Tim Hortons: Canadian icon but also a bellwether for politics

May 9, 2024 5:26 AM

"Tims is always going to be able to lean on the ordinary Canadians thing in their advertising. It is a habit.”

It's worth noting that this Canadian icon is not even owned by Canadians anymore. While the coffee is garbage, it is accessible garbage to all Canadians. Count the Timmies where you live!

posted by Kitteh (49 comments total)

It’s not coffee, it’s Timmies. Helps with expectations while on a road trip.
posted by whatevernot at 5:54 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]

Tim's knows their primary service is providing a reasonably clean and safe washroom to travellers and the trades.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:56 AM on May 9 [12 favorites]

Whoa wtf. The coffee is good. We lived in Canada for decade and I miss Canadian church on Sundays (a double double and a stroll around Canadian tire).

My wife's pregnancy food was a double double and a honey cruller.
posted by chasles at 5:56 AM on May 9 [5 favorites]

I haven't had (western NY) timmy's in a while because the specific one I'd use is now staffed exclusively by Very Slow Undergraduates but unless things have changed since eh 2022, my sense has always been that timmy's isn't good coffee, but it's quite good at being *swilling* coffee.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:59 AM on May 9 [5 favorites]

Tim's knows their primary service is providing a reasonably clean and safe washroom to travellers and the trades.

And yet they continually fail at even that. The number of Tim's I have been in where there is a layer of urine on the men's bathroom floor is more elections then I've voted in.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

As detailed in the article, Tim Hortons and Labatts beer, two incredibly iconic Canadian consumer brands that once upon a time really were local Canadian success stories, are both owned by the same private equity firm, 3G Capital. It controls the Ab InBev beer juggernaut and Restaurant Brands, whose most famous fast food chain is Burger King.

That firm was originally Brazilian in extraction but is effectively now a worldwide conglomerate with tentacles in thousands of brands. It is one of those companies that flies under the radar but is shocking to see how much it actually controls.

So knowing that, when I saw this ad a few years ago:

the True Stories campaign, which loosely re-enacted anecdotes posted on the company’s website. In one emotional ad, an immigrant reunites with his wife and kids at an airport, carrying bags of winter garb for them.

I remember thinking it is the most shameless, disgusting piece of capitalist tripe I have ever seen, surpassed only by ads from Raytheon praising International Women's Day. They knew exactly how to appeal to the UMC white liberal Canadian class who like to think of themselves as Very Good People.
posted by fortitude25 at 6:00 AM on May 9 [8 favorites]

A Timmies double-double large has 266 calories: 17 grams of fat and 26 grams of sugar. It's an energy drink, not a "coffee."
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

A Timmies double-double large has 266 calories: 17 grams of fat and 26 grams of sugar. It's an energy drink, not a "coffee."

At the hospital, I used to work with a guy in his 60s who only ordered triple-triple larges every shift!

Timmies occupies that weird space between national icon and grudging acceptance of its ubiquity.
posted by Kitteh at 6:12 AM on May 9 [7 favorites]

I haven't given a Timmies any money since they cut benefits to employees in retaliation to the minimum wage increasing in Ontario.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:15 AM on May 9 [14 favorites]

The quality of everything at Tim Horton's is so bad I would call it an insult to its customers if every store in Canada didn't have a lineup out of the front door of people eager to give this terrible company their money.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:24 AM on May 9

This seems like a good place to post A taxonomy of B.C. small town retail chain prestige, a classic Justin McElroy endeavour. Surprisingly, of the 61 out of 99 municipalities under 9000 people that have a chain, A&W (38) edges out Tim Hortons (33), but all are dwarfed by Subway (50). In fact, "if a B.C. town has at least 4 of the big 20 outlets, 2 of them will automatically be an A&W and a Subway".

A&W Canada is Canadian owned and earned my loyalty by providing a Satisfying Vegetarian Option (Beyond Meat burger). Tim Hortons, though unsurprisingly not on the printed menu, will make you a cream cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich, still putting it above say a McDonalds for road trip desperation. Starbucks lost my interest forever by killing off their Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich. Local fave Triple O's has an impossible burger. I am a single issue voter.
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:28 AM on May 9 [11 favorites]

Is Tims good? Not particularly -- the coffee is swill, but the lunches are OK. But it's ubiquitous and dependable, and always a solid choice when you're on the road. When you're heading somewhere and have a schedule to keep, but find yourself passing through Settlerton Corners needing lunch, Tims it is.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:32 AM on May 9 [3 favorites]

I like A&W’s food, but they’re union busters.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:32 AM on May 9 [3 favorites]

Tim Hortons franchisees raised a huge stink when the minimum wage was raised in Ontario. The owners of my parents' local Timmies were adamant that they were already running on a shoestring budget and cut benefits to their staff. Turns out, the couple are actually the son of the billionaire who sold the Tim Hortons brand to a multinational conglomerate and the daughter of Tim Horton himself. Not exactly a little franchisee trying to make ends meet.
posted by thecjm at 6:36 AM on May 9 [11 favorites]

Justin McElroy is a Provincial treasure. I hope he's enjoying his time off.

Thankfully, it's a jaunt over to the next town (about 40 minutes) to the nearest Tims, but almost every time I'm there I'm tempted. I'm shocked at the drop in quality over the last 15 years or so, especially in the food, which used to be really good (for quick road trip stops) and reasonably priced. No more. We used to look forward to seeing them on the long journeys, and I distinctly remember being happy when one opened up in Revelstoke, so we had somewhere else to stop besides the World's Worst Subway(tm).

I still remember really realizing how prevalent it had become when I was visiting Tilsonburg, ON, a town of about 10k at the time, that had a Tim's at both intersections with the highway and one in town.
posted by sauril at 6:38 AM on May 9

I am an absolute sucker for Tim's TV advertising. It doesn't actually make me go to Tim's, because the story-centered advertising is all coffee-focused and I don't drink coffee, but man, they have the ability to make me cry on command.

That ad with the stern father and the hockey game would make me weep even though I wasn't Asian and didn't play hockey because I did have a stern father.

Tim Hortons, though unsurprisingly not on the printed menu, will make you a cream cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich, still putting it above say a McDonalds for road trip desperation.

This used to be on the menu -- it was called the garden vegetable sandwich. Of course, it could still be on the menu and you'd never know, because Tim's has switched to those horrible video menus you can't actually read because they are constantly changing.

I like A&W’s food, but they’re union busters.

Aww man, I didn't want to know that, though I imagine almost all fast food restaurants are union busters. I like A&W because they will lettuce wrap a burger and also I love thousand island salad dressing which is what their burger sauce is. They're also one of the few restaurants my closest friend here in Ottawa and I can both eat at because she's a vegetarian who can't eat dairy and I eat keto.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:39 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]

I like A&W’s food, but they’re union busters.

I read that article. I'm surprised they're saying so in a public venue, but I think every fast food chain, and I assume every chain with low-wage employees, does this. I know that McDonald's location managers have a hotline they can call if they suspect union activity and a team drops in to quelch it, supposedly without running afoul of the law, but I doubt it. Anyway, yeah, if you're eating fast food go ahead and eat wherever because they're all awful.

I don't like Tim Horton's much and especially don't like them for actual meals, but my son loves it. I like that they have the berry quencher things because that's pretty much all I would drink there as I'm not a coffee drinker and their tea is not great.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:45 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

I can't drink Starbucks burnt coffee, and on Western New York we have Timmies all over. The coffee is fair, but just. I do like their muffins and on occasion their little round glazed donuts. Restroom always clean. At home I make Gevalia brand coffee.I got hooked 30 years ago when they would send you a coffee maker if you ordered a monthly plan thing. Cancel anytime...like after you got your first bag of coffee.
posted by Czjewel at 6:57 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

For a hot minute, Timmies had a Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich option and I was so pleased. But I guess fake sausage might have been a little too liberal and it got pulled a while after.
posted by Kitteh at 7:04 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]

It's been a while but from what I remember their lunch food IS better than Dunkin Donuts... low bar, I know, but that's the obvious comparison.

There's one on the NJ Parkway now and they have this terrible deal where one breakfast sandwich is $5.50, but you can get two for $6. It makes me so mad because $5.50 is way too much to pay for one of those sandwiches, but I don't want to buy two.
posted by subdee at 7:14 AM on May 9

Whoa wtf. The coffee is good.

honestly, they brew it so weak, I can't tell. A friend of mine brews it at home espresso style, says it's fine. So who knows?

as for the donuts, the baked goods in general, the tragedy here is that they were once very good as Tim's had a policy of baking everything on site. But then everything changed in the early 2000s at roughly the same time that the number of outlets multiplied many times over. As Tim's popularity grew, its quality declined ... by orders of magnitude.

Could the same be said to be true of Canada itself?

It will be if we keep allowing shitty operations such as Tim's to pretend to be somehow evocative of who we really are as a nation.
posted by philip-random at 8:15 AM on May 9 [10 favorites]

I can't drink Starbucks burnt coffee, and on Western New York we have Timmies all over. The coffee is fair, but just. I do like their muffins and on occasion their little round glazed donuts. Restroom always clean. At home I make Gevalia brand coffee.I got hooked 30 years ago when they would send you a coffee maker if you ordered a monthly plan thing. Cancel anytime...like after you got your first bag of coffee.

If you’re desperate and all there is around is Starbucks, order an Americano. A little more money than the drip coffee but also much better. Also if you’re making coffee at home, look in to local roasters. They sell fantastic coffee.
posted by azpenguin at 8:40 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Of small-town staples, A&W is definitely my go-to purely because of the beyond meat burger. My friends probably think I have some deranged brand loyalty as every road-trip ends up at A&W, but rural Alberta is otherwise something of a restaurant food desert for vegetarians.

Tim Horton's used to be something of a destination, when I was a kid in the 90s, since the nearest one was ~1hr drive from the town I grew up in. If we were driving any serious distance we would stop at Tim's for lunch, especially when they did soup in a bread-bowl. I think because of that it is still reliably where the family goes when we all get together: we find the nearest Tim's for coffee and doughnuts. Even though the coffee sucks and the doughnuts aren't as good. Traditions are hard to break.
posted by selenized at 8:41 AM on May 9

The urban legend around here is that Tim's switched to a cheaper coffee bean supplier and McDonald's Canada swooped in to sign with the original supplier.
posted by thecjm at 8:46 AM on May 9 [8 favorites]

I do not have a trailer hitch that needs cleaning so I have no use for Tims Hortons.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 8:54 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

not too liberal, not too conservative, eh? The local Timmies (during standing-outside-weather, at least) has a bunch of guys in huge pickups with the usual "F*ck Trudeau" (that's what it says, I'm not editing) stickers and hockey sticks with Canadian flags (= I am a KKKonvoy supporter) in the back. Haven't quite made out a Diagolon sticker yet, but give it time. Much laying on of horns as they peel out, too.

My biggest shock about Tim Hortons is that they have Blueberry Fritters as a permanent thing in Montreal. The injustice!
posted by scruss at 9:15 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]

We grind and french-press our morning coffee, which generally beats any chain coffee by miles. (Though confession - we often buy McDonalds beans to grind; it's pretty good). And being retired, a daily coffee out is an expensive habit we have skipped.

By coincidence, yesterday I was in another town to bike some trails there. I was a bit peckish and I had to pee. So... Timmies. A small coffee with milk (it was ok, not spectacular) and an apple fritter (it was meh). And a clean bathroom.

Politically/commercially I totally get how they've built and burnished their position as a staple or fixture of Canadian life, to the point that it becomes an identity/class thing. Their strategic sponsorship of local sports and community events is of course influential. And as the article points out, Timmies (and now McDonalds; they really want into this niche) are the remaining meetup/hangout spots for older Canadians, with affordable coffee, and the tables aren't all taken up with solitary headphone-wearing yuppies and their MacBooks.

In my working life I patronized mom'n pop lunch places as much as possible, but when you're traveling, a chain promises consistency. Though we do try to get non-chain recommendations from locals when possible.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:18 AM on May 9

If you smoke or used to smoke, you looooove the coffee. All others consider it a filthy buzz.

Ice caps however are (crack-esque) heaven! So, also a filthy buzz.

Donuts are bad. Sandwiches are small. I like bagels with cream cheese and that’s it.

But I agree, Tim’s is a shoddy substitute (along with poutine, which is *chefs kiss*) for an actual national character. Their commercials cloyingly reflect back to ourselves who we take ourselves to be but not as we really are… just as bad as American “strength power!!” commercials, ours are Ned Flanders aww shucks.

Sorry yall caught me in a mood this morning !
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:43 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]

Tim Horton’s is "brewing an idea of Canada" that absolutely prevails in the minds of Canadians, and that’s precisely why the company is so successful.

“‘Tim Hortons offers back what private industry, and the ideology of the free enterprise, have removed from the public sphere’ … a folkloric history of Canadian safety and comfort, the place to go when times are tough, the weather is cruel, and life promises death and poor crops,” the author relates, citing a text on the subject.

Canadian identity turns on these themes — hardy, community-minded folk who endure tough times, cruel weather, and poor crops; nice people, humble (“we’re number two”), and loyal (see: Tim Horton’s).

Tim Horton’s sells this identity to Canadians — and succeeds, despite the article’s insinuations — because Canadian consumers prefer it to the alternative.

Canadians overwhelmingly derive their identity from elsewhere than their land, their institutions, or their society: only 20 percent of Canadians live outside a metropolis, and only 14 percent of Canadians in metropolitan areas actually inhabit a city. Everyone else is in a subdevelopment. Cul-de-sacs are less suburban than Canadians.

Assiduously sheltered from want, discomfort, cold temperatures, and other Canadians, the average Canadian citizen, like every suburbanite, owes more of their essential character to the model of their pickup truck than to the geography, the weather, the history, or the people of Canada from which their cars and suburbs are in delibered flight.

Having renounced their sources of social culture, Canadians now find what substitutes for it in their purchases.

Tim Horton’s offers low-quality food and drinks, but that’s not what they sell. Canadians buy Tim Horton’s coffee, and with abiding zeal, for the same reason they buy big pickup trucks and suburban homes with big back yards: that’s their culture.

“Canadians, it’s said, are consumer citizens,” posits the author, and it follows that Canadian culture diverges little from unadulterated consumer culture, expressed through car culture, and nourished in suburban culture.

But Canadian civil society wasn’t “taken over by Tims,” as the writer of this piece asserts, nor did “privatization remove[] parks, clubs, and community centres.” Canada now stands on the brink of electing a MAGA prime minister because Canadians, of their own volition, reject their history, their cities, their forests, and one other; Tim Horton’s, Canadian Tire, Ford Motors, suburban real estate developers, and countless others like them merely discovered among the wreckage the opportunity to do what Canadians are no longer able, which is to fill the void that remains.
posted by cthlsgnd at 9:48 AM on May 9 [13 favorites]

I've mentioned before on the Blue that while Canadians give themselves the underdog kind accepting identity to the world, but the lived reality is very very different. How Canadians see themselves and how they act aren't simpatico. And yet, I'd rather live here than back home in the States. (I mean, in the States, Americans tell you who they are. You do not have to guess.)
posted by Kitteh at 9:55 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]

Canadians: clubbing baby harp seals with asbestos bats on tar sands, with a smile.

srsly, as an American I do get that Canada is better, on most metrics. and I think perhaps mocking a group of people for being...nice? is just crass. but Canadians themselves may take their own goodness a little too seriously.

I'm curious where the Tim's coffee rates v. Dunkies?
posted by supermedusa at 10:13 AM on May 9

Totally Kitteh. We’ve recently returned after years stateside and it is very weird to see my country after having been outside of it. People are a lot more quiet, conservative than I realized (vs Americans being so open and neighborly) and boy can they be mean! I think because they know no one is going to escalate much (because… we’re kind of weakly unable to truly defend ourselves), so they can be just brazenly rude to you if they think you’ve crossed a social norm because they generally expect not to be called out on their nonsense. (Think: tsk-tsk cluck-cluckers in the grocery store). But it’s definitely a high trust society (neighbors let their two little girls come play at our house for like three hours when we just arrived because… trust! I was surprised… you’re just letting your kids over? Without you?? Im cool with it just surprised!) and kids roam a lot more freely at least in this area. Think like 11 year olds taking the bus because… how else you gonna get where you’re going to?

We need to get back to ourselves instead of having companies tell us who we are and I think a big portion of that is our Home and Native Land - we love our nature and need to be more in touch with it. I would honestly hope that we can accept more leadership from our aboriginal peoples to help guide us in that area. Out in BC there is a lot around salmon cycles - right now it’s salmon release season and in the fall it will be spawning. And so having community events around that reinforces our connection with nature and builds a different (and I honestly think deeper) Canadian culture.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:46 AM on May 9 [3 favorites]

That ad with the stern father and the hockey game would make me weep

Guilty
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:45 AM on May 9

Canadians overwhelmingly derive their identity from elsewhere than their land, their institutions, or their society... Having renounced their sources of social culture, Canadians now find what substitutes for it in their purchases.

What? Strongly disagree here.

Successful marketing, like Tim Hortons, succeeds when it reflects our positive self-image back to us, with a little sepia tint. Others have already reeled off a list of "typical" Canadian things, and some, like celebrating the sense of community where it exists - we're hardly alone in the world for thinking that, are we?

Missing this is completely misunderstanding the appeal of Tim Hortons marketing... and its utility as a bellwether or stand-in for political identity.

PS - if you want to find open and neighbourly Canadians, make some friends in the smaller communities.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:04 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]

About the only thing from Tims that I actually enjoy is the Iced Capp so there isn't much pulling me into a Tims unless I'm out in the middle of nowhere and don't want to stop for long to look for food. The people who get their coffee from there everyday mystify me. Make instant at home and you'll have comparable coffee whenever you want for a lot less. If you actually like coffee then there are lots of easy ways to make good coffee at home that doesn't require a lot of equipment and isn't time consuming. Again, you're on a road trip and you just need something to keep you going fine, but in almost any other situation there has to be a better option available.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:33 PM on May 9

That being said, I love me a good heritage minute. I have a friend who studied for her citizenship test by watching them.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:57 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]

We're not supposed to tell anyone what is on the citizenship test, but let me tell you, after all the studying I did, not ONE question about the industrious beaver? I was misled.
posted by Kitteh at 1:06 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Having been born here, I have never had to take the citizenship test, but I have always assumed the citizenship test is one question for all the marbles, and the question is

Your house hippo is leaving his nest of lost mittens to search for food, what would he find tasty:
a) raisins
b) chips
c) crumbs from peanut butter on toast
d) all of the above
posted by jacquilynne at 1:33 PM on May 9 [6 favorites]

→ I'm curious where the Tim's coffee rates v. Dunkies?

Both brands really stretch the definition of "coffee".
posted by scruss at 1:33 PM on May 9 [3 favorites]

Oh, ffs! dept: Are Tim Hortons' new lids 'woke'? One Conservative MP thinks so
posted by Artful Codger at 1:42 PM on May 9 [3 favorites]

anyway tims jumped the shark when the roll up the rim to maybe get a free "coffee" promotion ceased being an actual roll up the rim thing that you could do with your bored ass fingers while sitting in traffic and you had to go online to give them all your personal info to maybe get a free "coffee"

no
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:54 PM on May 9 [4 favorites]

I'm curious where the Tim's coffee rates v. Dunkies?

Dunkins is awful and tims is acceptable to good.

I've done my own research. Extensively.
posted by chasles at 3:20 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Oh, hey Rex Murphy is dead. The distillation of white colonial Canadiana. If you're unaware, all you really need to know is that Stephen Harper left him a glowing eulogy on X.

*
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:31 PM on May 9 [4 favorites]

Whoa wtf. The coffee is good.

I mean you do you, but no, it really isn't. Tim Hortons is much like Wawa, bland North American mediocrity with effective PR.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:39 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Oh, hey Rex Murphy is dead.

Damn, Christmas came early.
posted by Kitteh at 6:04 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Rex Murphy is dead

As he was a lich I hope the proper precautions were taken.

Stephen Harper

Speaking of undead beasts - one of my favourite moments with Tim's as a political prop was when Harper revealed he didn't drink coffee (nor tea apparently) but was hard pressed so chose a hot chocolate. There was something so Harper about that moment.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 PM on May 9 [3 favorites]

Time to go back to basics and open a Gump Worsley bake shop.
posted by mazola at 3:30 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

→ Oh, hey Rex Murphy is dead

this might be the last time I get Salt-N-Pepa's 1991 hit “Let's Talk about Sex” stuck in my head except with the lyrics changed to Let's Talk about Rex Murphy
posted by scruss at 5:26 PM on May 10

We should also make mention of the other Canadian coffee chains: Coffee Time (better coffee than Tim's, oddly waxy donuts), Country Style (which I haven't seen for years) and Western favourite Robin's (who briefly had a location near me in Toronto and I miss them)
posted by scruss at 5:08 PM on May 17