Question

How A&W will win, and how its competitor, Tim Hortons might win against A&W?

Answer 1

Tim Hortons Inc. is a Canadian multinational fast food restaurant chain. Based in Toronto, Tim Hortons serves coffee, doughnuts and other fast food items. It is Canada's largest quick service restaurant chain, with 4,846 restaurants in 14 countries, by December 31, 2018.

  Tim Hortons' first stores offered only two products – coffee and doughnuts. Aside from its coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and doughnuts, the menu now contains a number of other baked goods, such as bagels – of which the brand sells one out of every two in the Canadian food service industry. Nutritional information on most menu items is made available by the company in a two-page brochure and online. The brochure does not list ingredient information. Most of the time Tim Hortons' menu contains many of the same items across different locations. However, the pricing may vary since it is a franchise so the cost of each item may be slightly different depending on the owner of the location.

  Tim Hortons' sells coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and soft drinks. In the mid-1990s the chain moved into specialty and premium items such as flavored cappuccino, iced cappuccino, and iced coffee.

Originally featuring Pepsi products via fountain machines, the retailer changed in the mid-1990s to Coca-Cola products. For a time they offered bottled and canned Coca-Cola products, but switched back to bottled and canned Pepsi products in 2007. PepsiCo replaced the Coca-Cola products on United States restaurants in 2011, disappointing similar longtime PepsiCo rival Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' Donuts moved to Coca-Cola products only for United States restaurants in April 2012 because of this.

Despite an expansion in their food offerings around 2009, the brand remained heavily dependent on coffee sales. In 2009, it was reported that 60% of their sales occur in the morning, and of that more than 50% is coffee. The coffee served is a blend of 100% arabica beans. The "original blend" is a medium, balanced roast that is the most popular served coffee in Canada. The chain has an "always fresh" policy where coffee is served within 20 minutes of brewing.

In November 2011, the company announced that they would be adding espresso machines in 1,000 of their locations, later that month. Lattes were added to Ontario stores on November 14, 2011. In February 2012, they offered a new beverage, White Hot Chocolate, in select branches. On April 16, 2012, the brand launched frozen lemonade, in two flavours: original and raspberry. In May 2014, they first offered frozen green tea. On August 15, 2014, the company added a dark roast coffee blend as an alternative. In the summer of 2015, they introduced a frozen drink called Creamy Chocolate Chill which was essentially a chocolate milkshake topped with chocolate whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup. In addition to the Creamy Chocolate Chill, they also launched a Maple Chill, a maple milkshake topped with regular whipped cream and sprinkled with maple flakes.

  Despite the chain's ubiquity across Canada, Tim Hortons has never offered poutine as a regular menu item, despite the fact that poutine (largely seen as Canada's signature dish) is offered at just about every other major restaurant chain in Canada. Tim Hortons did offer poutine for the first time in 2018 across Canada for a limited time, using seasoned potato wedges instead of the typical french fries. Tim Hortons poutine received a mixed social media response.