Maybe I’m just too chronically online, but people seem to complain a lot more about Tim Hortons than other fast food places. Even though they have a lot of the same issues.
Because its garbage. Decades back they had good coffee, fresh in store baked donuts, and good deals. Now is bland coffee, trucked in food that is garbage, and expensive. Nothing good about it anymore.
It used to smell like fresh baked bread and fresh ground coffee when you walked in.
Their pastries, donuts and buns were fresh baked in house. It was an experience to see a tray of steaming bread rolls coming out of the back while you were waiting for your order.
They switched their ethically sourced coffee bean supplier back when they sold out. If I remember correctly, McDonalds then swooped in and took over the supply contracts, so suddenly McDs had the superior coffee (in my opinion).
Tim’s is about as Canadian as Donald Trump nowadays…
Sold out to a Brazilian mega-corp (Brazil has the some of the worst coffee on the planet). Cut everything down to the bone in terms of quality of product and quality of service to maximise profits, and is just coasting on nostalgia and the good will it built back when it actually WAS good (1990’s… Damn, I miss those cherry sticks!)
Brazil has the some of the worst coffee on the planet
Brazil is the biggest coffee producer, so it’s both the biggest source of shit cheap coffee and also a big source of very good expensive coffee. Guess which one is picked as supplier for most chain stores?
If you get Brazilian beans from a local roaster, it’s pretty damn good. But it’s microlot so obviously expensive.
Well, I cannot write it better than all the comments here… Yes it was good 25 years ago, but selling it to BK, changing coffee beans (they used to be good, years ago they changed it, because of price I guess, and the new one is disgusting. McDo switched to the old TH beans AFAIK this is why the McDo coffee is good), having donuts came frozen and just heating them, capitalism, etc.
In the last 20 years I went to TH less than 10 times.
They keep trying to pretend they’re Canadian and there’s nothing good about it.
Eating Tim Hortons is like eating food made from someone describing food to a cardboard printer.
It sold out to a multinational organization becoming non Canadian owned before changing their coffee, all their baked goods, and rebranding as a bit of a psuedo upscale fast food provider.
What was a chill, decent coffee spot with some in house baked good swapped out for just another resteraunt with coffee that served frozen factory made baked goods that are dry, tasteless, overpriced, and boring.
Quality dropped, nolonger Canadian owned, vibe changed entirely, price went up.
Tims shouldn’t sell pizza, or fifty different lunch items. It shouldn’t be a cheaper upscale caffe, it shouldn’t be in competition with starbucks or McDonalds let alone both. But that’s what it is now.
It sold out to a multinational organization becoming non Canadian
and yet they continue to market themselves as an essential part of the fabric of canadian culture, and people eat it all up
There’s literally Tim Horton’s in the Middle East
I wouldn’t care about this at all if either A) It was a Canadian company that made good coffee/food and actually represented us well.
Or
B) Took that maple leaf off their stand. There is nothing Canadian in this picture to be putting the maple leaf on.
Come on bruh. Have you been to a Tim Hortons in the last 20 years? Dumpster fire to the exponent of 100.
Cuz it used to be great, but due to capitalism it has grown worse and worse over time. I mean, I eat and drink there because I am also a slave to convenience but it’s not “good” like it once was.
When was it good? 2005?
It was better then, yes. They still operated as a bakery at that point.
I was not impressed.
2005 was when they went public. That’s when the enshittification started. It all started when they went central with their bakeries and pulled all the baking from in house. Then the prices started going up. 25 cents per fiscal year, almost to the calendar date. Then shit started getting smaller. Less staff. The bagel toasters suddenly sped up a whole lot.
Fast forward to like say 2015, they were probably the biggest users of the TFW plan. Didn’t train anyone properly. Couldn’t keep staff. The toasters went so fast the bagels pretty much shot like a torpedo out of the toaster when someone put one down. Food was never warm. Lids leaked like hell, and no one would do anything about it.
Used to be a multiple times a day tim visitor. Best thing that ever happened to me was when they went to shit. It correlates directly with better health, better financial health and habits and it removed what was pretty much an addiction. I haven’t even been inside one since COVID.
That’s when I tried it and was also impressed I must have just missed the good times like always lol.
Prior to 2003 for sure, which was they year they switched from fresh baked in house to par-baked frozen donuts. I suspect the rot started earlier than that though. The company was actively shifting away from coffee and donuts, and pursuing aggressive growth way back in the 90s.
Around here the timing is always described as “when they gave McDonalds their coffee contract”
Right at that time, the coffee shops that pivoted away from in-house coffee were the ones that survived. When no-smoking was poised to be the standard across Canada, Tims started the focus on food, Salisbury House overhauled and became “decent” vs the shophouse it always had been. Robin’s didn’t pivot and died a quick death.
I couldn’t remember if that was before or after they went public. Must have been before if it was 2003, because I’m almost positive they went public in 2005.
Before it was bought by Burger King in 2014
To reiterate other points in the thread: they used to be pretty good and Canadian.
But in 2014, they were bought out by Burger King and the quality absolutely plummeted. Their coffee supplier went to McDonalds, and all the baked goods are now frozen rather than fresh; making them stale
They’ve cut enough corners that the brand is now associated with low tier trash. But because they used to be Canadian, and still try to market themselves as Canadian, it’s become offensive. This is not what Canadians want to associate themselves with anymore
I agree with most of your points, but the quality went down wayyy before 2014. My mom worked there in the early 2000s when everything was made in house. By the time I started my first job there in 2008/2009, absolutely nothing was made in house. Around 2010/2011 is when they got rid of the last semi fresh item - the muffins would be made with frozen dough, but they switched to bringing in fully baked frozen muffins that go in a high powered microwave (essentially) for about 3 minutes.
The coffee swap was definitely the last straw though. Their new coffee is worse than garbage.
Cause outsiders (since you mentioned online) associate Tim Hortons with Canadians, and it’s seen as a Canadian symbol.
But they are way too corporate with low quality products to be Canadian, it pretty much screams Americanization.
They’re not Canadian anymore, they’re not fresh, and the crap they serve is a shallow imitation of what they once were. The business that was started by Tim Horton himself died long ago, another victim of multinational corporations that fuck everything up in the name of profit.
They need to cut off quality to afford to give their execs more money.
Yeah, it’s owned by Burger King, and the new owners accelerated the reduction in quality that had started a decade before the buyout.
The reason for my particular gripes with Tim Horton’s is their over-the-top Canadian branding of an American company. It should be illegal, as clearly false marketing.
They’re also franchises, and are notorious for most franchise owners being borderline abusive to their largely teenage and immigrant staff, who may not know better or have the resources to fight back against illegal labour practices.
And the food is terrible, and the coffee is the second worst in the Canadian fast food industry (after A&W).
What is there not to hate about Tom Horton’s?
Because it was sold to American mega corps and the quality was driven into the ground by cutting every corner possible resulting in the worst products I’ve ever tasted.
Quality is shit, and it’s not even owned by a Canadian company.
Tim Hortons is known for fucking their workers hard and allowing their franchisees use indentured servitude.
Creeping decline in quality due to capitalism + using Canada as their identity created a strong backlash from others who identified as Canadian but didn’t identify with creeping decline.
Them selling out to a non Canadian company, and continuing to use Canadian identity to market themselves, then provoked even more intense backlash.
It’s not just the reaction to being attacked by the undead, it’s the reaction to being attacked by an undead friend.