History

The birthplace of convenience store is America, and "Southland Ice" is the first convenience store. Southland Ice was selling ice at first and gradually would be to sell food and daily necessities everyday. Southland Ice was named "Seven Eleven" later after that the business hours of that is 7 a.m.-11 p.m. In Japan, the first convenience store is said that "Mammy" which was established in 1969. Next, "Coco Store" was in 1971, "Seico Mart" was in 1971, "FamilyMart" was in 1973, "Seven Eleven" was in 1974 and "Daiei Lowson" was in 1975.

Precisely, convenience store is retail shop which does business for hours all the year round, is small shop and sells mainly food and daily necessities. The abbreviated desinations of convenience store are "konbini" and "CVS", and were "konbi" and "supermarket opened until late at night" by 1980s.

Most of convenience stores are managed as chain store by major companies. FamilyMart is the subsidiary company of Seiyu, Seven Eleven is Itoyokado, Lawson is Daiei, Circle K is Uni and Mini Stop is Aeon. However, Daily-Yamazaki and Sunkus are not subsidiary companies of supermarket and department store, and the former is that of Yamazakipan and the latter is independently.

Coco store at Fujiyamadai of Kasugai is said to be origin of Japanese convenience store. The Coco store opened in July 11th, 1971.Kasugai city is in Aichi prefecture. This year is 40th commemoration. I think that it is good to visite the place if you have time.