Corey Mintz: waffle breakfast sandwiches, nitrogen-infused cold brew and a shiny new 'innovation cafe'—what on earth is Tim Hortons doing?
Corey Mintz is a food reporter who has written for the Globe and Mail, TVO and The Walrus. His focus is the intersection between food with labour, politics, and culture.
That presumed, folksy simplicity is why the menu at Tim Hortons these days is so strange, so far off from their successful, strategic targeting of working-class Canadians. Belgian-waffle breakfast sandwich? Omelette bites? Salted-caramel iced capp?MORE: The new Tim Hortons lid is a huge improvement. Really.
And though we see Tim Hortons flailing about, composing menus that read like a food-trend Mad Libs—Mango Creamy Chill, Beyond Sausage Farmer’s Wrap, Brown Butter and Sea Salt Dream Doughnut—this is not aimless change for the sake of change.
The basic chocolate-dipped is gummy and tasteless. In a blind taste test, one would never guess that the brown coating is supposed to be chocolate. The upscale doughnuts are exactly as good as the price point suggests, which means they’re better, but still lousy. They’re fresh, and would have to be, given the volume the prototype location is doing. And the glazes and frostings have creamier textures than the standard Tim Hortons shellac.
Tim Hortons hasn’t sold coffee and doughnuts exclusively since before 1981, when muffins and cookies were introduced, followed by croissants , chilli , bagels , lattes and so on. These are additions, not changes. They don’t stop anyone from buying and enjoying the original products. The 2014 sale to 3G however, was more than cosmetic; Tim Hortons had plans to scale. After 3G acquired Burger King in 2010, the merged companies rebranded as RBI, which then gobbled up Popeye’s.
The degrading reputation of the brand, brought about by penny-pinching cruelty to employees, was entirely predicted, based on 3G Capital’s reputation for cutting costs at the companies they purchase.
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