It's been weeks since the last installment in my coffee crawl of Bloor Street between Christie and Spadina, but I'm making up for it today with THREE cafés squeezed into a single post. Three!
And they're all Tim Hortons.Tim Hortenses saturate the GTA, but my chosen stretch of Bloor Street is extraordinarily crammed with them. The three locations are dispersed relatively evenly: one just west of Spadina, one at 527 Bloor Street West (pictured above), and one just north of Bloor, on Christie Street (meaning it's technically not on Bloor Street, but it does have a Bloor Street address for some reason, and in any case it's so close that it would be kind of doctrinaire not to include it).
Little needs to be said about the quality of Tim Hortons coffee. It's the same everywhere: bitter, with a slightly fruity (I would say raisiny) aftertaste, and enough caffeine to help a customer build a nice, healthy dependence. One imagines it being brewed in cauldrons somewhere deep underneath Saskatchewan and then shipped in giant tanker trucks to stores all over Canada and the States. But of course that's not how it works; it all gets brewed in-store. I have no idea how they achieve such consistency, but I imagine there's a three-ring binder somewhere in every franchise with a manual that explains the whole process step-by-step.
Incredibly, the donuts actually are all made in a single, giant facility. Each store did at one time do its own frying, but now all Tim Hortons baked goods are prepared in one location—in Brantford, Ontario—and shipped frozen.
Tim Hortons donuts and coffee are uniform products, and this attention to uniformity extends to all aspects of the Tim Hortons experience. The three locations on my slice of Bloor are, for the most part, cases in point. But there are small differences that distinguish them one from another.
The store at Bloor and Spadina is the smallest of the three, and the most nondescript. It's just a small, box-like space, with a counter, some tables and uncomfortable chairs, and some window seats. There are only two detectable points of differentiation between this and the other two stores: a small caddy, made of fluorescent pink plastic, that holds some condiments on the counter; and an incongruous bumper sticker stuck across a poster advertising one of Tim Hortons' corporate philanthropic efforts, which reads:
"Please remove sticker and write in permanent marker the nationwide dollar amount raised..."
The store at 527 Bloor has furniture, fittings, and a color scheme similar to those at the Bloor and Spadina location, but the layout is slightly different, the space is larger, and there are small touches that make the environment perceptibly more lush. Little tufts of greenery poke out of planters set into the tops of dividers between tables. Can lights in the ceiling shed a dim, welcoming glow. Since the space is relatively inviting, people linger. An aging punk in a ripped black sleeveless t-shirt uses the fact that "Don't You Forget About Me" is playing over the in-store radio as an excuse to strike up a conversation about The Breakfast Club with a group of teenage girls. "It just captured every single high school stereotype," he says, and the girls reply stiffly and leave.
Those girls weren't the only under-twenties in the store. The clientele at this Tim Hortons is noticeably younger than at either of the others, presumably because of its proximity to Central Technical High School.
The Tim Hortons on Christie Street is the most distinct of the three. Its decoration scheme seems to belong to a different generation of renovations. The walls here are maroon, whereas at the other two stores they're buff. The floors are new-looking brown tile.
On the day I visit the Christie Tim Hortons, it's the busiest of the three locations, possibly because it's nice out and Christie Pits is just across the street. The clientele has no organizing theme; people of all ages, races, and tax brackets are represented. Nobody stays for long, except for a forlorn-looking old Asian man, who barely sips from his small coffee and stares blankly out the window. I think every Tim Hortons has a forlorn-looking old man who barely sips from his small coffee and stares blankly out the window. It's part of the uniformity.
Tim Hortons lacks atmosphere and uniqueness, but it offers something to everyone, which is important. I would never go to any of these three locations unless all other coffee was poison, but I appreciate the need for them to exist.
Well, maybe we could get by with one less.
Verdict: It's mediocre. But reliably so!
