In its Dec. 12 issue, Marketing launched End User, a new column by Vancouver writer Chris Koentges that examines the deluge that Canada’s marketers unleash on the world, and how they connect – or don’t – with the consumer.
The Pandora’s Box of ‘the new Tim Hortons’
You knew your role. You knew their role and the value proposition let you get on with your life
Two sugars. Two creams. A little bit of something that tastes like coffee. You pay for it with the coins and lint in your pocket. You take it in a cardboard cup. You take it to go. On the first taste, in the parking lot, you burn your tongue. You wait patiently at a red light. You listen to the hockey scores. You burn your tongue—this time, less sharply. You drive some more. You support the troops. You re-elect the Harper Government. And somewhere, in the slow-moving traffic, it is ready. You drink the double-double. You drink the State Kool-Aid. You head across town to Canadian Tire to look for an extension cord. You get on with all the possibilities of the day.
The next morning, you repeat. Disposable cups pile up in the back of your car. You don’t know if they’re actually made of cardboard. And if they were, can you recycle something stained with double double? The ladies who work there beam obediently at you from behind the counter, despite their meager remuneration. It confirms the natural order of things.
And so you repeat. And you repeat. And you repeat. And then one morning, the lights inside the value proposition are a little lower. It smells like lasagna. They’ve done something to the chairs. Reluctantly, you sit down. You sip the cappuccino. And in that moment, everything becomes fucked. You’re looking at Premiership scores on the HD ticker above a fake fireplace. Kids are typing on computers. Soccer Mom—or whatever you’re now supposed to call this lady—has turned on the Harper Government.
It is less simple than it has ever been to tell where Canada ends and this brand begins. (“Why we are Tim Hortons and Tim Hortons is us!” wept one Canada.com headline recently.) It’s a barometer brand. It’s a harbinger brand. It’s a brand that feels like a state-owned brand. Above all else, it’s a brand that has read the tea leaves. At the exact moment Alison Redford and Christy Clark have taken over a pair of plush armchairs out west, the Timbit world view acknowledges that Soccer Mom is more valuable than Hockey Dad. That Hockey Dad might now himself be something between recyclable and disposable.
Hockey Dad does not want to sit down and contemplate this too thoroughly. Rex Murphy, who pronounces espresso with a sneer and an x, had prophesized this moment for years. He has alluded to a coming gentrification. He alluded to the “aggressive yuppie haunts of Starbucks Corp.”
Less orthodox pundits note the open kitchen and espresso drinks at the new Tim’s are really about competing with the well-established McCafe. (Toronto Life had a predicable elitist giggle at the notion that any of it could somehow qualify as espresso.) In an online poll, CTV framed the transition as simple versus cozy. As if the two were at odds. Like plastering 4,000 Tim Hortons across a country only constitutes gentrification once it’s aimed at that ’80s demographic known as “Yuppy.” By the way, 65%, in case you’re wondering, preferred cozy.
And it’s not that you are against cozy. Or the notion of a “third place” experience. Even though you already spend enough time in the lineup and drive-thru to constitute a “third place” experience. And it’s also not that you would defend the old look, which is—was?—like the cafeteria in a federal building. But isn’t it the “go” experience that drives our economy? You and the everyday hardworking Canadians don’t have time to sit down and drink coffee. It’s not that you’re against simple. You just don’t like it when things get complex.
And so you do what you have been trained to do. You go. You drive. You drive aimlessly this time. You find yourself in an industrial area. Parked in front of the kind of greasy old place that your own dad would take you to. Maybe it’s the exact same place. You sit at the counter. You hold a glass sugar dispenser upside down over your cup. You build a pyramid out of creamers.
Chris Koentges is an award-winning writer based in Vancouver. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Maisonneuve and Reader’s Digest.
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