Menlo Park 7-Eleven offers free Slurpee® drinks today from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm

Locals stopping in at the Menlo Park 7-Eleven store at 525 Oak Grove Avenue will be treated to a free 12 ounce Slurpee, almost the double the size of previous years. It’s all part of  Free Slurpee® Day in celebration of the conveninece store’s 86 birthday.

This year’s summer’s featured flavors are Slurpee Strawberry Lemonshade and Slurpee Lite™ Sugar-Free Mango Lemonade. The convenience store is encouraging Slurpee drinkers to dance the Slurpee dance and download tiny hats and dancers to add to the spirit.

“7-Eleven Day, July 11, occurs at the approximate midpoint of summer and the Slurpee season when summer fun is in high gear. It also marks a milestone for 7-Eleven when we raise a collective Slurpee toast and dance a crazy dance to celebrate our birthday and all things 7-Eleven,” said Laura Gordon, 7-Eleven vice president of marketing and brand innovation.

7-Eleven, the world’s first convenience store, began its run in the summer of 1927 when a Southland Ice Company employee started selling bread, milk and eggs on an ice dock in a Dallas suburb. Since that inauspicious start, “convenience” has become big business. The small ice company has grown into a major international retailing chain with approximately 10,100 7-Eleven stores in North America and more than 50,700 stores worldwide.

7-Eleven has celebrated its birthday on July 11 for decades, but it wasn’t until its 75th birthday in 2002 that its stores began hosting birthday parties coast-to-coast with free Slurpee drinks for its customers.