Convenience Stores

Links found by researchers between snack foods and obesity in poor communities are prompting new calls for more regulation of convenience stores in South Los Angeles. The proposed new regulations under discussion are an outgrowth and expansion of last year's city restrictions on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area of South Los Angeles. The area is home to about 500,000 residents, including those who live in West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park. Motivated by new data focusing on convenience stores, civic activists and a City Council member favor limiting the development of new convenience stores.

In a move that could nearly double its Southern California footprint, the 7-Eleven convenience store chain is taking steps to lease up to 600 new locations in the region. The company hired commercial real estate broker CB Richard Ellis on Thursday to begin scouting locations for a planned seven-year expansion that would add to the 800 stores that 7-Eleven operates from San Luis Obispo County to the Mexico border. 7-Eleven, a Dallas unit of Tokyo-based Seven & I Holdings Co.

When you run for four hours straight, you have a lot of time to think -- and not just about your aching thigh muscles, your sore feet and the way the mile markers seem to be getting farther and farther apart. While running the L.A. Marathon last month for the seventh time, I had to wonder -- again -- why organizers have mapped out a course so visually deadening when we live in a city filled with iconic sights. I kept thinking about first-time visitors to Los Angeles who were running next to me. What were their impressions as they ran mostly through neighborhoods and business districts that could have been anywhere, with nondescript houses, convenience stores, strip malls, office buildings, chain-link fences and car lots?

A Hemet convenience store clerk known to customers and friends as "Skip" was killed this weekend after he tried to stop two men from stealing a case of beer, authorities said. Police said one of the men stabbed David Lynn Ganns, 60, in the chest when the clerk confronted the men about the theft shortly after his 11 p.m. shift began at the Depot Deli on Saturday night. Ganns was taken to a hospital, where he died. Hemet Police Lt. Duane Wisehart said officers knew Ganns because they would often stop at the store on West Florida Avenue when working late shifts.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips became the latest big oil company to get out of the filling station business, agreeing Wednesday to sell its last 600 U.S. gasoline stations to PetroSun Fuel of Seattle. The purchase price wasn't disclosed, but published estimates of $800 million were considered close to the mark. The stations, largely on the West Coast, operate under the Conoco, Phillips 66 and 76 brands. PetroSun, which has been accumulating stations, said it planned major upgrades in product offerings to focus on the more profitable convenience store side of the business.

At the grand opening of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart on Dec. 15, the Robot Emotions were going like hot cakes (happiness and schadenfreude were the top sellers). The mystery product Chubble, on the other hand, available in more than 50 different varieties, wasn't really moving. A worker dressed like a cowboy shrugged. "It's really hot in the future."

BP America Inc. said Thursday that it would sell all of its more than 700 company-owned and -operated U.S. convenience stores over the next two years, eliminating nearly 10,000 jobs. The company said most of the sites would be sold to franchise owners, while some would be sold to dealers and large distributors. The sites will continue to sell BP fuels in the eastern U.S. and Arco fuels in the western U.S., with the store brand now to be known as ampm nationwide. About 95% of BP's 13,000 U.S.

Fast food isn't just fast; it's also plentiful. In California, people are more than four times as likely to find a fast-food restaurant or convenience store than a grocery or produce store, according to a study released today by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. The researchers say it's a dangerous ratio in the face of an expanding national obesity crisis: It limits consumers' choices to the convenient rather than the nutritious.

Clutching a hot dog and a Coke, Mauricio Sanchez described himself as a convenience store regular as he left a 7-Eleven one recent afternoon. The office worker often grabs lunch at this store near the central business district here. He snags milk for the family at a chain called Extra near his house. He buys beer at the Oxxo outlets that dot Mexico's capital. "There are more of these [stores] than there used to be," said Sanchez, 32. Slurpee and Big Gulp are not yet household words in Mexico.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez can pump books but his country's oil company can no longer pump gas for 7-Eleven Inc. Amid a growing backlash against anti-American comments by Chavez, the Dallas-based convenience store giant said Wednesday that it was dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo Petroleum Corp. as its gasoline supplier so it could launch its own brand. Torrance-based Tower Energy Group will deliver fuel to most of the 7-Eleven outlets that Citgo is losing.