A former 7-Eleven store owner in Boston decided to test his luck by opening his own store under a rather inspired name: 6-Twelve.
Store owner Abu Musa waged a war with the convenience store giant by opening his own store across the road from the 7-Eleven he used to work in.
“My goal is to get them to close,” he said.
Successfully owning over 50,000 convenience stores worldwide, 7-Eleven was named due its opening hours of 7am to 11 pm.
Similarly, Mr Musa’s store name also emulates his opening hours in his store name, 6 am to 12 am.
Opening his first store, a 7-Eleven franchise in 2005, Mr Musa said it was the company’s restricted policies surrounding their hot food offering claiming the items never sold and cost him money to stock.
“They’d sit there on the rollers, no one would buy them, and every day I would throw out $200 to $300 worth of food that I had to pay for,” he said.
After multiple clashes surrounding the sale of pizza and chicken wings, the struggle reached its breaking point with Mr Musa was accused of shady practices at his register including a failure to ring in purchases and voiding others.
“Whatever, whenever they want they can bring into the store and we have no option, no choice but to accept it,” he said of 7-Eleven and their hot food stocking policies.
“Because they said you signed the paperwork.”
His franchise was revoked and he filed a countersuit against the company.
Mr Musa settled for an undisclosed sum out of court and reluctantly left his store.
“7-Eleven didn’t treat me as a partner anymore,” he said.
“They treated me as a slave.”
After spending a year trying to work out what to do with himself, he decided to open a rival store across the street from his previous employer.
Mr Musa is now focusing on how to drive up business, grow his customer base and outsell 7-Eleven.
“I know the price of everything in that store,” he said.
“I sell the same things cheaper.”