I think the thing that bothers me the most is that any time I am with another person or a group of people and we want to go for coffee, it always has to be Tim Horton's. It's like no other place exists to some people. And everyone I know who drinks their coffee black (as I do), thinks it's nasty. I know a lot of people that won't even try anything else because Tim Horton's is so burned into their brains. They get dumbfounded if "Coffee Time" is closer and you mention going there instead.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Tim's used to be good. Well some of them used to be good. Way back when each store actually had a baker who made things fresh. Oh that wonderful smell when you walked into a store at the wee hours of the morning!
Of course this led to inconsistencies in customer experience from store to store (donut size, quality etc). So they centralized the baking and everything became consistent....consistently bad. It goes for the donuts and the soups (when the soups first came out in I want to say the mid-80's they were really quite good. They are also now terrible).
I wouldn't say I prefer Dunkin Donuts (and certainly not the sugar bomb that is Krispy Kreme) but Tim's lowered themselves to that level of quality a decade or so ago. There was nothing that distinguished them from the already well established competitors in the US marketplace.
Yeah, I only live within walking distance of three of them.
I wouldn't call Starbucks a flop (unfortunately), but they can only dream of the kind of customer base Tims gets.
Like most, I go to Tims for the Iced Capps. Tried Dunkin Donuts twice when I was in Chicago in May. And while they do some things better, I wouldn't go out of my way if a Tims was closer.
ernie is dead on, however. Tims just doesn't do anything to differentiate from the other options in the US. Simple intertia keeps it strong in Canada, but it needs to up quality to make further gains.
They get dumbfounded if "Coffee Time" is closer and you mention going there instead.
I had a Coffee Time right beside my place. It went broke because there was next to zero traffic even though they had decent coffee, surprisingly good food, and incredibly good/friendly service.
The location shortly became a Tim Hortons and has a constant supply of traffic. It's frustrating to see a brand succeed while quality failed.
I should also mention (as I have in the past) that having a Tim Hortons close to your home sucks. Constant flow of cars (doing stupid things) and Tim Hortons branded litter all over the place.
Location: In a land without pants, or war, or want. But mostly we care about the pants.
Exp:
Coffee sucks. All you coffee people are deluded in the first place, that Tim Hortons has successfully managed to reprogram millions of your caffeine-addled brains is hardly a surprise.
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Apparently I'm a vast minority here but my favorite cup of coffee is a Tims double double. Starbucks is the worst crap I've ever tasted. McDonalds coffee is pretty good as well. I'd even choose 2nd cup over starbucks. There's a little coffee stand on Stephen Ave. outside of the Scotia building that has a pretty good cup of coffee also.
There is a good reason for this, and that is quite simply that BP never resorted to wrapping their brand in the Canadian flag the same way that Tim Hortons has. Tim Hortons became a Canadian institution because they started to tell everyone that they were a Canadian institution.
Here's the way I remember this happening:
Before 1990 Tim Horton's was a place to buy donuts and to get a cup of coffee. For Canadians, if you wanted donuts and a cup of coffee, choices were generally limited to Tim's or Robin's Donuts, or a much smaller, more local chain. But back then, there was nothing special about their coffee, and Tim Horton's never really made any claims about the distinctiveness of their coffee—their donuts were special because, well ... they're donuts ... and who doesn't love donuts.
Then, sometime in the '90's I saw this commercial:
(...which is really, REALLY ridiculous, because coffee in virtually every place that I have been in Europe is substantially better than in North America—at least in my experience...)
Suddenly, and somewhat without much crescendo, Tim Hortons coffee became a symbol of "being Canadian", almost entirely as a result of the campaign that produced this ad and dozens more like it over the next several years. I don't necessarily think that people spend their money at Tim Hortons through some misguided form of patriotic or national cultural identification, but it is naive to imagine that their aggressive marketing which targeted national pride did not play a significant role in establishing their enormous market share.
It seems to me that this all happened at a time when we as Canadians were struggling a little bit with our cultural identity, which was likewise also a product of the emerging digital age and the explosion of globalisation. The dollar was weak, the "brain drain" was a real concern, and the job market was pretty soft—especially compared to what was happening in the US. I recall this producing a sort of national angst and inferiority, and it was usually directed in response to American-borne stereotypes (You will remember that it was during the '90's that we also began to see those dreadful Molson "I am Canadian" ads)...
To Tim Hortons's credit, they capitalised on this rather palpable sense of national insecurity, and they ran with it. I think people responded in large part because they wanted to feel great about being Canadian (whatever that meant), and Tim Hortons provided an outlet.
Personally, I can't stand Tim Hortons coffee (I happen to drink my coffee black, and with no sugar), but I do understand that there is a significant element of personal choice in such things. What I really do resent, though, is the implication that Tim Hortons is somehow symbolic of "being Canadian". It was a cheap and very, VERY effective marketing campaign that made the original Tim Hortons owners (one of whom I believe was Murray Edwards) abundantly wealthy, but also one that produced this sense of identity on the backs of Canadians who were willing to latch onto anything to fill an odd sort of patriotic void.
...There is surely a graduate thesis in there somewhere.
That's the exact commercial I've been thinking of this whole time. I'll even admit to being pulled in by that campaign, first stop after a summer in europe was Tim's. I thought the guys in that commercial were geniuses.
I love when I stumble through an argument over 20 or so posts and then Textcritic comes rolling in and not only makes that argument, but dramatically improves upon it, in a single post. I seriously love it, well done.
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Coffee sucks. All you coffee people are deluded in the first place, that Tim Hortons has successfully managed to reprogram millions of your caffeine-addled brains is hardly a surprise.
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.
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Tim Hortons might have the worst hash browns known to man. It's like they deep fry them, soak them in water, then finish it off by letting a Filipino contract worker fart on it right before serving it to you.
Their lattes are equally as nasty but I do enjoy an Iced Cap.
Holy crap is that ever true! how on earth does head office not pull that crap from their menu?? haha
To the OP, I strongly disagree with Timmies being better than Dunkin Donuts. When they were in Calgary I thought they were superior in every single way. Their selection for donuts was even way better.
haha. i didn't even know they were in Calgary. I only had them in New York and in Korea and they some kinda sucked.
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.
It's an acquired taste for sure. It's like beer or wine. Not too many people try it for the first time and think it's delicious. But after a while, you appreciate the flavour.
But you are right that for most people it is just a way to administer caffeine to themselves, although you still see people drinking de-caff, so obviously there is more to it than that.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
It's an acquired taste for sure. It's like beer or wine. Not too many people try it for the first time and think it's delicious. But after a while, you appreciate the flavour.
But you are right that for most people it is just a way to administer caffeine to themselves, although you still see people drinking de-caff, so obviously there is more to it than that.
Never could understand the point of de-caff, same with non-alcoholic beer.
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Never could understand the point of de-caff, same with non-alcoholic beer.
I drink quite a bit of decaf coffee. I can only tolerate 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day, so i switch to decaf coffee around noon. I enjoy the taste and the routine.
...It's just a donut shop. But for better or worse it has become a part of the 'culture'. But that doesn't bug me, not sure why it would bug anyone. I guess maybe it's the commercials coming off as culturally important when your a donut shop is excessively preachy. But meh, a lot people enjoy it, no reason to rain on their parade...
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.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
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.
If I ever take up coffee drinking again, it will only be the Kopi Luwak stuff. </snob> </jacknicholson>
That's the exact commercial I've been thinking of this whole time. I'll even admit to being pulled in by that campaign, first stop after a summer in europe was Tim's. I thought the guys in that commercial were geniuses.
My experience with this Tim's ad and the first Molson "my name is Joe" commercial were the same. The former produced a welling sense of pride that actually convinced me that there was something special about Tim Hortons coffee. I used to drink it in spite of myself because of the powerful influence of the idea that Tim Hortons produced in those commercials. It wasn't until my brother mentioned while we were chatting one day how much he hated Tim Hortons coffee, and how much better McDonald's coffee was that I somehow felt a sense of permission to abandon Tim's for something regrettably "non-Canadian".
I think this is a testament to how powerful good advertising can be, and also how susceptible people are to suggestion. I can't really explain it, but there was a sense of veiled patriotism that accompanied my own feelings with regards to the Tim Hortons Canadian identity ad campaign—as if these produced a sense of guilt for my lack of enjoyment of what they proclaimed to be a Canadian institution.
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
I wouldn't call Starbucks a flop (unfortunately), but they can only dream of the kind of customer base Tims gets.
Starbucks doesn't need the sort of business that Tim Horton's gets. The markup that they have on their drinks is greater than that of Tim Horton's and there is usually a line of people at many locations. In fact I think that Starbucks would crumble if they ever did have the lineups that Tims has, due to the fact that drinks need to be made to order often times and the time required is greater than pressing a button and having sugar and cream come out of a machine. If they did have the long lineups it would quickly turn into a situation in which people would be waiting for 10-15 minutes for a cup of coffee and the number of customers would dwindle as a result. I am sure that someone has put together a study of the optimal line length for different coffee shops.
I don't think that either company (or the franchises) are doing poorly - although the key for both is to have a parking lot - the ones I have seen fail (Starbucks that is) are ones that rely entirely upon walk-up traffic in stand-alone locations.
</snob> </jacknicholson>
