Why Thailand loves 7-Eleven, and how to heat a กด 5 (press 5) meal at home

7-Eleven's popularity shows in numbers, and the กด (kot, "press") on the pack names a button on the shop's own microwave. CP All, the company that runs 7-Eleven in Thailand, reports 16,284 stores at the end of June 2026, 200 of them opened in the three months from April to June ¹. CP All runs 8,414 itself (about 52 percent); store business partners and sub-area stores run 7,870 (about 48 percent). Of all the stores, 86 percent stand alone and the rest are inside PTT petrol stations ¹.

Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai have 487 7-Elevens, and 231 stay open all night

Mot Dang, Hongdam's online directory at motdang.net, lists 487 7-Elevens in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. It records 92 with a cash machine and 231 open all night, counted on 18 September 2026 ². 231 of 487 is just under half.

7-Elevens are sacred, with popsicles and beer

On 26 September 2026 I removed a line that called all 7-Elevens the same. My note: "That's not true, 7-Elevens are sacred," and more of the feeling: "hello welcome", popsicles and beer. The One Man Sideshow page has a banner "7-Elevens are sacred", with สวัสดีค่ะ (sawatdee kha, hello), เบียร์เย็น (bia yen, cold beer) and ไอติม (ai tim, popsicles) ². The Wave It at Home page opens with สวัสดีค่ะ เซเว่นอีเลฟเว่น ยินดีต้อนรับค่ะ (sawatdee kha, seven-eleven, yindi tonrap kha: hello, welcome), and lists popsicles and beer under "No wave. Open the fridge door and take one." ³

กด 5 is a button on the shop's microwave

The number on a ready-meal pack is a program saved on the shop's microwave. Staff press one number and the oven sets its own power and time ³. Postjung, a Thai online forum, described the oven on 23 April 2021 as industrial-grade stainless steel, over 30 kg, with keys numbered 1 to 0 in place of watts (W, the measure of an oven's power), and named Panasonic as the brand ⁴. Thai reports disagree on the model ³.

The pack names two store oven powers, so one number gives two different times. Times here are minutes and seconds: 1:10 is 1 minute 10 seconds. 7-Eleven's online shop lists the Kurobuta pork curry rice like this: 1,800 W, press 6, 1:10; 1,300 W, press 6, 1:30; and for a home oven, 800 W, 1:45 to 2:00 ⁵.

The number depends on how cold the food is. Sipso rice soup is press 5 at room temperature and press 6 from the fridge, at 2 to 6 °C ⁶. Frozen meals use 7 or 8 and add a second press ³. Two presses, like 6 and 2, add a short program after the first rather than doubling it: about 15 to 20 seconds in the shop ³.

The home times are calculated, not published

No published table of each code's power and time has been found ³. The home times on the Wave It at Home page are its own calculation, not figures from 7-Eleven. Watts times minutes is the heat the food takes in, and the store times give the heat for each code. A pack line that says "under 1,300 W" is taken to mean 800 W, the middle of what the packs imply, about 650 to 1,050 W. Codes 2 to 6 rise by about 1.46 times per step. Code 1 is estimated from that pattern, with no pack seen. Codes 7 and 8 come from frozen packs. One check: Creator sea bass rice soup lists 800 W, 5:00 and 1,300 W, 3:00, which agree within 3 percent ³.

The page lists its gaps: the AB button appears on one pack, and code 1, and code 8 alone, have no pack with a printed time ³.

At 800 W, press 5 gives 1:30 to 2:00 on the page: the time starts at 1:30 and rises by 15 seconds at a time up to 2:00. Press 6 gives 1:45 to 2:40 ³. A pack that prints its own home time can be compared with those ranges. The curry prints 1:45 to 2:00 for code 6 ⁵. Sipso prints 1:00 to 1:30 at 800 W for code 5 ⁶.

The watts are on a sticker inside the microwave door or on the back ³. A small home microwave of 17 to 23 litres uses 700 to 900 W ⁷.

Press 4 is not 4 minutes

On 10 June 2021 a poster on Pantip, a Thai discussion forum, wrote that a shop clerk had said กด 4 meant 4 minutes. The poster heated a Japanese sweet potato for 4 minutes and burned it. An account named น้องเปาเซเว่น (Nong Pao 7-Eleven) replied that a normal microwave takes about 1 to 1½ minutes, and that the pack has more information ⁸.