Best convenience store franchises 2026: 7-Eleven, Holiday, RaceWay, Gulf and Street Corner compared on Item 7 cost, royalty model and unit counts.
Quick answer Six convenience store franchise systems hold current FDDs in our database, and they account for 7,865 franchised US locations between them. 7-Eleven is 7,274 of those, with an Item 7 range of $162,900 to $1,656,800 and a royalty taken as 45% to 59% of gross profit. The alternatives are far smaller and structured conventionally: RaceWay at $197,500 to $585,000 with a flat $1,000 monthly royalty across 237 stores, Street Corner at $128,199 to $702,199 with a 5% royalty across 24, Gulf at $147,650 to $651,550 with a 3% to 5.5% royalty and zero franchised units, and Holiday Stationstores at $896,200 to $7,742,500 across 83.
Six convenience store and fuel concepts hold current franchise disclosure documents in our database of 2,126 active systems, and between them they cover 7,865 franchised US locations. 7-Eleven accounts for 7,274 of those. Everything else in the category is a rounding error by unit count, which means shopping for a convenience store franchise is mostly a decision about whether 7-Eleven’s terms work for you.
The six split cleanly into three structures, and the structure matters more than the sticker price.
Gross profit split. One brand uses it. 7-Eleven’s Item 6 charge is a percentage of gross profit rather than gross sales, starting at 45% and reaching a 59% marginal rate, and Item 6 Note 1 says the charge also covers your lease of the store and the equipment. There is no rent line anywhere in 7-Eleven’s Item 7 because 7-Eleven is the landlord.
Traditional royalty. Street Corner charges 5% of gross sales and a 1% brand development fund. Holiday Stationstores charges 3.5% of grocery, food service and merchandise sales and 1% advertising. RaceWay is stranger: a flat $1,000 a month regardless of volume, and $800 a month for technology. These behave like ordinary franchises, and the franchisee carries occupancy separately.
Fuel supply and conversion. Gulf Franchising, a RaceTrac subsidiary, franchises conversions of convenience stores you already operate, rebranding the fuel island under the Gulf marks at a 3% to 5.5% royalty. Its Item 7 real estate line is $0 for exactly that reason. Sunoco’s APLUS program works similarly, splitting its stores into Leased and Non-Leased depending on who holds the premises.
Every figure below comes from the brand’s current disclosure document. Unit counts are Item 20 franchised outlets at the end of 2025.
| Brand | Item 7 investment | Initial fee | Ongoing structure | Franchised units | FDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7-Eleven | $162,900 to $1,656,800 | $0 to $1,100,000, priced per store | 45% to 59% of gross profit; 1% ad fee, also on gross profit | 7,274 | 2026 |
| Sunoco APLUS | Store document not in our corpus | $5,000 area representative fee | Up to 4% of gross sales for Non-Leased stores | 247 | 2026 |
| RaceWay | $197,500 to $585,000 | $25,000 | Flat $1,000 per month; $800 technology; rent to RaceTrac | 237 | 2026 |
| Holiday Stationstores | $896,200 to $3,252,500 conversion; $3,356,200 to $7,742,500 new build | $25,000, less 25% for conversions | 3.5% of non-fuel sales; $0.0075 per gallon; 1% ad | 83 | 2025 |
| Street Corner | $128,199 to $595,699 Express; $287,399 to $702,199 Urban Market | $30,000, less 10% for veterans | 5% royalty; 1% brand fund | 24 | 2026 |
| Gulf C-Store | $147,650 to $651,550 conversion | $25,000 | 3% to 5.5% of gross sales | 0 | 2026 |
Two caveats. Sunoco’s only document in our corpus is the area representative program rather than the store agreement, so its $20,000 to $38,500 Item 7 prices a territory development business, and the 4% store royalty is quoted from that document’s description of what an area representative earns commission on. Holiday’s range runs six times everyone else’s because its Item 7 assumes you own the land and building unless you are converting.
The item missing from every row except the first is earnings. Holiday, RaceWay, Gulf, Street Corner and Sunoco all state in Item 19 that they make no financial performance representations. Five of six brands here will not tell you what a store makes, and the sixth reports gross profit without a single line of operating expense. Our guide to what a missing Item 19 actually means covers how to work around it.
Setting 45% next to Street Corner’s 5% produces a number that looks like robbery and means nothing, because the two are not the same charge.
Item 7 Note 7 of 7-Eleven’s 2026 FDD is explicit: “You do not buy the land, building or equipment where the store is located. We obtain the land, building, equipment, leasehold improvements, fixtures, furnishings and cover the decorating costs, and you must lease it from us under the franchise agreement. Part of the 7-Eleven Charge you pay covers your required lease of the land, building and equipment.”
So the charge bundles royalty, rent, equipment lease and bookkeeping. A Street Corner franchisee paying 5% also pays a landlord, buys the coolers and the point-of-sale system, and funds the buildout. The comparison only works after you add a full occupancy cost to the other brand’s model.
What the split costs in practice is calculable. Take the middle third of Connecticut stores in Exhibit H of the 2026 FDD: $1,966,319 in average gross sales and $707,721 in average gross profit for FY2025. Run that gross profit through the Item 6 schedule and the effective charge is 53.07%, or $375,555. The 1% advertising fee, also assessed on gross profit rather than sales, takes another $7,077. The operator is left with roughly $325,000 before a single hour of payroll, and Exhibit H discloses no operating expenses at all, so the FDD cannot close that gap for you.
One number in the document suggests 7-Eleven knows the floor is thin. Item 6 describes Gross Income Support, a discretionary credit that tops a store’s Gross Income up to $280,000 when the prior year came in below that, capped at $100,000 per period. A franchisor does not build a subsidy mechanism for an outcome that never happens.
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The pumps are traffic infrastructure. The money is inside the building, and three disclosure documents say so in three different ways.
7-Eleven sells gasoline on consignment. Item 8 states that you do not buy the fuel, you sell it at prices 7-Eleven designates, the gasoline facility sits outside your store lease, and 7-Eleven expects to profit on the fuel it supplies you. You receive a commission. In the Connecticut cohort above, the average commission among fuel-selling stores was $12,291 for FY2025 against $1,966,319 of store sales, so the pumps produced 0.6% of the revenue line.
RaceWay is structured the same way. All gasoline must be ordered through RaceTrac, Inc., and Item 8 states that title to the fuel remains with RaceTrac until you sell it. You are running someone else’s fuel business on their forecourt.
Holiday shows it from the franchisor’s ledger. Its royalty is three quarters of one cent per gallon on automotive fuels plus 3.5% of gross sales of groceries, food service items and merchandise, and Gross Sales is defined to exclude fuel entirely. Move 1.5 million gallons in a year and Holiday collects $11,250 on all of it. Sell $2 million inside the store and the 3.5% line collects $70,000. The franchisor prices those two revenue streams as different businesses, and so should you.
Margin follows the same shape. Across the Connecticut thirds, gross profit ran 34.28% of sales at the bottom, 35.99% in the middle and 37.02% at the top. A mid-thirties margin on inside sales is what pays for everything else, and it moves with foodservice mix and shrink discipline rather than with pump volume.
Round-the-clock operation is a contractual default here, not a choice, and shortening hours is priced.
7-Eleven’s Item 6 requires you to operate on a 24-hour basis. Close early with permission and the charge rises by 0.1% of gross profit for each hour a week the store is dark. Close early without permission and it rises by 4% of gross profit if you still run at least 136 hours a week, or 6% if you run less, on top of 7-Eleven’s right to terminate. Shutting from midnight to 8am seven nights a week gives up 56 hours, which under the permitted-closure formula costs 5.6% of gross profit. On the Connecticut middle-third cohort that is roughly $39,600 a year, and you still have to fill the other 112 hours.
Staffing to that standard is the operating problem. Three shifts, seven days, in a job category with high turnover, in a store that also handles alcohol, tobacco and lottery compliance and, at fuel sites, environmental and safety recordkeeping. Item 15 of the 7-Eleven FDD says the franchise is granted on your personal qualifications and your intention to actively and substantially participate, and that full-time supervision is essential. Street Corner is the softer version: its Item 15 permits a trained operating manager, but the store must be supervised on-site at all times either way. This is not a semi-absentee category, and any broker who presents it as one has not read Item 15.
The real estate question determines the capital question, and the two brands with the lowest entry cost are the two that keep the property.
7-Eleven’s entry is low because Item 7 has no land, building or construction line. What it does have is a franchise fee priced per store off sales history and location quality, disclosed at $0 to $1,100,000, with Item 5 noting that fees actually charged in 2025 ran $0 to $800,000. 7-Eleven also finances: opening inventory beyond the $20,000 down payment runs through an Open Account at Bank of America prime plus 2%, currently 8.75%, a real cost sitting outside the investment range. RaceWay follows the same logic, with rent of $7,000 to $40,000 a month payable to RaceTrac and a $25,000 to $100,000 security deposit.
The brands that leave you the equity ask for the capital up front. A ground-up Holiday Stationstore runs $3,356,200 to $7,742,500 and assumes you own the land, building and an optional car wash. Gulf’s conversion program only works if you already operate a store, which is why its real estate line reads $0.
Those are also the systems that are contracting. Holiday’s franchised count fell from 114 at the start of 2023 to 83 at the end of 2025 while company-owned stores rose from 417 to 455, a franchisor buying its network back. Street Corner went from 34 to 24 over the same three years with no company-owned stores at all. Gulf has yet to open its first franchised outlet. 7-Eleven, by contrast, added 45 franchised stores in 2025 and recorded 223 franchisee-to-franchisee transfers, which is a functioning resale market and the closest thing to an exit this category offers.
Buyers who want an operating store with cash flow on day one and no real estate ambition should look at 7-Eleven and accept the split for what it is. The side-by-side with Circle K is the right next read, and the Circle K cost breakdown covers the traditional-royalty alternative for buyers who do control a site.
Independent c-store operators are the natural fit for Gulf and Holiday’s conversion program. You already own the hard asset, you already run the hours, and you are buying fuel branding, supply and a loyalty program rather than a business model.
Buyers who want a franchise to teach them retail should look elsewhere. Five of these six brands disclose no earnings data, the labor model is unforgiving, and the one brand with real disclosure prices its stores individually so no published number applies to the store you are actually offered. Our guide to what it costs to open a franchise covers categories with better information available before you sign.
If you want to filter by capital, category and operating hours at once, the free franchise matcher runs those constraints against the full database rather than the six brands here.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
Between $128,199 and $7,742,500 depending on format and whether you supply the site. The disclosed Item 7 ranges in our database are Street Corner at $128,199 to $595,699 for its Express format and $287,399 to $702,199 for Urban Market, Gulf at $147,650 to $651,550 for a conversion of a store you already operate, 7-Eleven at $162,900 to $1,656,800, RaceWay at $197,500 to $585,000, and Holiday Stationstores at $896,200 to $3,252,500 for a conversion or $3,356,200 to $7,742,500 to build new. The spread is driven almost entirely by real estate. The brands at the bottom either lease you the site or expect you to already have one.
It is the only convenience store franchise most buyers can realistically enter, and the terms are unusual enough that the question needs restating. 7-Eleven had 7,274 franchised US stores at the end of 2025 against 24 for Street Corner and 83 for Holiday, so availability is not a concern. What you are buying is an operating business on a site 7-Eleven owns, paid for with 45 to 59 cents of every gross-profit dollar under the Item 6 schedule. The upside is that entry cash is low, the site is proven and Exhibit H gives you real cohort data. The cost is that you never build real estate equity and your ceiling is capped by the split. For the full cost stack see our 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown.
It depends entirely on the brand, and this is the single most important structural difference in the category. 7-Eleven's Item 7 Note 7 states that you do not buy the land, building or equipment, that 7-Eleven obtains them, and that part of the 7-Eleven Charge covers your required lease of them. RaceWay franchisees lease the site from RaceTrac, Inc. at $7,000 to $40,000 a month. Gulf and Holiday work the other way: Gulf's Item 7 carries a $0 real estate line because it franchises conversions of stores you already operate, and a ground-up Holiday Stationstore assumes you own the land and building. Sunoco's APLUS system splits its stores into Leased and Non-Leased for exactly this reason.
Inside sales carry the margin, and the disclosed numbers show it plainly. In 7-Eleven's Exhibit H, the middle third of Connecticut stores averaged $1,966,319 in gross sales and $707,721 in gross profit in FY2025, a 35.99% margin. The average consigned gasoline commission for fuel-selling stores in that same cohort was $12,291 for the year, under 1% of store sales. Holiday's royalty structure tells the same story from the franchisor's side: 3.5% on groceries, food service and merchandise, and three quarters of one cent per gallon on fuel, with fuel excluded from the gross sales base. Fuel drives traffic and inside sales convert it. A site with pumps and weak inside execution is the worst version of this business.
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