2008/05/26

Caffeine: double double or nothing?

Before we get the Ultra Cosmic Top SeKrit Project fully underway, we're going to need caffeine. And if we're going to need caffeine in Ottawa, Tim Hortons is a starting option. It's been considered the quintessential Canadian coffee chain for years, even when it briefly was owned by American interests. (How Canadian is that?) The furniture is hard, the ambience is fluorescent, the coffee is on the slightly better side of 'lousy'. What it's got going for it is donuts, urban ubiquity, a lot of 24-hour drive-by windows, and a population that loves it. The oddly corporate-looking Wikipedia entry mentions, apparently without irony, a Tim Hortons Culture.

Why? Because it's Spartan but serviceable, perhaps a submerged reflection of the country's Protestant ascetic stock. Protestants are far from the only patrons these days, but the mainstream Canadian ethos remains, at heart, no-frills and unfussy. The coffee may be lousy, but it's fresh, cheap, hot and highly caffeinated. If you order it predoctored with enough no-extra-cost cream and sugar - the famed 'double-double' - it's palatable enough to goose a groggy brain toward sentience for a kid's Peewee hockey practice at 5:00 AM, a sunrise departure to cottage country, or a red eye, cross-country barn-burner of a road trip.

Despite the fact that many in the thrifty Timmy's tribe may snicker at the prices Starbuckians will ante up for a 'coffee beverage' such as the decafnonfatnofoamskinnysoylatte, the two almost-separate demographics share an important commonality: the insider's off-the-posted-menu SeKrit Sign. Whether it's a doubledouble or a decafnonfatnofoamskinnysoylatte, only those in the know can order without the words tripping on hesitant lips. Knowledge of each is acquired only by observing other, more senior adepts and acolytes of the order. Each in its milieu is the caffeinista's equivalent of a Masonic handshake. And almost everybody wants to feel they belong somewhere...

4 comments:

Pandora said...

oooh, okay, I have a couple of comments...

one is a query - did you hear that Walmart recently hired the ad agency that made Tim's so famously 'Canadian'? Walmart wants to be 'as Canadian as Tim Horton's'.

two is a story that I'm putting in the comment box, partly to blur the genre boundaries between 'comment' and 'post', to wit - I went on a road trip last year with a colleague who, it became apparent, had *never before been in a Tim Horton's*, despite a)being a full-fledged Canadian citizen since birth b) being a coffee drinker (not a donut eater, though) c)there is no c... As we entered the first of many Tim's during our journey, she asked me if they had washrooms (!) and then she did not know where to line up. What demographic is SHE in?

coyote said...

One: Walmart is already as Canadian as Tim Hortons was - when it was briefly owned by American-based Wendy's International. I'm afraid they've seriously understimated differences between 'Canadian' and 'American' if they think an ad agency is going to turn the trick for them. But that's a common American mistake...

Two: I think she might be in the 'blurry' demographic. But where did she grow up? I think TH was a powerhouse only in the maritimes and Ontario until quite recently...

Pandora said...

I don't know where she grew up. But I think she's in a demographic where servants bring you coffee in little china cups.

coyote said...

All righty, then. With permanent room service - and bone china - what would be her motivation to bother hanging out with the paper-cup plebes...?