Lunch at Cheers, dinner at 7-Eleven

How do convenience stores here compare with Japan's konbini? The writer finds out with a week of meals

- Cherie Lok

I know, I know. Worst idea ever.

What can I say? I was seduced by the romance of the convenience store, those fluorescent mystery boxes, described in Japanese author Sayaka Murata's award-winning novel, Convenience Store Woman, as "not merely a place where customers come to buy practical necessities", but also "somewhere they can enjoy and take pleasure in discovering things they like".

In other words, a place of self-discovery. Perhaps that is why so many content creators flock there, driven by the same compulsion to spend the next 24 hours eating their way through shelves upon shelves of ramen, instant meals, biscuits, chips and chocolates.

Videos of such escapades are typically filmed in Japan or South Korea, countries that have turned these everyday pit stops into tourist attractions with their impressive array of produce: some fresh, some less so, but still reportedly delicious.

In Singapore, however? Well, let's just say that 7-Eleven and Cheers are rarely anyone's first choice for lunch or dinner.

It is tough, after all, when convenience stores have to tussle in the same price bracket as hawker centres—a hurdle the 7-Eleven team is well aware of.

"A pretty unique challenge about Singapore is that few markets in this world have this sort of prevalence of fresh food every few steps, like we do with our hawker centres. So, it is pretty competitive, because it's hard to compete directly with absolutely freshly made food at a similar price point," says Ms Anushree Khosla, managing director of 7-Eleven Singapore.

"We're not trying to give you the best chicken rice. We're trying to give you food you wouldn't normally go to a hawker centre to eat."

That means sandwiches, wraps, mac and cheese, onigiri, rice bowls, instant noodles from South Korea; and snacks from Japan. No yakitori or whipped-cream sandwiches yet, though; food safety regulations make the importing of chilled Japanese produce tricky.