If I had to pick between going to Tim Hortons or Syria, that’s easy.

At least in Damascus, I could get a half-decent cup of joe. Sure, there may be shocking violence and chaos and the threat of abduction or death. But if I survived the night, at least my morning coffee wouldn’t taste like suffering. It would not taste, as I’ve written before about the bland sludge at Tim Hortons, like hot water filtered through packing peanuts and left to percolate in a carafe of soot.

I laughed out loud this week as financial analysts expressed “surprise” over the chain’s “sluggish” quarterly results. Really? Have these analysts never visited a Tim Hortons? The long and short of this fast-food business tale is that sales are dipping and the company is blaming cold drinks and sandwiches. It’s as if the Real Fruit Chill or Artisan Styled Grill-Cheese are wreaking havoc on the bottom line when, in reality, everything about Tim Hortons is problematic in 2019.

A Tim Hortons superfan is, without exception, dead on the inside.

Before we proceed, again, let me be absolutely clear about my bias: I hate Tim Hortons more than I hate Donald Trump. In fact, the psychological overlap between the Cult of Timmies and the Cult of Trump is fascinating. Show me an American in a MAGA cap or a Canadian cradling a cup of double-double and I will show you the exact same soul. I see a person who does not know better, a person who through habit or irrational fear is settling on mediocrity. No, you don’t have to support the most corrupt and incompetent American president in history. And, no, you don’t have to pay for insipid beverages and experimental empty calories.

Both the Cult of Timmies and the Cult of Trump are blind to possible escape.

The last time I was in a Tim Hortons, sometime this summer, my first thought was, “Get me out of here.” That is a terrible thought for a customer to have. The only reason I was there was to buy my daughters a box of Timbits, which they had sweetly requested as a post-ballet class treat for friends. Fine. But my God, even before I swung open the glass door smudged with fingerprints, a sigh tumbled from my lips.

It was around 8 p.m. on a weekday and there was a lineup that rivalled the one I recall before seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Why was there a lineup? There were only two staffers to handle a horde of multiple orders from a rambling menu that might require everything from a toaster oven to an Iced Capp machine. It was like watching two kids run a lemonade stand, but also be expected to spontaneously serve up tuna melts or flavoured cappuccinos.

And having spent countless hours of my teenage nights and weekends working in retail, my heart went out to those two poor bastards behind the registers. They were doing the best they could. But if I’m going to be brutally honest, there were also a startling number of screw-ups. It was if every third customer sauntered up to the counter and said, “Yeah, I’ll have a Coke and Chicken Bacon Ranch Wrap,” but the clerk somehow heard, “Yeah, I’ll have a tea and Boston Crème Donut.”

While the financial experts now try to figure out why this iconic franchise is underperforming its corporate sister brands, including Burger King and Popeyes, I will simply point out that Tim Hortons has been flirting with an identity crisis and disaster for years.

Back when I was a kid, when my dad would grab a Timmies before my hockey practice, the company was a monopoly. There weren’t many other options. But now? The other fast-food chains have gotten serious about caffeine jolts.

I’m sorry, but McDonald’s serves up way better coffee than Tim’s. Walk into a Starbucks and you are walking into a different universe. Unlike Tim Hortons, Starbucks is designed to be an experience that rewards expectation, not a place you have to go because you have nowhere else to go. Then there is the rise of neighbourhood joints: in the last five years, there are a half-dozen indie cafés within a 1-km radius of my house that are always — always! — packed with smiling patrons.

But in this rapidly changing world, Tim Hortons does not seem to know how to protect the past and swallow the future. It’s more like a last-ditch option. You go there, if you go there, out of geographic convenience and never out of heartfelt desire. To walk into a Tim Hortons is to feel like you’ve tumbled through a crack in the space-time continuum. It is to feel like you are ignoring modern competition and accepting mediocrity of yesteryear.

And that, at the end of the day, is a business mistake.

Speaking of mistakes! I need to correct an error in a weekend column about that lunatic Kellyanne Conway and the bonkers phone chat she had with reporter Caitlin Yilek. I mistakenly wrote Yilek worked for the Washington Times. She works for the Washington Examiner. My apologies to Yilek, the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner. I will happily buy you a box of Timbits to make up for this.

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But no apologies to Conway. She remains a terrible wife and a horrible human.

If Conway were a coffee house, she’d be a Tim Hortons.

Vinay Menon


Are you surprised at the Tim Hortons results? How frequently do you patronize the coffee shop these days, if at all?
