You can tell a lot about a person by where they choose to get their coffee.
Fans of Tim Hortons are die-hard devotees, and usually proud to tell you about it.
All coffee shops spark a certain amount of brand loyalty, but Tim Hortons inspires passion
on a whole different scale.
Fans of the chain can tell you that their Timbits are legendary, and Roll-up-the-Rim
season can give Christmas a run for its money when it comes to sheer excitement.
What's there to know about this Canadian icon?
Plenty but it's not all pretty.
"I sat in the place for like two and a half hours, and no one waited on me, eh?"
"You're supposed to - you get your own donuts, you go up to the counter."
"Oh, get out, eh?"
Small start
While the name "Tim Hortons" is now almost universally familiar as a coffee-and-donut
destination, it didn't always bring to mind a restaurant.
Unsurprisingly, Tim Horton was a real person — a hockey player who suited up for the
Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Buffalo Sabres.
He always had a desire to get into the restaurant business, but it was only when he met a Montreal
businessman named Jim Charade that he got the chance.
Charade owned a donut shop only two doors down from Horton's go-to barber, and the pair
formed a company the same year they met.
The duo started out with four restaurants serving up burgers and chicken, and later
opened another serving donuts and coffee.
That shop was then known as "Tim Horton Donuts" - and it was tiny.
They sold coffee for 10 cents a cup, and only had two kinds of donuts: apple fritters and
Dutchies.
For various reasons, both founders would leave the company before its true success kicked
in, with most of the company's expansion coming under the watch of the now-billionaire businessman
Ron Joyce.
Tim Horton himself never knew how big his brand would get.
Not possessive
Let's address the elephant in the room: Why doesn't this company's name have an apostrophe
in it?
The answer's kind of a doozy, with roots surprisingly going all the way back to the French and Indian
War.
The story goes that when France gave up possession of what's now Quebec, the people living there
still embraced their French culture, despite the resistance of influential English cohabitants.
Tensions persisted for 200 years until a pro-French party managed to make French the official
language of the province - including in the realm of commercial signage.
Since the possessive apostrophe is an English invention, it technically became illegal to
use in advertising.
Rather than confuse matters with a restaurant with two slightly different names, they just
left off the apostrophe everywhere.
Canadian coffee?
Tim Hortons might have a reputation as being the coffee company from the States' friendly
northern neighbor, but their java actually has a surprising source.
The brand may be famously Canadian, but much of their product is actually roasted in, packaged
in, and shipped from the USA.
To be precise, it comes through a processing plant in Rochester, New York.
It's not too far from Buffalo, where Horton donned his skates for the Sabres.
That one processing plant sprawls over 40,000 square feet and employs only a few dozen people
to make all the coffee Tim Hortons stores across the US and parts of Canada need — "parts,"
because some Canadian stores are supplied by a separate Canadian processing facility.
How much coffee comes out of Rochester?
Reportedly, it's close to 40 million pounds each year.
The indelible "double-double"
A "double-double" is a coffee with two creams and two sugars.
Any Tim Hortons fan already knows that, even if they don't order it themselves.
It's become such an iconic thing that in 2004, "double-double" was among the new words added
to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
The book's editor-in-chief said the goal with the term's inclusion into the Canadian Oxford
lexicon was to create a dictionary that, quote, "accurately reflects how Canadians speak and
write in the 21st century".
Based on how many times a day people across the country are asking for a double-double,
we'd say it's a fairly legitimate addition.
The disappearing founder
Before Tim Hortons went from a thriving small business chain into an international empire,
the company's namesake lost his life in a car accident on February 21, 1974.
It wasn't until 2005 that details of his autopsy were released - and they revealed some uncomfortable
truths about the behavior of the hockey icon.
Reportedly, Horton had more than twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system at the
time of his death, along with a drug called Dexamyl.
A legal prescription drug at the time, the concoction was a mix of barbiturates and dextro-amphetamines,
which doesn't exactly sound appropriate for use behind the wheel.
When news of the circumstances of Horton's fatal crash came out, photos of Horton disappeared
from many of his restaurants, and it wasn't until 2014 that there was a public movement
to try to put them back in.
While some defended his actions by saying the drug was legal at the time, and he was
taking it in order to stay competitive with hockey players half his age, the other defense
of his actions - that the stigma against drunk driving wasn't as strong then as it is today
- is a bit of a harder sell.
The fight for higher wages
In 2018, Ontario raised their minimum wage to $14 an hour, with a further increase to
$15 set for 2019.
It was a win for workers - unless you work at Tim Hortons.
Instead of sharing the company wealth, Tim Hortons got stingy - and people hated their
response.
With both the corporation and its individual franchisees unwilling to cover the mandated
increase in wages, decisions were made to take away employee benefits in return for
the higher pay.
One franchise in Ontario asked employees to sign a document agreeing to give up their
paid breaks, and that they would partially pay for their own benefits.
Those particular franchisees are Ron Joyce Jr. and Jeri Horton-Joyce, the son and daughter-in-law
of the company's co-founders.
To put things in perspective, Joyce's father has a net worth of over $1.5 billion.
The backlash to the company's stinginess has done a good deal to damage the brand's reputation,
particularly among the kinds of working-class people who get jobs with - and coffee from
- the company.
Perhaps coincidentally, the brand's sales have been falling ever since, and public opinion
of the company is at a notorious low.
From the Canadian public's reaction to the company's stance, it seems the quickest way
for Tim Horton's to get back in the people's good graces would be simple: roll up those
wages, and start playing fair.
After all, that's just the Canadian way - right Timmies?