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It’s 7-Eleven Day — Free Slurpee Day Turns Into Free Slurpee Week, New Birthday Cake Flavor To Celebrate Store Giant’s 50th Birthday

By Dee Sharp
Published on: 09:02 PST, Jul 11, 2016

Today is July 11 (7/11) and is known as 7-Eleven Day, the “nameday” of the convenience store giant. The convenience store chain always gives free Slurpees on 7-Eleven Day, but this year is their 50th birthday, and they have a surprise in store for their customers, according to USA Today.

To celebrate their half-century mark, 7-Eleven is not only giving away free small Slurpees, but they also have a new flavor to choose from — birthday cake. Also, while 7-Eleven is giving away free Slurpees today only, they will continue giving away free items this week, including free drinks after every six drinks that are bought. Yes, that means your seventh drink is free all this week!

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However, to get your seventh Slurpee or other drink free at 7-Eleven, you must be a member of their 7 Rewards Loyalty program and have the 7-Eleven app downloaded to your phone. With the 7-Eleven app and loyalty program, every seventh drink you buy at 7-Eleven will be free for this week only. Just make sure that you have your app barcode scanned with each purchase, and you can have up to 11 free Slurpee drinks added to your app’s “Scan & Save” section. July 18 (next Monday) will be the last day you can get a free seventh drink, and coupons for the free drinks must be redeemed by August 31.

In order to get a free small Slurpee at your local 7-Eleven store, just go to any participating 7-Eleven locations today between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. and grab a small Slurpee of any flavor — it’s free of charge. If you want a larger size, you will have to pay the difference. There are about 14 current Slurpee flavors, including the newest, Birthday Cake and Sour Patch Redberry, and you can choose any flavor or mix flavors to create your own concoction. Current Slurpee flavors may not be available at all locations.

7-Eleven Day has been celebrated as Free Slurpee Day since about July 11, 1989, and is always observed on the 11th day of July. 7-Eleven started out in Dallas, Texas, as the Southland Ice Company in 1927 when ice was often sold at ice-houses in blocks for “ice boxes,” which became the modern refrigerator. A Southland employee by the name of “Uncle Johnny” Jefferson Green came up with the idea of offering milk, bread, and eggs along with ice. He saw a need to carry items like these and also to sell them on Sundays and evenings when regular grocery stores were closed.

Joe C. Thompson, Jr., one of the founders of the Southland Corporation, started selling the products at other ice-house locations owned by the company. The company had eight ice plants and 21 ice houses or ice docks when the idea was born, and convenience retailing began. In 1928, the ice docks were also offering gasoline for sale, which appealed to customers since they could get what they needed in one place.

The company called their early “convenience stores” Tote’m stores due to the fact that customers “toted” their purchases from the stores. Each store had the words Tote’m with a totem pole logo. Many Tote’m stores also had genuine Alaskan totem poles in the front of stores as well. In 1946, the company changed the name of Tote’m to 7-Eleven because the store hours were from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. seven days a week, according to the 7-Eleven corporate website.

Convenience stores grew in the 1950s, becoming the “mom-and-pop” neighborhood grocery store, “ice-house,” dairy store, supermarket, and delicatessen in one location. It was during the 1950s that 7-Eleven stores started opening stores in other parts of Texas for the first time, and shortly after, the company expanded across state lines to Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. 7-Eleven now operates hundreds of stores across the country.

[Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images]

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