The Journey Behind the Coffee That Changed a Nation’s Café Culture – SEVEN CAFÉ

"To be honest, there was a mood within the company like, ‘How long are we going to keep trying to develop freshly brewed coffee?’ We kept running into failure after failure."

So says Maida, Senior Merchandiser in the FF & Frozen Food Division —who oversaw SEVEN CAFÉ until March 2025.
(*Currently Senior Director at 7-Eleven International LLC.)

Seven-Eleven Japan first attempted in-store coffee service in 1975, not long after the company was founded. The coffee was pre-brewed and kept warm in pots, then poured into cups upon order—a style known as the “decanter method.”

In the 1990s, they tried again, this time using cartridges filled with ground coffee to brew one cup at a time. However, the sealing technology at the time couldn’t preserve the beans’ aroma, and the flavor wasn’t satisfactory.

In the 2000s, the "Barista’s Café" was launched using espresso-style extraction, where coffee is brewed by pressing hot water through finely ground beans. While it gained some traction, it didn’t achieve the desired results.

Still, the desire to serve delicious coffee at 7-Eleven never faded, and that passion was passed on to the next generation.

The turning point came around 2010. Foreign coffee chains were rapidly expanding, and inexpensive coffee was becoming popular at fast food chains.

If convenience stores could offer delicious coffee at a reasonable price, customers would surely respond.

They were well aware of past failures and false starts. Even so, the development team quietly forged ahead, fueled by the conviction that "this time, we’ll get it right."— which quietly paved the way for SEVEN CAFÉ.

Before launching SEVEN CAFÉ, the development team mainly handled fast food items sold at the counter, with oden being their star product. Coffee and oden—two seemingly unrelated items—may have crossed paths by fate.

With the water sorted, they had one more hurdle: preserving the aroma and taste of freshly brewed coffee—something the decanter and cartridge methods had failed to achieve.

To solve that, the team settled on a bold solution: grinding and brewing the beans cup by cup.

What mechanism would allow beans to be ground for each cup?
What’s the perfect water temperature for a single brew?
What would ensure the same taste nationwide?
As ideas and discussions flew around, the team found strong support in external partners.

The first strong partner was MITSUI & CO., LTD. a trading company that supplied the coffee beans. For roasting, they partnered with Ajinomoto AGF, Inc.

With bean sourcing and roasting secured, one major piece was still missing—a machine to brew the ideal cup.

While searching for a manufacturer, the team found FUJI ELECTRIC CO., LTD., a company that made vending machines for cup beverages found at highway rest stops.

Press a button, a cup drops down, and hot coffee pours in. We take this for granted now, but the engineering behind it was incredibly precise.

Still, we believed in the potential of serving coffee at convenience stores. With that belief, FUJI ELECTRIC CO., LTD. joined the team. This marked the beginning of what we now call "Team Merchandising" (hereafter, Team MD) for SEVEN CAFÉ.

And so, in 2011, the first dedicated SEVEN CAFÉ coffee machine was born.
But the real test was only beginning. We knew we could only see the light at the end of the tunnel if our customers embraced the coffee.

With great anticipation, we launched a test sale in Tokyo—but the results fell short of expectations. Our target of "50 cups per day per store" wasn’t met, and minor refinements to the machine continued.

Operational challenges also emerged. Unlike Apparently, the FUJI ELECTRIC CO., LTD. team was quite stunned at first. If you think of the size of a vending machine, then compare it to the counter space available at a convenience store, it’s like shrinking a full-size bus down to a compact car—and then making it even smaller!’s past coffee machines, which had been maintained by dedicated staff, the Seven-Eleven store employees were now responsible for the machine’s upkeep. The first-generation SEVEN CAFÉ machine was so complex, even changing the filter was a difficult task.

The development team ended up spending more than another year on further machine improvements.

Another major hurdle was customer awareness. Back in 2011, the idea of getting freshly ground and brewed coffee at a convenience store simply hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind.

What got us through that difficult period were the franchise owners who believed in the quality of SEVEN CAFÉ coffee.

Team MD, the support of our franchise owners, and the passion of every person involved—these all came together in one form. In January 2013, SEVEN CAFÉ was officially launched nationwide. From the first attempt, it had taken a full 38 years to arrive at this milestone.

After many rainy days, SEVEN CAFÉ finally saw a break in the clouds. Today, it has grown into a flagship product, with over 9 billion cups sold. But our journey of innovation is far from over.

From SEVEN CAFÉ Smoothies, which offer a convenient way to enjoy fruits and vegetables, to the upcoming SEVEN CAFÉ Tea, which will let customers enjoy freshly brewed, authentic tea, we’re broadening our lineup. We’re also adding baked goods and other treats that complement coffee time—all in the pursuit of providing customers with a "premium moment."

The journey of SEVEN CAFÉ continues.

This text has been translated using an automatic translation tool.