442: How so many South Asians came to run your local convenience store

Convenience stores are known for their, well, convenience—from the usual snacks and beverages, to toiletries and even makeup, they can carry quite a variety of products in a limited amount of space.

In the U.S. anyway, these small shops are also known for being owned by South Asian immigrants.

According to The Juggernaut, about half of the convenience stores in the United States are owned by South Asian immigrants. And when it comes to the most well-known convenience store—7-Eleven—South Asians own about 70 percent of the chain’s locations.

South Asians’ prevalence in the convenience store industry began in the latter half of the 20th Century. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (better known as the Hart-Celler Act of 1965) may have opened immigration on the basis of education and technical skills, but it also caused a chain reaction as people also began inviting family members to immigrate to the United States.

“They did not all have higher education degrees or college degrees so they couldn’t get white-collar jobs, but they could bring their entrepreneurial spirit here,” Gaurav Sabnis, a business professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, says in the Juggernaut article.

That “entrepreneurial spirit” Sabnis mentions led folks to convenience stores. With many Americans taking advantage of the full ride scholarships to college they received for serving in the military during the two world wars, there was an employment hole to fill at jobs such as running convenience stores—an industry that was also experiencing a boom in growth at the time, thanks to franchising. While most convenience store chains nowadays own and operate all their locations, 7-Eleven remains as one of the few companies that still franchises—meaning each location is independently owned—according to The Juggernaut. In addition, convenience stores’ smaller footprint made them more affordable and easier to manage.

Danger on the job

Like many service-industry jobs, running a convenience store is not easy. In addition to the long hours (after all, convenience stores are often open 24/7 since they’re supposed to be convenient to customers, at any time of the day), the job can be dangerous.

Convenience store robberies are not uncommon. In the Juggernaut article, Sabnis even says his father-in-law actually lost count of how many times he’d been robbed while working at a 7-Eleven, stopping his count after the 25th time.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “sales and related occupations accounted for 23.5 percent of all workplace homicides in 2020”—or 92 out of 392 from that year. In addition, Convenience Store News, reporting on FBI statistics, says in 2022, convenience stores and gas stations, combined, were the site of 13.8 percent of robberies, and that 4.5 percent of all reported violent crime in 2022 took place at a gas station or convenience store.

Representation in popular culture

South Asians have become so tied to the industry that the connection has even made it into pop culture, by way of The Simpsons. On a show filled with stereotypes, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon—perhaps the most well-known convenience store owner in the country, as he and his Kwik-E-Mart have been staples on the show since 1990—became one of the most controversial characters on the show. That’s because for a very long time, Apu, voiced by white actor Hank Azaria, was one of very few representations of Indians and South Asians in mainstream western media.