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Editor’s note: Trevor Williams traveled to Quebec April 25-29 for research on a special report looking at the province’s economic and trade ties with Georgia in advance of the SEUS/Canadian Provinces Alliance Conference and its return to Savannah this June, 15 years after its founding. The reporting trip was sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada in Atlanta.
There’s only one explanation for Tim Hortons announcing 15 locations in Georgia last week: I brought the state’s vibes north of the border as I traversed the highways and hoovered up all the fast food Quebec had to offer.
Even having driven through Canada on a baseball road trip two decades ago after high-school graduation, I don’t remember visiting the ubiquitous coffee and doughnuts chain (perhaps because I hadn’t yet developed my caffeine habit over four years of cram sessions.)
Nonetheless, my wife — who follows social media a bit more closely than me — said I should stop in. Apparently, “Tim’s” fans — like those of any prominent brand — are very loyal and vocal on Instagram and other platforms. As one news outlet put it, the chain, founded in 1964, has become an “institution” — and one that has more than 5,100 locations.
Over five peripatetic days in Quebec, including a few late nights that limited my options, I became something of a Canadian fast-food connoisseur. After midnight in Montreal, I made the mistake of purchasing a prepackaged salad from a cashier-less Aisle 24 convenience store. Later, on the road, I tried a papa burger at A&W (somewhat expectedly, the cane sugar root beer was the star of the meal), ordered the fast-food poutine at McDonald’s (just don’t do it) and somehow kept missing out on St-Hubert, the chicken chain that pioneered local delivery in fleets of yellow, rooster-shaped cars long before Uber Eats arrived.
Shuffling between factory visits and on the three-hour trek between Montreal and Quebec City, I did find time to make a few stops at Tim Hortons. I was satisfied with my honey doughnut, the passable coffee and a decent crunchy chicken wrap in a cardboard container that made it easy to eat one-handed. But I have to say, the company will face a much more competitive landscape in the home state of Chick-fil-A than it does in Quebec, where a gas-station-affixed Tim Hortons can sometimes be the only dining option for kilometers around.
Either way, Atlanta’s thriving franchise scene always has room for new brands, and finding out on my last day that such an iconic brand would grace my two Georgia hometowns — Columbus and Atlanta — with a slew of new stores seemed a fitting tribute to a trip aimed at uncovering the current flavor of the Georgia-Canada business relationship.