Some Thoughts on Tim Hortons

Just a few scattered thoughts about Tim Hortons today:

• Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room: Tim Horton was a hockey player; Tim Hortons the donut shop, therefore, requires an apostrophe. The original Tim Horton Charcoal Broiled Hamburgers in North Bay used the player's name without an 's' and I'm cool with that (mind you, if it was called "Angus Beef Charcoal Broiled Hamburgers", angus beef would clearly be an ingredient, and so I'm not really cool with it at all I guess). At some point, someone decided to introduce an 's' (and add donuts, and remove burgers) and that's when things went horribly wrong. Thats my opinion. Whats yours?
• I think there's lots you can learn about ownership and management by comparing the differences between Tim Hortons franchises (now I don't know if I should be saying "Tim Horton's franchises", "Tim Hortons franchises", or "Tim Hortons' franchises" but I digress). They all have basically the same food, the same equipment, the same procedures for beverage and food preparation, and presumably more or less the same compensation model for staff. And yet, as I'm sure you've experienced - there are wild variances in the customer experience from one place to the next. It's too easy to conclude that how you're treated and how fast your order is prepared comes down to the individual staff member you're dealing with. Not true. It's the ownership/management that recruits, hires and trains those people. I blame (and praise) them. Here are three recent examples of the wildly varying experiences:

Tims #1 (or is it Tim's?) - I pull up in the drive-thru (yes, I know) and the voice on the speaker becomes a person in the window. He hands me my steeped tea. Except it's not steeped tea at all. It's coffee. I tell him. He tells me that I'm wrong and it's steeped tea - pointing at the white "ST" on the lid. I patiently remove the lid and have him (wake up and) smell the coffee. He does, then patiently informs me that it's steeped tea. I eventually have to park and go into the store to rectify the situation. No apologies - just a new cup of tea.

Tims #2 - My colleague and I enter in the early morning and the place is empty. The drive-thru lane is also empty. We order a coffee, a steeped tea, a breakfast sandwich and a toasted bagel. The server's pupils dilate. I can almost hear Homer Simpson in a meltdown at his nuclear plant:  "What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" THEY ORDERED FOOD AND NOW I HAVE TO MAKE IT BECAUSE I'M ALL ALONE AND I CAN'T DO ALL THIS ON MY OWN!!! Thankfully, some other guy, not in uniform, walks behind the counter, pushes the server aside heroically, and makes our drinks AND our food all while shooting the original server some seriously angry glances. I think I'm seeing the manager in action.

Tims #3 - The voice on the drive-thru speaker is friendly and warm every morning: "Thank you for choosing our Tim Hortons. What can I get for you?" My order is captured without error and without requiring repetition or slowing down. At the window, I'm greeted with a smile and a "Hi!" and my food is delivered promptly and accurately. The whole team seems to have helped. They also seem to like each other (which I have found is often not the case in other Tim Hortons locations - having witnessed staff nearly coming to blows in a Tims #4 I won't talk about further). They are a well-oiled machine. I ask for half-butter on the bagel and they deliver half-butter (Tims #2 confused half-butter with three-times-the-butter). The bagel person is in a hurry to get me my food and hands it to the window person with urgency. The window person is a joy to deal with. And what's most notable is that it's the same experience but not always the same people.

As you might expect, I avoid Tims #1 and Tims #2 and go to Tims #3 ninety-nine percent of the time. I also commend Tims #3's staff all the time. But really, I should also be commending its ownership and management because what else is there in the fabric of each franchise that makes it what it is?

•  I'm too lazy to cut and paste the nutrition information here. It's also a bit of an effort to get to the nutrition information from the Tim Hortons website, and I'm feeling a bit sluggish from all the Tim Hortons bagels I've consumed over the years, even at half butter. So go look for yourself. Yuck. I will save you some time by letting you know that on their "Nutrition and Wellness" page, you'll see fresh, un-cracked eggs at the top, you'll eventually find a "Balanced Menu Options" link, and there, the 12 Grain Bagel proudly displayed first. Then the words: "Plain or toasted, buttered or slathered with cream cheese spread; everyone loves a tasty bagel." This shining example of a "balanced menu option" has 330 calories, 9 grams of fat (only 1.5 saturated), 55 carbs, and 450 mg of sodium. It isn't even clear to me whether those numbers are for a buttered bagel, plain bagel or one that is "slathered with cream cheese".
• Isn't 'slathered' a cool word? It sounds delicious and fattening while in fact containing no calories or fat. I just thought that deserved a paragraph of its own.
• So it sounds like I'm an idiot for going to Tim Hortons regularly (which, if true, would mean that most of my fellow Canadians are too). I defend the fact that I do go there as follows:

A) It feels like a patriotic duty (to buy from Burger King) 

B) It's so damn convenient (except when it's not) 

C) Sometimes, they have roll-up-the-rim and that's fun.

I will also tell you that I NEVER get donuts (haven't had one - not even a timbit) since reading all about donut nutrition when Krispy Kreme tried to enter the market and suddenly donuts weren't healthy, I go to Tims #3 almost exclusively, and I always order - when I need some food in the wee hours of the morning - a cinnamon raisin bagel with half-butter (which, if you check, you'll see isn't nearly as bad as the 12 grain). So I'm an idiot, but an idiot who slathers his food with half the butter AND an idiot who at least tries to get the apostrophe's right.