Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

For those of you who don't know who/what "Tim Horton's" is allow me to educate and enlighten.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hortons

It's a 'fast food/coffee' chain that really was made popular by a recurring skit on a TV show called: Royal Canadian Air Farce (Sketch based usually heavy on the political satire)

The skit had 3 people sitting around a table drinking coffee and cracking jokes about current-events and mostly political fiascos. It was this lampooning of 'typical Canadian behaviour' of art imitating life that caused more people to show up and start hanging out at the corner coffee shop. In my small home town (40,000 people) there were maybe 3 shops (aka Timmies). During this boom to it's popularity that number increased by atleast 10. They made their doughnuts in-house every morning, and the coffee was tolerated as being acceptable.

As the franchise grew in popularity it became something of a joke and expectation that a person could find a Timmies on nearly every block, and you would never need to drive more then 10 minutes to get to the closest one.

Throughout it's financial hardships and ownership changes there has been a lot of complaints that "The coffee isn't as good as it used to be." And rumours that McDonalds (with it's McCafee push) bought Timmies old supplier of beans.

Now the food is no longer made in store, and my impression is that the coffee is worse. There have been other cost-cutting measures like making the popular contest "Roll up the Rim" (where a person could unroll the lip of the cup of coffee to reveal a prize from free confections, to money and a car); becoming an APP-only prize (more like a lottery style jackpot then a winning cup).

In total, I am not surprised. Their quality has gone downhill, and the treatment of staff is horrendous.

Tim Hortons is everywhere in Canada and they used to be decent. The current owners are subsisting on brand recognition and market inertia.

Once enough negative associations form with the brand, it'll be the work of a generation to turn things around. Tracking user locations probably won't have a huge impact. Most people just don't care enough about privacy issues.

Tim Horton's real problem is that they are becoming known for bad coffee, bad donuts, and bad food, while similarly ubiquitous chains, like McDonalds, now have decent coffee and have added donuts to their menus. If I have to choose between a McDonalds burger and a microwaved chicken-finger with a shelf-stabilized tortilla wrapped around it from Tim Horton's, the choice is easy. Practically every truck-stop town that has a Tim Horton's also has a McDonald's very close by, so it really is just market inertia propping Tim Horton's up at this point.

Also worth noting that McDonalds started buying their coffee from Mother Parkers, Tim Hortons' longtime supplier, after Tims was bought by Burger King/Brazillians and switched to distressing dirty bean water to save money.

> Tim Hortons is everywhere in Canada and they used to be decent.

Apparently before Wendy's bought them out (mid-90s) that was true, but I'm too young to remember. It certainly hasn't been true since that time. Even co-founder Ron Joyce lamented at the time about how the quality was decimated under their ownership.

> Tim Horton's real problem is that they are becoming known for bad coffee, bad donuts, and bad food

Tim Hortons' problem is that Tim Horton's daughter, who is a Tim Hortons franchisee, made some negative comments towards minimum wage workers which was mistaken to have come from Tim Hortons corporate.

The bad coffee, food, and donuts isn't anything new. They moved to the par-baked donuts in 2003 (a part of the same Wendy's push for cheapness). People were willing to overlook the bad quality for decades because they felt they were supporting an upstanding Canadian business. The aforementioned comments changed minds about that.

I do have childhood memories from the late 80s/early 90s where I remember them making the donuts in store. They were better and had a lot more varieties.

In the brief period when they were still baking in store and indoor smoking was banned, it was a pleasant experience to go into a Tims, even if you were just getting a coffee.

I used to live near the first Tim Horton's. A tiny, smokey storefront on the east side of Hamilton.

You could taste the cigarette butts in the crullers

The coffee was so weak it tasted like the cardboard-and-wax cups it came in. There's a reason why they marketed ordering "double-double" (double cream, double sugar), it's the only way to get any flavour!

In the early nineties they opened a fancy new non-smoking one in Westmount, and the donuts were freshly baked in-house. I would go out of my way to visit that one, the crullers would melt in your mouth, and the chocolate walnut actually tasted like chocolate and walnut.

It wasn't too long before the donuts were centrally distributed, and with that they became completely artificial. Nowadays every flavour tastes the same - sickly sweet with lingering sour-chemical note.

Personally I'd rather have the cigg butt taste back.

I still associate the smell of cigarette smoke with doughnuts.

They were everywhere long before the Air Farce sketch. That's why they used Tim's in the sketch.

It used to be better. Or more accurately other chains used to have worse coffee.

Back when it was getting established its competitors (eg Country Style Donuts) focussed more on the donuts than coffee.

Tim Hortons made it's name on brewing fresh coffee carafes every 20 minutes. The standard at the time for other shops was to brew a large coffee urn in before the rush in the morning and let it sit all day.

Walk in for a coffee at 5 am and you might get the dredges of yesterdays brew.

So if you're on a long drive and need a cup of coffee at an odd hour, Tim Hortons was a good bet. Also if you were driving to hockey practice early in the morning. Or an early worker.

Is it a great choice now? Not really, but if you're driving it's still consistent and open late.

I would dispute the idea that Air Farce made Tim Hortons popular. Tim Hortons has been a fixture of small town life in southern ontario for as long as i've been alive. They've historically been cheap and cheerful, the go-to place for working people. Not just coffees but bagels and donuts. Old folks would sit around all day and drink refills from a china mug and munch a single old-fashioned plain. Most towns have at least one, and bigger towns have a ton of them. Recently they have tried to go up-market with premium drinks, more food, etc. and the low end has been squeezed by McDonald's which has better filter coffee.

Yeah that claim is absolutely not true. It might have made Tim Hortons known to OP, but the reason the skit worked was because Tim Hortons was already a ubiquitous part of the Canadian experience.

Tim Horton's modus operendi was to find the successful coffee shop in small towns all across Canada, and open up across from them, putting them out of business.

I often wonder why it's so loved by small-town Canadians when it's done us no favours. Especially since it hasn't actually been a Canadian company for 30 years.

Side note - on a trip to Corke, Ireland I was taken to a Tim Hortons by my hosts to make me feel at home!

Relevant: “But then Tim Hortons entered the roasting business, building its own plant, freeing up all that production capacity in the other companies. Mother Parkers started supplying McDonald’s” [0]

[0] https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/01/12/time-for-the-tim...

Tim Horton's was bought by RBI, which also includes Burger King and Popeye's. They run things super lean, though quality at the restaurant is going to be mostly up to the franchisee. For Tim's, I got the feeling that they don't really understand the customer; business seems to be doing fine since the acquisition, though the grumbling doesn't stop.

A friend of mine back in Canada is a cop and he told me that ever since they switched from Costa Rican beans around 2010 the coffee has been bad. I remember a friend of mine got a job there and he was like the only things that are fresh on the menu are the tomatoes and lettuce, literally everything else comes shipped into the store frozen - yet their tagline, on the sign of every store and on every cup of coffee, is 'always fresh'. heh

>ever since they switched from Costa Rican beans around 2010 the coffee has been bad

The unfortunate problem for Tim Horton's in Canada is that going to McDonalds (of all places) is better in every single way- their basic coffee is miles ahead in quality, their cups and lids are better, and their food is too.

Sadly, their coffee in the US is absolutely atrocious, to the point where I'm not convinced it even qualifies as "coffee".

> Sadly, their coffee in the US is absolutely atrocious, to the point where I'm not convinced it even qualifies as "coffee".

I prefer it to starbucks.

I typically make my own coffee but if I'm looking for a drip coffee and I'm out, I got to McDonalds.

I don't patronize ANY of these chain places. Like I might get a donut and a coffee at the airport from tim hortons because that's literally all there is open at 2am but i've just never been impressed by literally any big franchise and kinda feel more cheated I spent 10$ on some meal or whatever that really doesn't cost that much. It blows me away that people compare them cause they're literally all atrocious. I had a girlfriend come to Canada at one point and she was so un-impressed by the fact that people act like timmy's is some national treasure.

A friend of mine in Costa Rica knows Starbucks has a pretty funny trick to say they have coffee from there (Higher altitude begets better coffee). They actually just ship it in these big bags with the 'hecho en mexico' eagle on them and then re-bag it in Costa Rica. It's incredibly non-sustainable.

Well, you're at the airport at 2am and there's a Tim Horton's, a Starbucks and a McDonald's next to each other. This is the situation I'm talking about (though I was thinking on a road trip and wanting a quick coffee). I'd choose McDonald's.

I'm not super picky with coffee but whenever I've had Starbucks drip, it's tasted burnt. They make their money on the coffee milkshakes and it shows.

Ahh...Starbucks' Signature Overroasted Blend.

Is there a 3rd crack? They probably found it.

McDonalds is good now. It was always fine in several other countries (UK, Japan, Australia) but it's good in the US now too, even if the ice cream machine keeps breaking.

The black coffee is okay and they have those mango smoothies that are pretty good.

"Always fresh" is accurate because they brew fresh coffee every 20 minutes, and the baked goods are baked fresh every day (from frozen dough), then filled and frosted. I don't see the problem, personally.

Do you have any nostalgic experience from the 90s that suggests it was ever better?

No, I'm not that old, and my standards aren't super high. But by my dad's recollection, back when smoking in public buildings was acceptable, all the doughnuts tended to taste like cigarette smoke after sitting out for a few hours.

Also, the chain is named after its former NHL player founder, who died after crashing his car while drunk and on drugs.

I'll be honest I assumed that information was in wikipedia.

This is the only reference I've ever seen to Air Farce outside of my own childhood, in which I'd watch it with my grandmother. Incredible summary

The street near where I live has 3 Tim Horton's locations within less than a 1km distance (~800m according to a quick check on Google Maps)

Downtown Hamilton, or downtown Toronto?

There are provinces other than Ontario despite what Ontarians might believe ;)

(Relatively) larger city in Saskatchewan. Not downtown either!

Downtown Montreal has 7 Tim Hortons in 1 square kilometer.

There are at least three within a short walk of my apartment.

I can see one Timmies from my balcony. There's another around the corner.

Downtown Winnipeg has two right across the street from each other!

Two within 1200 metres of another on Fermor too :-) Lagmodiere and Westmount.

This whole thread is a geolocation harvesting operation :)

I live 40 minutes from a medium sized city. I can still drive to 3 different Tim Horton’s in under 8 minutes. I fact I find the smaller towns in SW Ontario actually have more stores per capita. For example my parents town of 40,000 people in the middle of nowhere has 15 Tim Hortons stores.

"becoming an APP-only prize (more like a lottery style jackpot then a winning cup)."

Sooo they could track exactly where their customers were going?

The coffee has gotten worse. They use cheap, bitter Arabicas beans and hope they can coast on their reputation. The donuts were never the same after they started shipping frozen dough from Toronto.

Heck, even McDonald's makes better coffee.

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