Tim Hortons
From Freepedia
Tim Hortons (officially written without an apostrophe) is based in Oakville, Ontario and is the largest coffee and doughnut chain in Canada and the Northeastern United States. It is well-known for its coffee, doughnuts, Timbits, soups, and sandwiches. Many Canadians consider the chain an integral part of their national culture.
Tim Hortons stores are plentiful in Canadian cities and towns. The chain has expanded aggressively across urban Canada and also into small rural towns. There were 2,507 outlets in Canada and 270 in the United States as of September 2005. Tim Hortons has supplanted McDonald's as Canada's largest "fast food" operator; it has nearly twice the number of Canadian outlets, and its revenues surpassed those of McDonald's Canadian operations in 2002.
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History
The first "Tim Horton" (later with the s) store opened in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario. The business was founded by Tim Horton, who played in the National Hockey League from 1949 until his death in a car accident in 1974. Soon after Horton opened the store, he met and partnered with Ron Joyce, a former Hamilton police constable. Upon Horton's death, Joyce bought out the Horton family and took over as sole owner of the existing chain of forty stores. Joyce expanded the chain quickly and aggressively in geography and in product selection, opening the 500th store in Aylmer, Quebec, in 1991.
Tim Hortons' aggressive expansion resulted in two major changes in the coffee and doughnut restaurant market: independent doughnut shops in Canada were virtually eliminated and Canada's per-capita ratio of doughnut shops surpassed all other world nations. [1]
In 1995, Tim Hortons' popularity had spilled over to American investors; the chain's parent company, The TDL Group ("TDL" stands for the original corporate name "Tim Donut Ltd."), was acquired by American fast-food giant Wendy's International, Inc.. As a result, Ron Joyce was, for a time, the largest shareholder of Wendy's.
Now a subsidiary of Wendy's, TDL oversees all Tim Hortons stores from its head office in Oakville, Ontario, with over $800 million in sales in 2003. [2] The merger with Wendy's facilitated Tim Hortons' expansion into the United States, with new stores opening in New York, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Maine, many being located in former Hardee's restaurants. By 2004, the chain had also acquired 42 Bess Eaton coffee and doughnut restaurants situated in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
On July 29, 2005, Wendy's announced it would sell between 15 and 18% of the Tim Hortons operations in an initial public offering in early 2006. It will retain the remainder but is considered likely to sell or spin off to shareholders its remaining interest, perhaps a year or so following the IPO. Wendy's cited increased competition between the two chains and Tim's increasing self-sufficiency as reasons for its decision, but the company had been under shareholder pressure to make such a move. [3]
Advertising and promotion
Tim Hortons has one of the most successful marketing operations in Canada. Due to its powerful and effective branding, the store has established itself in the top class of fast-food restaurants in Canada and in the heart of Canadian culture.
Tim Hortons commercials appear frequently on Canadian television and radio stations. Generally the chain promotes one or two "featured" products every month, for instance, iced cappuccinos and various sweetened baked goods during the summer, lunch products such as soup or sandwiches during the winter, and its flagship coffee promotion "Roll Up the Rim to Win" (see below) during the early spring.
Tim Hortons' advertising slogans have included "You've Always Got Time for Tim Hortons" and, more recently, "Always Fresh".
Roll Up the Rim to Win
From March until May of each year, Tim Hortons holds a very large marketing campaign called "Roll Up the Rim to Win". Over twenty million prizes are distributed each year, ranging in value from vehicles to store products. Customers determine if they have won prizes by unrolling the rim on their paper cup when they have finished their drink, revealing their luck underneath.
Advertising for the contest is always very aggressive. Television and other media are inundated with advertisements that repeat the "R-r-roll up the R-r-im to Win" slogan and encourage the recitation of the phrase using rolled R's to match the announcer's delivery.
Community
The store also promotes itself through community support and the "Tim Horton Children's Foundation". Founded by Ron Joyce, the Foundation sponsors many thousands of underprivileged children from Canada and the United States to go to one of six high-class summer camps located in Parry Sound, ON; Tatamagouche, NS; Kananaskis, AB; Quyon, QC; Campbellsville, KY; and St. George, ON.
Tim Hortons stores often locally sponsor young children's sports programs, affectionately known as "Timbits" minor sports.
A Canadian cultural icon
Doughnut shops are an important part of Canadian daily life, and as the leading chain in Canada Tim Hortons has branded itself as a part of the Canadian identity. There are many examples of the importance of doughnut shops and of Tim Hortons in everyday life.
- The store's name is a permanent fixture in Canadian tongue, as are its nicknames: "Tim's" and "Timmy's". Other, less common pet names include "Timmy Ho's" and "Timmy HoHo's".
- In 2004, the Royal Canadian Mint introduced a new quarter — the world's first coloured circulation coin (featuring a red and black poppy in honour of Remembrance Day) — and chose Tim Hortons to circulate one-third of the 30 million coins and distributed the remainder to banks and Royal Canadian Legion branches.
- In the movie Wayne's World, characters hang out at a doughnut shop called Stan Mikita's. The name is an inside joke for Canadians; Mikita was another NHL player and the name makes an implicit reference to Tim Hortons.
- In 1999, Steve Penfold, a history graduate student at York University in Toronto, wrote his thesis on the sociological aspects of the Tim Hortons shops. For that, he received the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in Sociology.
External links
- Tim Hortons official site
- Wendy's International, Inc. Corporate and Investor site
- More on Tim's History
- "King of The Cruller", Canadian Business, about Tim's successful branding (Acrobat file)
- Royal Canadian Mint: The Poppy Coin
