![]() ![]() There are almost 4,000 Tim Hortons locations in Canada. How did such a seemingly unremarkable brand ignite such national passion?įirst, says Robert Mackalski, assistant professor of marketing at McGill University, there’s its ubiquity. In order to really understand the downfall of Tim Hortons, you need to look at why it became so popular in the first place. The making (and unmaking) of a Canadian brand While it may have been a one-off by an inordinately upset punter, the episode seemed to encapsulate the, well, shitshow, that is the Tim Hortons brand at the moment. The incident was all caught on camera and the video was widely circulated online. Last month, a woman defecated on the floor of a Tim Hortons and threw her feces at the cashier because she was angry he had denied her access to the bathroom. While this is partly due to increased competition from the likes of McDonald’s and millennials opting for more artisanal food and drink options (there’s certainly nothing artisanal about the processed cheese sandwiches at Timmies), it was also, said Schwartz, largely attributable to “negative media created by group of franchisees”.Īnd then there was the poop incident. In an April earnings call, Daniel Schwartz, the CEO of RBI, told investors that Tim Hortons same-store sales (an important retail metric that tracks sales at locations that have been open for a year or more) had fallen for the eighth consecutive quarter. Not only has the very public rowing between the Tim Hortons parent company, franchisees and employees hurt the brand’s reputation, it has hurt sales. What makes Tim Hortons Canadian? Is it the fact that the coffee is quite bland? Chris Lloyd Employees were vocally unimpressed by this – as was the premier of Ontario, who called the benefit reductions a “clear act of bullying”. These franchisees notably included Jeri-Lynn Horton-Joyce (Tim Horton’s daughter) and her husband Ron Joyce Jr (the son of Ron Joyce, co-founder of the chain) the couple made national news after axing benefits, a move they blamed on “the lack of assistance and financial help from our head office and from the government”. At first, RBI refused to let Tim Hortons franchisees pass on the costs by raising prices so some store owners cut paid breaks and benefits. ![]() ‘The company has cultivated Canadiana through its marketing.’ Photograph: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty ImagesĪnother contributing factor, Scholz notes, is the rancor between franchisees and employees, sparked by Ontario significantly raising its minimum wage earlier this year. Many store owners have been unhappy about what they see as self-serving measures by the parent company to increase its margins as the franchisees’ expense. What mattered is that since RBI took over, Tim Hortons has been perceived to be acting in a way that seems antithetical to Canadian values. ![]() Indeed, Timmies was owned by the American company Wendy’s for years, before regaining independence and restructuring as a Canadian public company in 2009. RBI is majority-owned by the Brazilian investment company 3G Capital but the fact that Tim Hortons was no longer properly Canadian needn’t have been a problem. Sholz attributes much of this dip to a longstanding, and increasingly acrimonious, row between Tim Hortons franchisees and the relatively new parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), which was formed in 2014 when Burger King merged with the coffee chain. “We’ve been doing this study for 20 years and they’ve been at the top 10 every year, except for once when they were number 13,” Dave Scholz, the executive vice-president of Leger, told the Guardian. This was announced only a few weeks after Tim Hortons dropped from number four to 50 in an annual survey of corporate reputation by research firm Leger. In May, for example, the company fell from 13th place to 67th place in a study tracking Canada’s most reputable companies. But while the popular purveyor of caffeinated patriotism may have burrowed its way into the national psyche, there are signs that it is beginning to lose its hold on Canadian hearts not a week seems to go by without a new negative headline about Tim Hortons. ![]()
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