Coffee

Saturday April 21, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 21, 2018

How Tim Hortons lost its connection with the Canadian public

Léger and National Public Relations last week released their annual report ranking Canada’s most admired companies. While some results were indeed surprising, others were not.

January 9, 2018

Both Google and Shoppers Drug Mart (owned by Loblaw) ended up at the top of the overall rankings, as well as the leaders in their sectors. Google has been No. 1 for six years now. It was surprising to see that eighth-place Kellogg’s is the most respected food company in Canada. Campbell and Kraft, two other food companies, closed out the top 10. Despite bread-price collusion accusations, Sobeys moved up 10 places and remained the most admired grocer, while Subway was recognized in the food service category.

But Tim Hortons’ year was just plain awful. It went from No. 4 to No. 50 in just 12 months. This significant free fall can be linked to the very public spat between Tim Hortons franchisees and the Tim Hortons parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI). This dispute has taken its toll and likely affected the reputation of the iconic Canadian company.

RBI has been at war with Tim Hortons franchisees since 2014 when the holding company was created, and things have gotten progressively worse. While franchise owners – family businesses, really – were committed to serving communities, RBI swooped in with an efficiency-driven agenda. Menu changes, royalty structure modifications, higher costs of supplies to operate outlets – all were revised to serve RBI’s shareholders, and it paid off. The share price hit a record high last October of $85.

March 17, 2007

RBI’s ultimate commitment has been to its shareholders and not necessarily to the Canadian public. This year’s Léger-National rankings confirm that Canadians have been keeping tabs.

But RBI’s profit-driven agenda has started to work against it over this past year. Rallies to raise awareness of minimum-wage campaigns made Tim Hortons a public target right across the country. To make matters worse, reports surfaced suggesting that in Ontario, where the minimum wage increased by 22 per cent on Jan. 1, some Tim Hortons employees had been asked to pay for uniforms and cut out breaks. While other food chains were adapting well, the rift between RBI and its franchise owners in Ontario became even more evident to the public.

Now sales are slumping, and as a result, RBI shares have fallen to about $70. RBI’s response is to invest $700-million over the next four years, including a change to the interior design in all of its Tim Hortons restaurants. But here’s the catch: Most franchise owners will be required to pay more than $450,000 per outlet to support the cost of renovation and create an open-seating concept. Given that the average Tim Hortons franchisee owns three outlets, the cost to support RBI’s new redesign strategy will be well more than $1-million for a typical franchise owner. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

SaveSave

Friday January 13, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 13, 2017

Justin Trudeau’s Ontario road show takes on partisan edge

Canadians who want to meet Justin Trudeau during his upcoming road tour town halls are being asked to first register their personal details with Liberal Mps.

That puts a political taint on the prime minister’s attempt at grassroots mingling, Conservative MP Candice Bergen (Portage–Lisgar) said Wednesday.

“Don’t call it an open town hall when it’s actually a Liberal rally,” she said. “It’s not at all the back-to-the-people tour that the prime minister described.”

Trudeau’s tour, which kicks off Thursday in Ontario, was originally framed as an effort by the prime minister to reconnect with Canadians on their priorities.

“The prime minister wants to hear from them on how they are feeling at the start of 2017, what their concerns and anxieties are, and what we can do to help alleviate that,” spokesperson Cameron Ahmed told the Star last week.

But the road trip — which continues on to Quebec, Prairies, and B.C. — has taken on partisan overtones as Liberal MPs hosting Trudeau at some of his Ontario stopovers are using their websites to glean personal data of those who want to attend.

Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen, who is hosting Trudeau’s Thursday town hall event in Kingston, promoted the event on Twitter and Facebook. “The prime minister wants to hear from you about issues that matter to you and our community as we enter the new year,” Gerretsen wrote.

His social media postings directed those who want to attend to sign up on his web page. To register for the event, attendees are asked to provide their name, email, postal code and telephone number. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

Friday, March 6, 2015

Friday, March 6, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, March 6, 2015

K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system

K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod systemThe man who invented the K-Cup coffee pod almost 20 years ago says he regrets doing so, and he can’t understand the popularity of the products that critics decry as an environmental catastrophe.

John Sylvan worked at Keurig in the 1990s when he devised a simple product that could create a small mug of coffee out of a plastic pod. Originally aiming it at office workers, Sylvan said he thought the product might have some limited appeal to people who would normally go Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or other coffee chains in the morning, because now they could get a cup of coffee at work that was cheaper, faster, and no fuss.

“That would make it environmentally neutral, because you wouldn’t have those Starbucks cups [everywhere],” Sylvan told the CBC’s As It Happens in an interview. “The first market was the office coffee service market,” he said, adding he is “absolutely mystified” by his product’s popularity in homes.

Popularity doesn’t begin to describe it, as the K-Cup’s status is closer to ubiquity. Keurig Green Mountain’s annual revenues have climbed to almost $5 billion, up more than five-fold in five years, largely on the back of selling billions of K-Cups every year.

Keurig dominates what’s come to be a large and growing market. Research firm NPD Group recently estimated that about 40 per cent of Canadian homes have a single-serving coffee machine, and Canadians spent $95 million on them last year.

According to a wildly popular ad campaign against the product earlier this year, there are so many discarded K-Cups that if you lined them up it would be enough to circle the earth more than 10 times — and that’s just from one year’s worth of coffee pods.

As the man who invented them, Sylvan might have been pleased with their popularity. But he left the company in 1997, selling his ownership of the product for $50,000.

To this day, he still doesn’t understand why people like them. “I find them rather expensive,” he said. (Source: CBC News)

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Tuesday, March 19, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Chris Hadfield doesn’t want to go to sleep

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says just one thing gets him mad on the International Space Station — having to go to sleep.

Hadfield says he’s dreamed about going into space since he was a young Canadian and has worked hard to get there.

Saturday, March 17, 2007The 53-year-old space veteran is resolved to make the most out of his current visit and to spend as little time sleeping as he can.

Hadfield was speaking today in his first news conference since becoming commander of the giant space station last Wednesday.

He is the first Canadian to hold the position.

Only three reporters attended the news conference which was broadcast down to the Montreal-area Canadian Space Agency.

Hadfield was asked about the experiments on board, cuts in research spending and his massive following of more than 500,000 Twitter followers.

His five-month visit, which began in late December, ends in mid-May. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

October 27, 2006

Classify lottery ticket people in convenience stores as a social irritant of mine. Surely, I’m not the only person who seems to be wanting to purchase a newspaper or a pop, only to have someone at the counter hold up everybody’s time because he or she is checking their lottery numbers, and buying tickets for the next one. Yes, it’s a small irritant compared to the atrocities in the world, but one of several issues I like to illustrate on.

Don’t get me started on what I think about lotteries in general

Lotteries are among the other less significant trouble spots I’ve highlighted in the past, such as drinking coffee on boiling hot summer days, icicle lights (here’s another), suburban garage doors, radical vegetarians, Canadian comedians, summer news filler, and lousy neighbours.

While I may come off as irritating complainer, I’m just getting things off my back. My rants about drivers have barely been illustrated, and my wife can attest to how critical I get on every occasion we happen to share a drive some place.

Pet peeves are often occur as fleeting events. You get into everyday situations that aren’t new but are enough to make you pound your head against the wall when they happen… and then you forget about it. A few weeks ago I was reminded about one of the most annoying thing that occurs during economy class flight travel. And it always happens to me. This time I took note… I’m buckled into my seat on a commercial airplane and the moment it becomes ok to recline your seat the person in front of me always, always, finds it’s necessary to recline right to the limit and stay reclined for the duration of the flight. It doesn’t matter that the reclining will cause the crunching sound of the newspaper I was reading and compounded with the tightening grip of my hands on that same newspaper hoping for some kind of retreat by the recliner. Some how I’ll eventually get around to illustrating that particular pet peeve of mine… it’s just a matter of remembering.