Division 6 Dossier: Temple 24/7, History and Context
24/7 is NewEdo’s most ubiquitous convenience store brand. 24/7 stores are famous for having everything you need in the city, including hot meals, fresh groceries, booze, clean bathrooms, cash machines, discount legal advice, and exchangeable umbrellas. There are thousands of 24/7 locations throughout the city, and other than in Old Town, it’s rare to hear of a resident who can’t walk to one from home. 24/7 doesn’t have the brand loyalty of Goto Burger or Six Side Sushi, but it is arguably NewEdo’s most iconic corporate name.
Most 24/7 locations are franchises, locally owned and operated in the neighbourhoods they serve, paying reasonable franchise fees up to the brand owner, 24/7 Convenience and Family Incorporated. The corporate parent is privately held by the Owari Clan, a quiet but fabulously wealthy old family known for their philanthropy. 24/7 doesn’t use advertising or public media and, for one of the city’s biggest corporate names, is notably absent from the political stage. “We are here to serve,” is the company’s default statement when asked about anything more complicated than hot rice snacks.
In the middle of the 20th century, the Owari used part of their wealth to purchase and refurbish an abandoned temple. At the time, the temple was perched on the edge of a massive tract of parkland between the Metro Special Ward and Sakanaya, on a historic coastal roadway that had become obsolete in the city’s transportation matrix. The Owari renovated the temple’s interior, put up a neon “24/7” sign, and hired staff. For the first decade or two, the store was a money pit, often going days between customers.
But as the city grew, that stretch of parkland shrunk. Houses, then towers and subway stations, crept inward from Downtown, the Metro Special Ward, and Glittertown. The temple store stopped losing money. The city continued to densify, and the temple store had to add a second and third floor. It became known as Temple 24/7, and the city even added a subway stop (on the Coastal line) immediately across the street called, simply, “Temple.” In the mid 21st century, the parkland is almost gone but the Owari have preserved a small area of green space in the block around 24/7, giving the store the illusion of isolation.
Temple 24/7 is currently operated by a strongly manifested kami of Commerce who calls himself Cane.
