Philippine Seven Corp., the local master franchisee of 7-Eleven convenience stores, is slated to open about 250 to 280 more stores for the remainder of the year while competing with hard discount stores for the best locations.

During the Philippine Stock Exchange STAR (Strengthening Access and Reach) Investor Day, PhilSeven Operations Director Francis S. Medina said, “we're looking at opening at least 500 stores until the end of this year… We have opened around 218 stores. So around 250 more stores are due to open in the following months.”

Medina said the bulk of these new stores, about 70 percent, will be in Visayas and Mindanao, and it is mainly due to the growth that “we've seen in the past two or three years, surpassing stores in Luzon, even in the NCR [national capital region] stores.

He said about half of the new stores will be owned by sub-franchisees since “as a working target, every year we have to open at least 50 percent of new stores operated by franchisees.

“This is more evident in the areas of Visayas and Mindanao, wherein most new stores, more than half, are franchise-operated. While the Luzon stores, and particularly NCR, remain company-owned stores. So every year it's a 50 percent working number for us.”

Meanwhile, he admitted that the company is getting stiff competition from hard discount stores, which are “opening left and right.”

“Yes, they are a threat. From the perspective of site acquisition, they practically open on the same areas where we want to open,” so they compete for the same site bidding, said Medina, noting that, “At the same time, they focus mainly on residential clusters, which we are also going into.”

However, he said they have an advantage over hard discount stores since not all of them operate 24 hours, “so it's a big plus for 7-Eleven since most of them open at 6 am and close at 10 pm, while we are open 24 hours.

“The second big advantage is we serve fast food, which most of them don't have. Third is we have dining spaces, so this gives customers more options. They can sit down while shopping.”

Amid this challenging environment, Medina said, “Our objective is to acquire most of the best sites as soon as possible to prevent or make it difficult for any competition.”