Sleepless in 7-Eleven

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged, at least in Bangkok, that one cannot walk a few steps without running into a 7-Eleven. Two identical stores can sit side by side on a busy street. In some places, you can walk to four different stores in less than five minutes.

For all the hand-wringing about the death of retail, the 7-Eleven convenience store chain is remarkably dominant in Thailand, South-east Asia's second largest economy.

There, operator CP All, which holds the area licence for 7-Eleven in the country, hit the 10,000th store mark as of end-June, having opened thousands of new stores in recent years. Thailand is now the country with the most 7-Eleven stores outside of Japan.