# Beijing Convenience Stores: What to Buy, What to Pay With and What They Do for You > 24-hour convenience stores are the most reliable fixed-price, no-Chinese-required, cash-still-works place in Beijing. The chains, the real prices, how to pay, and six things staff will do beyond selling snacks. _Category: first-time · Reading time: 11 min read_ It is 23:40, the street around your hotel has gone quiet, your phone is at nine per cent, and you want food that does not involve decoding a Chinese-only QR menu. In Beijing the answer to that problem is almost always a convenience store. They are bright, fixed-price, open late, staffed by people who deal with foreign visitors every day, and — the part most travellers underestimate — they still take cash. Industry counts put 7-Eleven at roughly 300 Beijing branches, Lawson at well over a hundred, and domestic chains such as Bianlifeng at several hundred more, so across most of central Beijing you are rarely more than a few minutes' walk from one. This guide covers what they sell, what prices actually look like, how to pay, the handful of useful things staff will do for you beyond ringing up a bottle of water, and the things they will not do. ## The names on the door Four kinds of sign matter. Knowing which one you are walking into tells you roughly what the food will be like, whether it will be open all night, and how awkward payment is going to get. - **7-Eleven — the densest international chain** — Roughly 300 branches across Beijing, thick in Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chaoyang and Haidian. The most consistent bet for 24-hour service and fresh food. - **Lawson (罗森) — including inside the metro** — Entered Beijing in 2013 and now runs well over a hundred branches. Some Beijing subway stations have a Lawson in or beside the concourse, which is handy when you are already underground. - **Bianlifeng (便利蜂) — the Beijing-born one** — Opened its first stores in 2017 and grew fast. Mostly 24-hour and app-driven, and many branches serve hot dishes canteen-style rather than only pre-packed. Ordering screens can push their own app; the counter and cash work normally. - **Local chains — 好邻居, 多点, 物美** — Common through residential blocks. Similar or slightly lower prices, almost no English signage, thinner fresh-food selection, but perfectly good for water and everyday basics. - **Petrol-station chains — 易捷 and 昆仑好客** — What you get in the outer districts and along the ring roads. No fresh food to speak of, but standard prices on drinks, snacks and toiletries, and long opening hours. ## Opening hours: all-night is normal, not guaranteed A large share of Beijing convenience stores run 24 hours, especially anything on a main road, beside a hospital, next to a transport hub or inside a bar district. But plenty of residential and suburban branches shut at 22:00 or 23:00, and hours shrink over Spring Festival week and other public holidays. If a four-in-the-morning store matters to your plan, verify it earlier in the evening rather than betting on it. - **Check the door sticker** — Opening hours are printed on or beside the entrance glass. That sticker beats any online listing. - **Trust the map card, mostly** — Amap and Apple Maps both show listed hours and are usually accurate for chain branches, less so for small franchises. - **Main roads beat side lanes** — Round-the-clock branches cluster on arterial roads, at intersections and around hospitals. Deep inside low-rise hutong blocks everything closes early. - **Terminals and railway stations** — Airport terminals and the main railway stations have the longest-running branches in the city, which matters on an early departure. ## The food, and what it actually costs Convenience-store food in Beijing is a long way better than the reputation convenience food has in most countries. The prices below come from 7-Eleven Beijing's own current product listings; the other chains sit within roughly the same band. Everything is priced per item, nothing is negotiated, and the person at the till will heat it for you free. - **Steamed buns and hot-cabinet snacks — ¥2–8 each** — 包子 (steamed filled buns), 烤肠 (grilled sausage on a stick), sweetcorn, fried items. Point at what you want and they will bag it. - **Oden style hot-pot skewers (关东煮) — ¥2–6 a piece** — Fish balls, radish, kelp rolls, eggs and tofu skin simmering in broth. Pick a few and they hand you a paper cup. About ¥15 makes a small hot meal. - **Rice triangles, or onigiri (饭团) — around ¥5–7** — The cheapest real food in the store. Mildly seasoned, filling, easy to eat standing up, and identical every time — which is often exactly what you want after a bad restaurant experience. - **Bento boxes (便当) — ¥13.9–19.8** — The main event. Simple rice-and-two-dishes from about ¥14, larger meat combinations up to about ¥20, with cold noodle pots and side dishes at ¥9.9–15.9. Heated on request. - **Cold noodles, liangpi and salads — ¥9.9–15.9** — 凉面 and 凉皮 are cold wheat or starch noodles tossed in sauce. This is what you buy in July when hot food has no appeal at all. - **Sandwiches, breads and packaged cakes — ¥8–16** — Chinese-style sweet breads and pre-packed pastries. Fine alongside a coffee, not dinner. - **Canteen-style hot dishes at some branches** — Particularly at Bianlifeng and a share of Lawson stores, staff scoop rice and hot dishes onto a tray rather than handing you a sealed box. The format varies store by store. ## Coffee, tea and cold drinks Convenience-store coffee is the best-value caffeine in Beijing. Self-service machines and counter carts run roughly ¥8–20 depending on chain and cup size, against ¥30 and up at an international café chain. Several chains also run their own larger-format drinks counters, historically priced broadly in the ¥10–20 band for coffee and ¥12–18 for made-to-order tea; check the board, because those prices move. In cold weather most chains keep a heated cabinet holding bottles at roughly 50 °C, which turns a minus-five morning into something survivable. - **Bottled water — ¥2–3 for 550 ml** — The cheapest safe hydration available anywhere in the city, and the single best reason to walk into one of these stores. - **Counter and self-service coffee — ¥8–20** — Roughly half what a sit-down café charges. Quality is decent to good and essentially never excellent. - **Beer and canned cocktails — ¥5–15** — Sold all day straight from the fridge. There is no restricted time window on buying alcohol to take away in Beijing. - **Heated-cabinet hot drinks — winter only** — Bottled coffee, tea and soy milk held at around 50 °C. Look for the warm case near the till from roughly November onward. - **Local drinks you have never seen** — Iced tea, herbal tea, coconut water, sparkling water, sugar-free soda. Trying one is arguably the point of stopping. ## Paying: the place where cash still always works Every chain convenience store in Beijing takes banknotes, and every one takes Alipay and WeChat Pay. That combination is rarer than it sounds: plenty of small Beijing shops have quietly drifted to app-only payment, and card readers fail often enough that you should never build a plan around one. Foreign Visa and Mastercard acceptance is genuinely inconsistent even between branches of the same chain, so treat it as a bonus rather than a plan. If your payment method is unusual, use the counter rather than the self-checkout kiosk. - **Cash — universally accepted** — Keep ¥100–200 in small notes for exactly this situation. Till staff can change a ¥100 banknote without blinking. - **Alipay or WeChat Pay — fastest** — Scan the store's code or let them scan yours. Set this up before you land, not when you are hungry at midnight. - **Foreign contactless cards — unreliable** — Rolled out unevenly across branches and networks. Always have a second method ready rather than discovering the gap at the till. - **Self-checkout kiosks — often Chinese-only** — Larger branches have them. If the screen makes no sense, walk to the counter instead; nobody finds this strange. ## Six things staff will do besides selling you things This is what separates a convenience store from a vending machine, and none of it costs anything extra. - **Heat your food — free** — Hand the bento or the rice triangle over with the rest of your basket. They microwave it at the till and hand it back hot. You do not even need to ask. - **Hot water — usually free** — Many branches keep a dispenser for instant noodles, or staff will fill your bottle from the back. Ask for rè shuǐ (热水). Worth knowing if you are avoiding the tap. - **Shared power bank rental — rent anywhere, return anywhere** — The kiosks by the door are standard, and cross-store returns within the same brand generally work, so you can borrow in one district and drop it in another. - **Parcel and locker collection** — Cainiao and Fengchao lockers sit inside or beside plenty of branches, so your name on a delivery may well resolve to a convenience-store pickup. - **Emergency supplies at 23:00** — Umbrellas, toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, socks and cheap charging cables. Poor quality, real markup, but open when nothing else is. Budget ¥20–40 for a throwaway umbrella. - **The everyday things you forgot to pack** — Tissue packs, trial-size toiletries, hair ties, laundry sachets, contact solution, wet wipes. Prices are a supermarket plus a convenience markup, and staff know it. ## What they will not do Setting expectations right here saves more wasted trips than anything else in this guide. - **No customer toilet, in most cases** — Most Beijing convenience stores have no toilet you can use. Some staff will unlock theirs if you ask politely; plenty simply do not have one. Plan around public toilets rather than hoping. - **No medicine of any kind** — Over-the-counter and prescription drugs legally require a licensed pharmacy. Look for the green cross and 药店 (yào diàn). This trips up people looking for simple painkillers at 23:00. - **No SIM cards or eSIMs** — Tourist SIM and eSIM products come from carrier stores and airport counters, never off a convenience store shelf. Do not budget time for it. - **No fresh fruit worth buying** — Supermarket and street fruit shops are cheaper and riper. Convenience-store fruit is expensive and usually underripe. - **No guaranteed ATM** — Some branches have a machine by the door, most do not. Get cash from a bank ATM during the day rather than hunting one at midnight. ## Finding one in the next five minutes Store density in Beijing is high by Chinese standards, but it falls off a cliff once you leave a main road. Searching in Chinese also returns noticeably better results than searching in English. - **Search 便利店 (biàn lì diàn)** — In Amap or Apple Maps the Chinese word returns many more results than 'convenience store'. If you are English-only today, the flagship branches still show up. - **Add the 24 小时 filter** — Searching 24 小时便利店 pushes genuinely all-night branches to the top of the list. - **Walk toward a main road, an exit or a hub** — Airport terminals, railway stations and a number of subway stations have branches inside or right outside the concourse. - **Ask your hotel reception** — They know which nearby branch really is open at midnight. Thirty seconds at the desk beats ten minutes of walking. - **Head for a hospital** — Hospital-adjacent stores are disproportionately the ones that never close — useful when the rest of the neighbourhood has gone dark. ## Related Beijing guides If this was useful, these cover the next question most visitors ask after they get back on the street: - **Tap water, kettles and where to refill for free** — /guides/beijing-drinking-water-guide/ - **Paying in China with a foreign card** — /guides/paying-in-china/ - **When your foreign card is declined, and the cash plan** — /guides/foreign-card-declined-beijing-cash-plan/ - **Public toilets in Beijing** — /guides/beijing-public-toilets-guide/ - **Power bank rules, deposits and flying with them** — /guides/china-domestic-flights-power-banks-battery-rules/ - **Receiving packages and pickup lockers** — /guides/beijing-receiving-packages-fengchao-cainiao/ - **Pharmacies and seeing a doctor in Beijing** — /guides/medical-pharmacy-beijing/ - **Choosing a SIM or eSIM before you land** — /guides/esim-china-trip-com-vs-airalo-vs-bytesim-vs-hong-kong-esim/ ## The convenience-store checklist - **Before you land** — Save the two Chinese words 便利店 and 热水 somewhere you can find offline. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay. Withdraw around ¥200 in cash. - **Arrival evening** — Locate the nearest round-the-clock branch before 22:00, and note the chain name, not just the location — you may want to return a power bank there later. - **Every day out** — Leave with a charged power bank. If you forgot, rent one rather than buying, and return it to any branch of the same network instead of walking back. - **A no-Chinese lunch** — A bento, a rice triangle and a bottle of water lands at roughly ¥25–30, point-at-it ordering included. - **Sudden rain** — Buy the umbrella at the store instead of waiting it out. Budget ¥20–40 and treat it as disposable. - **Feeling unwell** — Convenience stores sell water, tissues and electrolytes, not medicine. Anything you swallow needs a pharmacy. ## Where to stay **KOULING Ruiyue Hotel** — 5m from Guogongzhuang Metro Station · 9.6/10 · US$26 View hotel: https://12001.net/hotels/ruiyue/ KOULING Ruiyue sits about five metres from Guogongzhuang Station on Lines 9 and the Fangshan line. It sits on a residential grid rather than in the tourist core, which is why the everyday things — a convenience store, a small restaurant, a fruit shop — are a short walk instead of a taxi ride. Reception will point you at whichever nearby branch stays open latest, and staff will make the local call for you in Chinese when a payment app decides not to cooperate. --- Source: https://12001.net/guides/beijing-convenience-stores-guide/ © KOULING Hotels