Everything I know about Tim Horton’s I’ve learned from reading. Never been to one. Most of my limited time spent in Canada has been in downtown Montreal 20
= years ago where/when they seemed to be absent.
Perhaps this is a situation where back in the 1960s Horton’s was actually a good small-ish chain of decent if basic all-hours coffee/donut joints. But slowly over the decades they’ve grown too big, en-cheapified too much, and tried to brand-extend farther than their store equipment, company- and franchisee- culture, and most importantly hiring practices, can sustain?
In short, perhaps the legend has only grown over time, while their ability to live up to that legend has been actively shrunk by cumulative management action.
And by all their competitors slowly upping their game. Which cumulatively ups the customers’ expectations.
I imagine that if a typical US or Canadian urban / suburban dweller were teleported into 1965 they’d find all sorts of food and beverage outlets to be unremittingly dreary. From coffee & donut joints to high-end steak houses it’d all seem bland & scruffy. And most of the variety of foods we take for granted simply wouldn’t be available. Whether that’s decent lettuce in February, or even crappy Americanized forms of Chinese food anywhere.
I know one can simulate this teleporting pretty easily by visiting most any rural small town main street and sampling the food and groceries on offer. Dreary seems the best word for it.
I will also cite this almost-current thread along a similar line:
Lots of places from our youth have legends that now exceed their reality. But as long as management can keep puffing the puffery, a new generation of aficionados can be made to queue up in their cars for crap.