I was reading an artcle (Globe and Mail, IIRC) about the switch at Tim Hortons/Horton’s. About 10 years ago one of the principals of the company quit over the quality of doughnuts. They used to be mixed and baked at the store during the night shift. Now they are plopped out and frozen at a central factory, and reheated and decorated at the store as needed.
This may have affected quality, but since Tim’s has forced out most of the competition, and is the equivalent of “Starbucks on every corner” outside the urban downtowns, where will people go if they don’t like reheated cardboard? A side effect of this is that the variety of donuts is about one quarter what it used to be, and fanciful creamed varieties (Remember bowties?) non-existent. Of course, the franchisees are of two minds. On one hand, they replace expensive real bakers with minimum drudges who transfer trays to ovens. OTOH, can you be proud about raking in cash if it is for selling crap?
The problem IIRC with Krispy Kreme is that they were good (if any doughnut could be “good”) but they misread the enthusiasm and grossly overexpanded. Once the novelty wore off - “I can get them around the corner, they are not the big treat when I go to New York” the payback disappeared and they sank under the debt. Is there even one still open in the Toronto area?
As for the sign discussion - well, someone wondered about the apostrophe. Canada has its interesting politics, even if we are all intelligent about health care. We argue language, signs and doughnuts. I keep looking for the Tim Horton’s exit on the St Catherines skyway. Is it, like, fifty feet in the air?