Tim Hortons - Canada’s First Choice of Any Day

Courtesy: Tim Hortons, insidetimmies.com

“One small double-double, please”. Any first-time visitor hears this very common phrase used at Tim Hortons®. If you are coming from a country where Tim Hortons® has not yet set its foot, this might leave you a little flustered. In case anyone is wondering, what it means, it means 2 servings of cream and sugar with your fresh coffee. 

Ever wondered why Tim Hortons® is the #1 coffee place in Canada. Other than being strategically located nearly everywhere in Canada, it goes the extra mile by being visible on the Digital World. On this blog, my main focus is the recent marketing strategy used by Tim Hortons®.

On November 2014, prices of coffee across US and Canada had increased due to shortage of coffee beans in Brazil. The price rise in coffee couldn’t have come at a better time. The price increase was around 10 cents/item. Winter had already set in and the number of cups of coffee consumed by people have already started to increase. For Tim Horton®, this just made the price increase transition very smooth. Some people hardly noticed the difference, since the price had been stable since 2011 and not many people care if they are paying a few cents extra to their daily dose of caffeine.

The increase was not only communicated to us through the daily newspaper, but Tim Hortons® was very honest about it. A visit to Tim Hortons® before the change was due, you could see notices at the counter and the drive-thru windows. This only lets us to trust it even more since they were transparent about the change.

Tim Hortons® is very actively visible on the digital world. The website has a twitter widget on the right side with the latest tweets. There are many people who are either complaining or thanking Tim Hortons® for their services. You can see that the comments are being considered and Tim Horton® replies to all of them. Tim Hortons® Facebook and Twitter pages have more than 2.5 million followers and likes. 

The world is getting more and more conscious about health issues. To cater to such a huge audience, Tim Hortons® website is constantly updated with new health facts to its menu items and healthy combos to try with nutritional information. On its landing page, Tim Hortons® has a nutrition calculator which tells you the total number of calories you are consuming after selecting the items from its menu. It also works the other way around where a user can input the total number of calories to be consumed and it builds up your meal plan. Tim Hortons® is updating its menu constantly and has seen to be shifting to more healthier options which has been happily embraced by a lot of people.

This is an excellent marketing strategy and Tim Horton® success is only going to grow by giving people what they want. Tim Hortons® also have innovative promotions (Free hash brown with your regular coffee or $1 Drinks Deal) throughout the year which gives its patrons reasons to keep coming back. 

In my next blog, I will explore another area of Tim Hortons® (Gamification) and my personal experience with it.