Tim Hortons invests $80 million in product improvements!

Tim Hortons, a coffee chain, announced a C $80 million (US $64 million) investment in Canada this year.

It is understood that this investment is mainly used to increase advertising spending, highlight menus that improve product quality, and support continuous improvement of the digital visitor experience, including customer incentive programs.

Canadian national coffee brand Tim Hortons was founded in 1964. In 1964, hockey player Tim Horton opened the first Tim Hortons ®(Tims) cafe in the small town of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. At first, the store was just a fast food restaurant selling doughnuts, and the products were only two doughnuts and one kind of coffee. Later, because of its legendary star fame, the store became more and more popular in more than a decade. Tim Hortons is just beginning to grow, and now Tims has more than 4900 cafes around the world.

According to public information, Tim Hortons currently has more than 4800 stores in the world, of which Tims China currently has more than 100 stores, and Tim also attaches great importance to the Chinese coffee market. According to the current number of stores and future plans to open stores, the Canadian market accounts for 60%, while China accounts for more than 20%. China will become the second largest market of Tim.

On February 26th, 2019, Tims opened its first store in Shanghai and officially entered the Chinese market. 20 days later, Tims opened its second store in Shanghai Century Metropolis. 50 days later, it continued to open its third store in Shanghai Nanyang 1931. By May 2020, the number of Tims stores in the Chinese market was close to 50. Although the number of stores in China is not large, it covers stores in first-and second-tier cities. Such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chongqing and so on.

Surprisingly, on May 12 last year, Canadian coffee brand Tim Hortons China announced that it had received investment from Tencent with a financing amount of 10 million RMB. Since Tim Hortons was exclusively invested by Tencent, Tim Hortons has developed rapidly in the Chinese coffee market. At that time, Tim revealed that it will open more than 1500 stores in China in the future and plans to use funds to further expand digital infrastructure construction. And cooperate with Tencent to explore the digital upgrade of online channels, while quickly opening more stores to meet the needs of consumers.

This investment is also the first round of financing for Tim in China. The second round of financing is in February this year. This round of financing is jointly invested by Sequoia Capital China Fund, Zhong Ding Capital and Tencent. It will be used to continuously increase the investment of Tims Coffee in the Chinese market. After this financing, Tim also put forward a clear store opening plan. It is expected that more than 200 new cafes will be added in 2021, including standard stores, Tims Go stores and theme stores. Plans to open 1500 cafes across the country in the next few years remain unchanged and will try to enter the coffee retail sector.

Industry insiders said: according to the current opening rate of Tims, it is not surprising that 1500 stores will be opened in the Chinese market in the next few years.

* Image source: Internet