Buy Canadian

Definitely, the quality difference is unbelievable!

I find most of the people I know that complain cafés are too expensive drink drip anyways and it seems to be about the same price everywhere 🤷‍♂️. Its $2.16 for a large drip at Tim's here, and $2-$3 at most every local café I've ever been to apart from really bougie ones.

People just see the $4-6+ milk drinks and blended frozen drinks (with real ingredients, apples-oranges) and get sticker shock compared to Tim's fake whipped topping and sweetener sludge (sorry, "iced capp") for $4.19 when they could be enjoying much better drip in the meantime for effectively the same price.

I worked there during the frozen donut transition. A few really cool stoner night bakers got let go from my store.

In Cobourg, Ontario, a Tim Hortons store got into the news because after the minimum wage was raised they cut their employees benefits.

The interesting part was that the store was owned by the son of one of the Tim Hortons founders and the daughter of the other founder, who had married. There was a bit of a backlash, to put it mildly.

I never cared for Tim Horton's coffee, so I didn't mind the change.

The term is 'enshittification' and it's practically the default business strategy for extracting cash from brand value.

Buy/make a good company by offering a quality service and then spend the next decade cutting costs until the product is terrible.

Most people won't notice the incremental changes. It's often likened to boiling a frog.

Tim Hortons have been pooping (autoassume changed that from popping, but I'm fucking leaving it!) up here in the UK, not loads of locations, and weirdly not in some of the places you'd expect. First one was in Glasgow, I believe, but there still aren't any in Edinburgh, or London. I work up the Forth Valley from Edinburgh, and there's one in the town I work in, and two more within a 20-30 minute drive. So it seems to be mostly small towns and Glasgow with a Tims.
Doughnuts are the same pish quality as back home, but the (drip) coffee is surprisingly way better! Pretty sure they had to step up their game because they didn't already dominate the "pop in for a to go cuppa" market here. They're also one of the few places I've seen here in the UK where you can get a filter coffee.
I'm participating in the US product boycott from here, in solidarity with my family and nation. Just thought the difference between quality here vs home was interesting.

Mary Brown's has good chicken. Big Mary Monday deal used to be good, don't have any around here now.

A&W is awesome. Canadian ones are locally owned by franchisees and it shows in the quality. Antibiotic free run Canadian chicken last I checked. Free run Canadian eggs. Good quality Canadian beef. Canadian vege for the most part I think... All for the same price as the slop served at other fast food joints these days. The coffee isn't my favourite but I know lots of people that like going there for breakfast and don't seem to mind. Usually has a decent sit down atmosphere for breakfast. Lots of them host car meets still in the summer.

I WISH Robin's Donuts was still around. Unfortunately Timmies all but put them out of business before enshittifying. I randomly found one up around Lake Superior a couple years ago in some small town if I remember right. They must have bought out the location and kept it going. They were still baking fresh donuts in house, had the same mugs, same coffee. It was like stepping into a time capsule and made me loathe what capitalism has done to Timmies.

For coffee you are usually best finding whatever local non-chain café you like best and stick with that. If I'm visiting somewhere I'm not familiar with I just search for a non-chain café and get to try some new coffee.

If you really like the chain coffee shop vibe I believe Blenz and Second Cup are both decent Canadian founded and owned still, maybe someone else can confirm, I can't find the details rn

Edit: to add emphasis

As for fast food, Harveys is Canadian by my understanding. So is Mary browns (my favourite) which isn't even available in America last time I checked

Tim Hortons isn't American owned, but technically brazillian of you go by the major shareholderof the toronto headquartered company.

Still though, it's heavily degraded over the years and isn't in actuality Canadian owned.

At this point the only Canadian thing about them is in showing how dumb we can be.

* Buys Tim Horton's.
* Proceeds to vote for Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre.

It's because they can afford to. I remember pre-covid a local gem restaurant bought up a spot in the airport, did well. Covid hit and they didn't have the money to support a location while air travel was at a low. Plus extra costs associated with running a restaurant during a pandemic.

There were other, complex reasons, too. The owners were assholes, some employees spoke out about working conditions, and they had a PR nightmare. But honestly, it was good food.

Still, all those problems would be a blip on the chart for a company like Tim Hortons who can get away with shit quality and shit conditions ad infinitum.

The only decent fast food I've had lately is A&W, specifically their breakfast.

They at least make their breakfast the same way I would at home, so it's decent.

McDonald's is awful and has only gotten more expensive. Tim's is meh, I get tim bits and hot chocolate occasionally.

I've found Canadian pastry does not compare with European, which is unfortunate. I think the extra moisture content in our butter means traditional pastry recipes do not translate as well.

I guess I'm mostly a Harvey's guy as far as Canadian fast food chains are concerned. Pizza, subs, shawarma, etc. are up there too, though there are too many of those to list.

My daughter took me to Odd Burger when I was up in Ottawa and I could totally get into that if only we had one where I am.

I live in the UK, one thing I'll say on this specifically, McDonalds here tastes like it's shit food that's too expensive. In Canada it tastes like shit, but it almost tastes like you're not being bent over the counter and having your pockets turned out.
There's definitely some cities here that have a massive selection of different take away places. London, the only thing I miss about London is the variety of different foods. If I get stoned and drunk and feel like Ghanaian at midnight, it's likely I'll be able to get it. Might be cold, but it'll turn up. I'm in Edinburgh now, and while there's definitely a growing selection of foods, it's still mostly variations of greasy white people food. Take away in the vast majority of medium to small cities is exactly like Canadian cities of similar size, Chinese delivery, 1 or 2 pizza shops almost certainly one will be Domino's, some Indian delivery, 3-10 chippies, and McDonald's, Burger King or both.

Second Cup

They're based in Mississauga but have changed hands a lot in their history.

I think Balzac's is Canadian too. There's are kids of independent coffee shops that are good.

Twiggs Coffee Roasters

BC has Waves, Serious Coffee, Island Grind, Blenz, JJ Bean, and more but thats what I can recall off the top of my head.

Ottawa has Bridgehead

Restaurant Brands International owns them along with Burger King, Popeye’s Chicken, and Firehouse Subs. They are headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant_Brands_International