On June 29, 2009, Tim Hortons Inc. announced that, subject to shareholder approval, the operations of the chain will be reorganized under the direction of a new publicly traded company, also Tim Hortons Incorporated, established under the Canada Business Corporations Act. The change was made mainly for tax reasons. [33] [34] On September 28, 2009, Tim Hortons Inc. announced that it had completed the reorganization of its corporate structure to become a Canadian public company. [35] [36] After the 2000-2001 recession, during which many of its national coffee and donut competitors failed or failed, Tim Hortons became the largest fast food chain in Canada. It had expanded into luncheon, surpassing McDonald`s in Canada in 2002. The restaurant was too successful, even for Wendy`s shareholders, who felt the chain`s true value was being suppressed in a company whose burger outlets were struggling. They felt that Tim Horton`s shares would be much more valuable as a separate public company. Wendy`s bowed to shareholder pressure and sold Tim Hortons in 2006 by distributing shares to existing Wendy`s shareholders and offering additional shares to the public on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. (It took until 2009 to legally unravel Tim Hortons from Wendy`s.) The company was repatriated to Canada. Hortons celebrated the opening of its 2000th store in December 2000. With a slower growth strategy than previous expansion attempts in the South, the company expected to be profitable in the United States by the end of 2002.
In addition to suffering from a problem of notoriety south of the border, he had to deal with the intrusion of a powerful newcomer into his motherland. The Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation will soon open several stores in the Vancouver area, and Krispy Kremes` average revenue per store (nearly $3 million) dwarfs that of competitors such as Dunkin` Donuts ($650,000) and Tim Hortons ($700,000). Tim Horton president Paul House rejected Kreme`s stature, saying the chain`s total number of stores at the time (166) was not much greater than the number of Hortons in the U.S. alone. He also highlighted Horton`s extensive menu, while Krispy Kreme consisted exclusively of donuts and coffee. Dunkin` Donuts, which had 175 of its 200 Canadian restaurants in Quebec, has also increased its branding and renovation budget and plans to spend $40 million over five years to fend off competitors. By then, many of Tim Horton`s customers hadn`t grown up watching the restaurant of the same name play, which meant his face was becoming less and less recognizable. The chain`s signage had also been changed from Tim Hortons (as the chain became known) to the pluralized Tim Hortons. The change was made to be the standard throughout the chain while meeting the requirements of Quebec`s Language Act, Bill 101 (1977), for commercial signage.
For many customers, “Tim Hortons” had about as many connections to an individual as “McDonald`s” or “Harvey`s.” Horton`s death threatened the future of his eponymous restaurant chain. There were 35 stores open when he died, and there were plans to expand from southern Ontario to the Maritimes. At the time, donut stores were considered marginal areas of the restaurant franchise landscape, dominated by burgers, chicken and ice cream. But the chain had already begun to change Canadian consumer tastes by popularizing coffee, which has become more of a branded product than baked goods for Tim Hortons. Some older locations retain signage with the company name, including a possessive apostrophe, although the official style of the company name has been without a Tim Horton apostrophe for at least a decade. [19] The company had removed the apostrophe after some interpreted the signs using the apostrophe in 1993 as a violation of the sign laws of the province of Quebec. [20] The removal of the apostrophe allowed the company to have a common drawing image across Canada. [21] Tim Hortons Inc., commonly known as Tim`s or Timmie`s, is a Canadian multinational fast food chain.
Toronto-based Tim Hortons serves coffee, donuts and other fast food products. [5] [6] It is the largest quick service restaurant chain in Canada with 4,949 restaurants in 15 countries (as of March 2, 2022). [ref. needed] The third franchisee of the troubled Hamilton franchise was a Hamilton police officer named Ron Joyce, who lived nearby. Joyce had run a dairy queen next door and wanted to expand her restaurant interests. When Dairy Queen did not approve his plan to open another outlet in nearby Bronte, he bet on becoming the next franchisee of the donut store in February 1965. The company was founded by Tim Horton, who played in the National Hockey League from 1949 until his death in a car accident in 1974. [12] [13] The first Tim Horton restaurant was located in North Bay, Ontario, and sold hamburgers. [14] The chain`s first donut store opened on May 17, 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, as “Tim Horton Donuts.” [15] The name was later shortened to “Tim Horton`s” and changed to “Tim Hortons” without the possessive apostrophe. Ronald V.
Joyce, who was drawn to the idea of using the Horton name to launch donuts, took over the first Tim Horton store in 1965. Joyce was a former member of the navy and, given the popular donut association and law enforcement personnel, a police officer for nine years. Born in 1930 in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, he left home at the age of 15 and spent the next few years working menial jobs and “surviving,” the Toronto Star wrote in a 1995 article. He then spent five years in the Canadian Navy before working for nine years as a motorcycle police officer with the Hamilton Police Service. Joyce and Horton became full partners in 1967 when Joyce operated three stores. Eventually, the company opened an office in Oakville, halfway between Hamilton and Horton`s home in Toronto. The company was originally incorporated as Tim Donut Limited. [9] In the 1990s, the company name changed to The TDL Group Ltd. This was an attempt by the company to diversify its business, focus on donuts and continue to expand menu options as consumer tastes increased. [16] On 7.
In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tim Hortons announced that it had cancelled the distribution of physical cups for the promotion due to concerns that the virus could be spread through the returned cups, and that the promotion would be conducted exclusively through the app. The chain had also joined others in temporarily banning the use of reusable cups for similar reasons. [199] The 2020 changes remained in use for 2021, so the action was renamed Roll Up to Win.