an income line. We’ve seen this in the past with McDonald’s. The upper income customer is spending more. The lower income customer vanished from the transaction data. So you really have to ask yourself, are there more people making over $75,000 a year? And it’s not going to matter. Or are there more people making under $80,000 a year? And is that going to weigh on the actual physical American economy? You know, and you got to add that the stores located in the neighborhoods, right? That depend on that lower income customer are the 645 of them that are actually closing right now.

53% of Americans set a formal budget in 2026, which is up from 46% the year before. The biggest single year jump in Ugov’s tracking history. When a population shifts from spending, whatever’s left over to budgeting every dollar in advance, the business model built on impulse, it actually breaks. Not temporarily, but structurally. The consumer who learned to plan every purchase doesn’t unlearn it when things stabilize. The stop that actually that they went through, right? They eliminated from their routine. It actually doesn’t come back. The habit is gone. Pandemic era savings are depleted, credit card delinquencies at a decade high.

Then now you see gas spiking, right? Over a dollar per gallon in March alone, acting as an overnight tax on disposable income that forced immediate cuts everywhere. Everywhere in people’s household budgets. The money left over after essentials, the money convenience stores exist to actually capture to be able to keep their food shelves full? It’s gone. See, the thing is, the money convenience stores exist to capture has been systematically eliminated by four years of inflation, depleted savings and max credit and a fuel cost spike that is happening right now that has crowded out everything discretionary. That money is not coming back in any timeframe that saves the stores depending on it.

If you work in retail, convenience, restaurant specialty, you’re watching this happen in real time. Your transaction counts aren’t flat. They’re either flat or they’re falling. Your prepared food sales are declining even though you invested in the kitchen build out last year. The consumer walking through your door today is not the consumer your business plan was written for. That’s why I came out with FRAP and the business profit accelerator. Again, I’ll throw the link down below because the sale is only going to be for a little bit of time. But it’s going to change the way that you attract new customers, retain your customers and make more profits so that you don’t end up like this.

The truth is, the loyalty is gone from your customer because he who has the lowest prices now are going to get the better sales. Or is that the case? Actually, it’s not. But most business owners don’t understand that. You see, if you haven’t restructured your labor model and your lease terms around a consumer who is fundamentally more selective than 12 months ago because of price, the math is going to catch you. Talk to your team this week. If you’re seeing this on the ground right now at your store, let me know down in the comments.

Now, where is the damage the worst? I’m going to give it to you by name. The five retail markets that deteriorated the fastest last year in 2025 confirmed by Collier’s commercial real estate data. First off, New Orleans retail vacancy is up 240 basis points in a single year to 6.3%. Buffalo is up 240 basis points to 10.8%. The highest vacancy rate among major American metros. Pittsburgh up 200 basis points to 6.4% with a negative 890,000 square feet of absorption. This is space leaving faster than anything is filling it. Providence up 170 basis points. This brings it to 6.7%.

Milwaukee is up 170 basis points up to 7%. Memphis posted the worst single metro absorption negative 708,000 square feet. Detroit was the only major metro in the country where retail rents actually declined year over year. Every one of these cities shared the same profile. Population stagnation. Shopping center inventory built in the 1980s and the 90s for a middle class manufacturing economy that never came back. Disproportionate exposure to the chains that went bankrupt. Rite Aid, Joanne, Big Lots, the Bonton legacy, and in most of these markets, zero new retail under construction. Nothing in the pipeline to replace what’s leaving.

These are not coastal luxury markets adjusting to a shift towards e-commerce. These are middle American cities, the viewers cities, the strip malls and retail corridors that were built for the version of the economy that employed their parents. The factories left a generation ago. Now the retail that serve the factory workers and their families is following the factories right out the door. The United States has 23 square feet of retail space per capita, more than any other developed nation on earth. The closures are a concern that’s been building for decades. But the speed more than 14,000 closures expected this year alone.

This is overwhelming the ability of these communities to absorb and replace what’s leaving. So this is the truth. And let’s close on this. What are you going to do about this? The facts are astounding. More and more malls are closing, more and more storefront strip malls, even these convenience stores. Because the convenience is no longer affordable. You need to transform your businesses now. You need to get ahead of marketing almost like a gorilla style. A recession marketing plan. I’ve put this all together for you. The link is down below to the business profit accelerator and I’m going to teach you an acronym called FRAP that’s going to blow your mind and change everything.

But you’ve got to pivot before your competition does or you may end up like this. Alright, with that being said, thank you so much for watching. The Economic Ninja is out. [tr:trw].

See more of The Economic Ninja on their Public Channel and the MPN The Economic Ninja channel.