I just wish restaurants would stay in their lane.
The latest menu offering from Tim Hortons has me longing for the days when you knew exactly what to expect at the iconic coffee-and-doughnut chain.
Last week, they added pizza to the menu board.
With every fibre of my being, I want to scream "Don't do it!"
Maybe it is my fond memories of working at Tim Hortons all through high school, but I loved what it once offered and did so well.
It wasn’t necessarily a small number of offerings back then, with coffee, doughnuts, muffins, pies, cakes and what were referred to as fancies — those would be your eclairs, fruit pastries and cinnamon buns.
Over the years, though, the cakes and pies were eliminated and in came soups, chili and salads.
Still later, sandwiches, breakfast biscuits, veggie bowls, etc., etc.
Then some traditional favourites disappeared. Goodbye peanut crunch and walnut crunch (blaming allergies), then went the white and toasted coconut and so many more.
I understand the strategy is to grab the customer in the morning and keep them returning for lunch, coffee break and dinner.
Now, enter flatbread pizza. There are four varieties and all under $8. It can be ready in 90 seconds.
The company’s chief marketing officer says this is the “big bet” this year.
Of course, it has to be a flattened piece of dough to go with the pseudo-classy cold brews with shots of oddly flavoured syrups.
Didn’t McDonald's try pizza and fail in devastating style a few years ago? Turns out that was in the '90s and the big flaw was the fact it took 11 minutes to cook it and fast-food customers weren’t used to waiting that long.
I understand all businesses are trying to get their piece of the pizza pie, as it were, but as a consumer I think sometimes a business needs to do what it does best and stick with it.
If you are an iconic coffee chain, stay that way.
A company can offer too many choices and being stretched too thin. It just waters everything down.
Speaking of the sandwiches, forgive me for saying they are very small for the price and sort of tasteless.
And to be fair, I have not yet sampled the flatbread pizza, so maybe it’s the best this side of Naples, but I’m not too hopeful.
The other thing great the Canadian coffee shop is known for is getting us to love certain products and then taking them away.
Then, as we saw recently, they call it “retro” and allow us to vote on which old-time favourite can come back, albeit ever so briefly.
I know the fix was in, though, as my beloved honey stick and orange twist never made a return.
Walnut crunch did, though. (Did allergies go away?)
I’m not picking on Tim Hortons. It remains my beloved go-to. It's just their recent venture into capturing parts of the afternoon and evening brought up memories of a simpler time.
Products used to be baked in-store by actual bakers. Now, it has brought in frozen in giant vats.
It just doesn’t seem quite as homespun.
I can’t even have my coffee in a china mug anymore, and germs be damned — it tastes better that way.
And so, we will all live through another incarnation of our Canadian coffee chain.
While I’m on a roll, rather than make me download an app and tell you my pin number to collect points, how about you just give me a free coffee once in a while?
Every 10th visit?
Maybe, throw in a pizza slice to win my loyalty.
