Tim Hortons a Flop in the US

[seattleflamer]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I see the backups in this city at various Tim's drive through's. Is it a ticketable offense to be stopped on a road in line for a drivethrough? It should be.

I don't understand our car culture sometimes. Isn't it just as "convenient" to park, walk the 30 steps back and forth, get your coffee and leave probably faster than waiting, spewing exhaust and causing traffic?

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by seattleflamer

I don't understand our car culture sometimes. Isn't it just as "convenient" to park, walk the 30 steps back and forth, get your coffee and leave probably faster than waiting, spewing exhaust and causing traffic?

Convenience means never having to say you're sorr...err never having to get out of a sitting position.

[nik-]

You should be able to just drive up to the drive through and they blast you in the face with coffee out of a water cannon.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by troutman

Coffee really tastes gross, objectively. People only drink it because it delivers a caffeine fix. Bitter ground up beans in hot water - yum! Your teeth are yellow, and your breath stinks.

I really disagree.

It's just a bit of an acquired taste. It takes a while of drinking it before you get used to the bitter and you start to taste the good stuff.

It's like olives, scotch, various forms of seafood, strong cheese, etc..

[kipperfan]

As someone who strongly dislikes and would never consider drinking a icecap or a coffee (or latte, expresso, or any other hot caffeinated drink) and also strongly dislikes and would never consider eating a donut, I have absolutley no use for Tim Hortons. Their soup and sandwiches are terrible and frankly I am not sure I will ever go to one of their locations ever again. I definatley have some "good ole boy" relatives up in Northern Onatrio that love their "Timmies" though, so I'm sure someone if going to drag me back through one of these hell holes eventually.

[Jordan!]

Outside of the lustre of Timmies being amazing and a cultural icon in Canada. DD's is more or less the same damn thing with different branding. Donut and coffee wise at least, Timmies soup and sammies are nasty.

[simmonjam1]

I actually like Tim's black coffee. It's not bad. I like McD's black coffee as well as Starbucks too. All have their unique flavour.

Tim Horton's should have expanded into the US on the backs of Canadians. Expand into areas where there is a large area of expats and snowbirds. Then let the Canadians slowly indoctrinate their American friends.

[10W30]

Originally Posted by Bertuzzied

Kinda surprised. Tim's is definitely better than Dunkin Donuts.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/busin...431/story.html

Activist investors say the $664-million-U.S. expansion over the last decade has been a waste. At stake may be a forced retreat from a market that promises the Oakville, Ont.-based company potential growth as it reaches saturation at home.
"They are meeting the point at which they won't be able to open any more stores in Canada," said Jim Danahy, chief executive officer of Customer LAB, a Toronto-based retail consulting firm. "They know long-term growth will have to come from the U.S."
Tim Hortons recently faced criticism of its U.S. strategy from activist investors Highfields Capital Management LP of Boston and New Yorkbased Scout Capital Management LLC, which hold four and five per cent of the company's shares, respectively. Both investment firms pressured the company to scale back the U.S. expansion, and instead direct capital to share buybacks.
"The company's consistent and long-standing underperformance should long ago have been a wake-up to Tim Hortons' board and management," Scout said in a letter on June 25. "We urge you to curtail the use of the company's cash flow to fund real estate or new store capex in the U.S."
With a U.S. market share of only 2.7 per cent, according to retail consulting firm Technomic Inc., Tim Hortons hasn't been able to replicate the institutional status that it enjoys in Canada. The chain was founded in Hamilton in 1964 by late National Hockey League player Tim Horton, the man credited with inventing the slap shot. The chain plays off its founder's hockey roots, sponsoring minor hockey development programs, and can be found in practically every city in the country. The company has 3,453 locations in Canada, more than McDonald's Corp.

I scanned the whole thread, hoping to participate in the heated debate that I was sure would follow after reading the article.
I am disappointed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slapshot

[Rerun]

Tim Horton's started its downhill slide when they started outsourcing their baked goods. I'm old enough to remember when a Tim's donut or apple fritter was the best!

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/07/e...ouble-trouble/

Tim’s regulars may have a hard time swallowing the news that their maple dip is no longer produced under the Maple Leaf. As national symbols go, a Hortons donut is second only to a Hortons coffee. But Timmy’s selling baked goods from a freezer? That’s standard operating procedure, and has been for quite some time.
Yes, it was certainly a scandal back in 2003, when Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce confirmed the truth: that the company he built (and had recently left) replaced its in-store deep fryers with frozen globs of dough trucked in from a factory. “This is not a philosophy that I would have embraced if I still owned the company,” he famously boasted. One Hortons spokeswoman, convinced that she could stop the unflattering headlines, famously told a reporter that “until I confirm or deny anything, it simply doesn’t exist.”
It did exist, of course. And the backlash was swift. (Joyce’s words were especially damaging. “I’ve tried them,” he said of the new donuts. “And they’re certainly not the same.”) In time, though, most people eventually forgot—or simply stopped caring—where their honey crullers came from. Truth be told, many customers still have no idea that the donuts on display have to be defrosted.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Rerun

Tim Horton's started its downhill slide when they started outsourcing their baked goods. I'm old enough to remember when a Tim's donut or apple fritter was the best!

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/07/e...ouble-trouble/

Where have you been?

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by seattleflamer

I don't understand our car culture sometimes. Isn't it just as "convenient" to park, walk the 30 steps back and forth, get your coffee and leave probably faster than waiting, spewing exhaust and causing traffic?

I have never bought a cup of coffee in my life, but when it comes to drive thru (fast food, bank, etc), if there is a line up, I always park my car and go in if I'm by myself. BUT, if I have my two small boys with me, I'm staying in my car waiting in that stupid line (or I'll just leave). But it's a bigger hassle to pack up the kids and go inside IMO.

[pylon]

Originally Posted by Rerun

Tim Horton's started its downhill slide when they started outsourcing their baked goods. I'm old enough to remember when a Tim's donut or apple fritter was the best!

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/07/e...ouble-trouble/

Yep, I agree. No two donuts were the exact same, the sizes slightly varied, and you could tell they were made on site. Now you can see the molding lines on the sides of their donuts, and they have a stale sorta taste to them.

I 100% agree, that the old Apple Fritters, Boston Creams and Dutchies were awesome. Now they suck.

[getbak]

The worst thing about them closing their in-store bakeries is that they got rid of cakes and pies. Their chocolate cream pie was great.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Is it wrong that I think Swiss Chalet is horrible?

I worked there for months and share this sentiment. I was at the Lethbridge location when it opened and the rush of people was insane, people waiting 1 hour or more for a table. At Swiss Chalet! Smelling chalet sauce for 10 hours at a time was beyond gross.

Really not sure why the chicken is often dry. Seems fine right when it comes out of the rotisserie... but then it just sits in a drawer. It's barely a step above fast food.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by blankall

It's been that way from the get go.

Basically, the whole chain was started by someone who wanted to cash in on the connection to hockey. It was founded by Tim Horton, but a bunch of corproate investors quickly took over, transformed the restaurant entirely, and began franchising. The only thing they kept was the name, to create a marketing link to hockey and, therefore, Canada.

It worked.

People don't go to Tim Horton's for the predictable quality of the food like other restaurants. They go there because they've arbitrarily decided this chain is more Canadian than others. IE they've been sucked in by lame patriotic marketing, which is one of the lowest forms of marketing.

Really? I go there because they serve steeped tea. I don't know what kind of morons you're friends with, but you might want to find a new group.

Originally Posted by blankall

Exactly.

It's ridiculous how quick people are to defend Tim Horton's or mock those who don't like it. If I was calling someone out for eating McDonalds several times a week, people would take no issue with that and probably, generally, support me. Do the same to their Timmy's, which by the way is lower in quality to McDonalds in every way, and people get all up in arms and accuse others of being haters.

It blows my mind that Tim Horton's is able to survive and flourish with such sub-standard product.

Is there something wrong with defending your choice when people are getting lunatic-level offensive about it?

Originally Posted by blankall

McDonalds breakfasts are all made on the spot. Tim Hortons pre-makes their components and keeps them in a warming tray.

Ok, I like McD's as well, so don't mistake this as a Tim's vs. McD's rebuttal, but McD's also puts their stuff in warming trays. At least, they did 20 years ago when I unfortunately worked there.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

See, here is the thing that bugs me: In my opinion, Tim Hortons latched onto something significant that they had no business staking a claim to. In 1992, you could literally have replaced Tim Hortons in the ad that I posted with any other Canadian coffee franchise (and by that, I mean ANY franchise that served simple, ordinary coffee, be it Muffin Break, Coffee Time, Robin's Donuts, etc.), and the results for that company would have been indistinguishable from the success that Tim Hortons has achieved.

There is nothing special about Tim Hortons coffee.
There is nothing Canadian about Tim Hortons coffee.

And yet, Tim Hortons has managed to convince an entire nation that their coffee somehow represents Canadian culture, and is engrained in Canadian identity. They hijacked an already very fragile collective grasp on what it means to be Canadian, and they filled it with ... filler. Its shallow, meaningless and somewhat offensive, and THAT's what bothers me.

Again, who are these people that you interact with? Where are these nationalists that refuse to get coffee anywhere else, because Tim's is "canadian"? I've never met one person like that. Ever. I thought you were an educated adult, but it seems that you've been hanging out in a Jr High or something, judging by the apparent idiots you hang out with that buy their coffee at Tims because it's canadian.

Originally Posted by kipperfan

As someone who strongly dislikes and would never consider drinking a icecap or a coffee (or latte, expresso, or any other hot caffeinated drink) and also strongly dislikes and would never consider eating a donut, I have absolutley no use for Tim Hortons. Their soup and sandwiches are terrible and frankly I am not sure I will ever go to one of their locations ever again. I definatley have some "good ole boy" relatives up in Northern Onatrio that love their "Timmies" though, so I'm sure someone if going to drag me back through one of these hell holes eventually.

How do you know you don't like it if you would never consider ever buying it?..... But thanks for the contribution.


As for my own $.02, Tim's has tea, a drivethru, and food if I want it. Plus they're located on every corner. Plenty of different reason I go there. None of the reasons I go there have anything to do with "being canadian". I swear, some of you guys like to think up dumb sh*t in your head and assume that's what people are doing or thinking.

It's coffee (or tea). You guys are acting like people are investing their life savings in Detroit real estate. It's a $2 hot drink in the morning. I didn't know I needed to navel gaze about whether my $2 was spent supporting a small enough coffee shop.

Next up will be the anti Big Mac zealots informing everyone that WHOPPERS ARE BETTER!@!!OMG!

[jayswin]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

nailed it.

It's like these guys are just watching the commercials and thinking to themselves "people are going because it's Canadian, ****ing idiots, this pisses me off so much, I'm going to go on a message board and complain about stupid Canadians who give into fake patriotism". I highly doubt they actually have any friends who say "I'm going to Tim Horton's because I feel like I'm experiencing canadiana". My BS meter is at 10 on that one.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Really? I go there because they serve steeped tea.

I keep seeing steeped tea being mentioned like it's something special. Do other places not steep their tea? I've had steeped tea at McDonald's and their cups are 1000x better. The lines are usually way shorter in the morning too.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

I keep seeing steeped tea being mentioned like it's something special. Do other places not steep their tea? I've had steeped tea at McDonald's and their cups are 1000x better. The lines are usually way shorter in the morning too.

I didn't know that McD's has tea. As long as it's not like buying tea at Macs or Sev where you put the hot water, and the tea bag, then you have to wait 5-10 minutes before it's actually tea.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Again, who are these people that you interact with? Where are these nationalists that refuse to get coffee anywhere else, because Tim's is "canadian"? I've never met one person like that. Ever. I thought you were an educated adult, but it seems that you've been hanging out in a Jr High or something, judging by the apparent idiots you hang out with that buy their coffee at Tims because it's canadian.

Nice.

Yeah I must be some poorly educated sycophant with ridiculous friends because I think that patriotism fuels Tim Hortons commercial success...that must be it, and you would know, wouldn't you?

I actual fact, that is not really the argument I am making. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Canadians patron Tim Hortons not out of some sort of patriotic duty; they do so because they are convinced that Tim Hortons is the best coffee, sandwich and donut purveyor on the market. This is the conscious motivation, but DO NOT underestimate the enormous power of mass media and the effect that it can have on a culture that believes in some instinctive sense of patriotism. Tim Hortons ingeniously capitalised on these collective feelings in Canadians in the 90ies, and they used all that cheap social capital and common good will to sell their products—which as I have already noted are NOTHING SPECIAL, and NOT IN ANY WAY DISTINCTLY CANADIAN.

People may not remember or even realise why they think Tim Hortons is great, but I believe it is a mistake to fail to recognise the critical impact that their aggressively patriotic ad campaigns from the 90ies had on the success that they experience today.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by troutman

Coffee really tastes gross, objectively. People only drink it because it delivers a caffeine fix. Bitter ground up beans in hot water - yum! Your teeth are yellow, and your breath stinks.

Glad to see i'm not the only one who hates the taste of coffee. Tried it once and spit out.