This week, though, Mr. Long will be looking for a little payback.
Shares of Tim Hortons, Canada's iconic and wildly successful fast-food chain, are expected to go on sale this Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
It's a complicated stock offering, and, ironically, one not easily available to Canadians. But that's not likely to keep Mr. Long and thousands of others from trying to get in on what some financial analysts are already calling the country's investment event of 2006.
"It's time to make my money count for something that gives me more than a few minutes of pleasure," says Mr. Long, a double-double drinker who gets his fix at one of several Tim's outlets in west Ottawa. His anticipation is easy to understand. In addition to its near-astonishing status as a Canadian cultural institution, Tim Hortons remains one of the country's most amazing business growth stories.
In the past five years, the number of Tim's outlets has jumped by nearly 50 per cent to more than 2,600 in Canada and nearly 300 in the U.S. Over the same period, sales increased 62 per cent, so that by last year Tim's generated a staggering $1.2 billion U.S. in revenue for its American owner, Wendy's International.
"It's a gold mine, pure and simple," says Peter Oakes, a New York food industry analyst. "It just keeps humming along."
Not everyone is quite so optimistic about Tim Hortons' worth as a stock investment. Some analysts believe its growth has peaked, that the Canadian market is saturated and that the company will never achieve a high level of success in the U.S., where Tim's is just another fast-food chain and not a national symbol.
But such talk is unlikely to deter those Canadians who consider an investment in Tim Hortons to be a show of patriotism, says Adrian Mastracci, president of KCM Wealth Management in Vancouver.
"I think there will be a lot more heart, a lot more more emotional attachment, than usual involved in people's decisions regarding Tim Hortons," he says. "I'd never say it's a bad investment, but I'd advise people to have a coffee and doughnut and think things over before jumping."
Even so, it's easy to understand why owning a chunk of Tim's has a magnetic, almost mythological appeal for many Canadians.
"In so many ways the story of Tim Hortons is the essential Canadian story," the late writer Pierre Berton, whose annual garden parties were known to feature buckets of Timbits, once said. "It is a story of success and tragedy, of big dreams and small towns, of old-fashioned values and tough-fisted business, of hard work and of hockey."
It also a story of marketing genius, one that seemed even to seduce Mr. Berton, a Canadian legend himself, with its nostalgic appeal.
Tim Hortons, which is after all simply a fast-food chain that offers safe and reliable fare, achieved its iconic status in large measure through a careful application of down-home, folksy branding.
It's difficult to say which came first, the reality or the market image, but the company's "True Stories" ad campaign probably resonates with Canadians because the tales it tells contain the ring of, well, truth.
Given that Tim's kiosks were set up in Turin for Canadian Olympians, and that Canadian soldiers have been promised an outlet in Afghanistan, it's not difficult to buy into the TV spot featuring the young Canadian travelling through Europe with the Tim's mug attached to his backpack.
Or considering Mr. Long's 35-year-long pilgrimage to Tim's, nor is it hard to believe the ad featuring Lillian, the gentle grandmother who trudges up a hill every day, rain or shine, to visit the Tim's outlet in Lunenberg, N.S.
Then there are the hockey ads.
"You look around the arena some mornings and every parent is holding a Tim's coffee," says Leigh-Anne Bifolchi, a Barrhaven hockey mom and a Tim Hortons regular (she takes a single cream). And, adds her husband, Grant (a double-double guy), "they're all stamping their feet to stay warm. It's so Canadian."
The down-home image goes beyond mere marketing, though.
Tim Hortons insists its franchise operators get involved at the grassroots level, supporting community recreation and sports activities, including the hugely popular Timbits hockey tournaments. One day every June, franchisees are required to donate the proceeds from their coffee sales to the Tim Hortons foundation that operates six camps for underprivileged kids in Canada and the U.S. Last year that amounted to a $5.5-million infusion for the camps.
"It's not an accident that this huge company makes people feel at home," says Tommy Chi, another double-double customer at the Barrhaven Tim's on Strandherd Road. "They work hard at cultivating an image and then they deliver."
Even some people who don't much care for the coffee and doughnuts are regulars. Middle-aged sisters Betty Anderson and Jean Dagenais meet two or three times a week at the Tim's outlet in the Greenbank Mall for a chat over bottled water, a muffin and an occasional coffee.
"It's convenient, it's clean, it's quick and it's inexpensive," says Ms. Dagenais. "There's really no other place you can go that gives you those things. I guess I'd say we feel comfortable here."
Marketing hominess might be a business strategy these days, but when Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Tim Horton open his first outlet in Hamilton in 1964, the ambience was naturally folksy and modest.
So were Mr. Horton's ambitions. Although he played on four Stanley Cup-winning teams and was an NHL all-star six times, Mr. Horton was not especially well paid, like most players of the era. He was looking for a way to make a few extra dollars after his hockey days were over.
In the mid-'50s, before he became a fan favourite for his "heads-up" puck-rushing style, Mr. Horton had tried the fast-food business. His Toronto hamburger joint went bankrupt after a year, but he developed a taste for selling food and was open to the idea of a doughnut shop when approached by three friends in 1964.
They chose Hamilton for their first outlet because a potential competitor, Mister Donut, had no stores there. With Mr. Horton's name emblazoned on a yellow sign outside, the new outlet received a encouraging welcome from residents of the blue-collar city, who spent about $35,000 on coffee and doughnuts in the first year.
In fact, that's all they could buy. The first Tim Hortons offered only coffee and a few types of doughnuts. Everything cost 10 cents. Right from the start, the outlet's most popular baked goods were the apple fritter and the Dutchie, two of Mr. Horton's personal favourites and still among the biggest sellers 42 years later.
Although Mr. Horton left the business to others -- his role was to be a figurehead and help bankroll the enterprise -- he readily agreed in 1965 that franchising was the answer to some cash flow problems.
It was a brilliant, and lucky, stroke.
The first franchisee was Ron Joyce, a ruggedly handsome Hamilton policeman whose relationship with the doughnut would turn out to be much more than the stereotype.
A high-school dropout who left Nova Scotia at 15, Mr. Joyce possessed a powerful instinct for business. Within two years, he opened two more outlets and by 1967 had become Mr. Horton's full partner.
As Mr. Joyce began to develop Tim's corporate culture -- carefully screened franchisees, clean outlets, food products and coffee of consistent quality -- Mr. Horton continued his NHL career.
He had agreed to play one last year for the expansion Buffalo Sabres in 1974 when his exotic Italian-built Pantera spun out of control at 160 kilometres an hour on his way home from a game in Toronto. He was killed instantly at 44.
By then, the chain had grown to 40 outlets and was already something of an institution in southern Ontario. Mr. Joyce decided it was time for a big national push.
In 1975, he became full owner after paying Mr. Horton's widow Lori, a former Ice Capades star, $1 million and a Cadillac for her shares. (She later sued Mr. Joyce to regain her half of the chain, claiming her decision to sell was affected by prolonged drug and alcohol abuse. The suit was denied.)
As he expanded throughout Ontario, Mr. Joyce introduced the chain's first major menu change, the Timbit. Although similar bite-sized doughnuts -- they are not actually the holes, as many people believe -- were already being offered by some U.S. doughnut chains, Timbits became an instant sensation in Canada.
"There's nothing better than a box of Timbits for the kids in the back of the car," Toronto philosopher Mark Kingwell wrote a few years ago. "Nothing better to pick up spirits during a grim winter morning at the office, either."
The 1980s brought bigger change. In 1983, Tim's became the first national chain to introduce, albeit gradually, no-smoking outlets. The company's expansion was broadened to include smaller outlets and kiosks in gas stations, highrises, hospitals and shopping malls. For convenience, drive-through lanes were added to many outlets and dozens of car service-only sites were established.
There were also major menu additions, starting with soup in 1985, followed over the next decade by chili, sandwiches and bagels. As the chain evolved from a coffeeshop to a restaurant, the word "donuts" was quietly removed from signs outside the stores.
In the early '90s, with Tim's amid its most extensive expansion ever, Mr. Joyce authored a surprising new chapter in the Tim's story. While vacationing at his winter home in Florida, he became a golfing buddy of Dave Thomas, the Wendy's founder who had transformed his aw-shucks personality into an advertising coup.
It turned out the two men had something in common besides golf and their passion for the food industry: children's charities. In 1975, Mr. Joyce had established the Tim Hortons Children's Foundation in memory of his former partner. Mr. Thomas, adopted as a child, had contributed millions to children's causes in the U.S.
"It's amazing how our attachment to working with children blended with our attachment to working with the restaurants," Mr. Thomas, who died in 2002, once said.
They started modestly by opening 13 combination Wendy's-Tim Hortons restaurants in Canada. In 1995, they stunned the business world with a $620-million merger that made Mr. Joyce the biggest shareholder in the third-largest hamburger chain in the U.S. and made Canada's largest coffee-and-doughnut chain, and a national icon, a division of a U.S.-based company.
If anything, though, the move seemed to enhance the essential Canadianness of Tim's at home.
"While Canadians are normally sensitive to the threat of American-owned companies, the sale of this 'national institution' to an American hamburger company did not seem to affect Tim Hortons' link to national mythology at all," says Toronto historian Steve Penfold.
In his essay Eddie Shack Was No Tim Horton: Donuts And The Folklore Of Mass Culture In Canada, Mr. Penfold argues our national obsession with doughnuts in general, and Tim Hortons in particular, is "curiously disconnected" from the product's American origins.
But the answer to that conundrum is simple, says Mr. Mastracci: It's not just the doughnut, but the entire Tim Hortons experience that is Canadian.
"I think we feel a certain pride that we are exporting a bit of our culture to the U.S," he says. "It's the reverse of the usual."
For Mr. Joyce, the deal was his chance to make it big in the U.S. Tim's move south of the border actually began in the 1980s with a few stores around Buffalo. Although growth was steady if modest, the outlets never caught on in the U.S. in the same way as Canada.
But inside Wendy's itself, Tim's soon emerged as a white knight.
"I don't think it gets nearly enough credit for giving Wendy's whatever lustre it has," says Mr. Oakes, the food industry analyst.
Although the Ohio-based hamburger chain has 21/2 times more outlets, its revenue was barely twice that of Tim's in 2005. Even more significantly, in pure dollars, Tim's profits actually outstripped Wendy's by more than $50 million.
Some of that gap can be explained by the hit Wendy's took after a California woman claimed she was served a severed finger in a bowl of chili. By the time the hoax was uncovered, several carnivorous American hedge funds had scooped up shares at shrunken value and began to lean on Wendy's to spin off its doughnut sidekick as a separate entity on the stock market.
After some resistance, Wendy's eventually agreed last summer to put 18 per cent of Tim Hortons on the market by this spring. The remaining shares are to be distributed over the next few months, first to Wendy's shareholders, and what's left later into the open market.
Only 35 per cent of the shares have been set aside for Canadian dealers. By the time the big institutional clients get a first-crack look at the offering, there's not expected to be much more than slim pickings left for ordinary investors.
But Mr. Long has already primed his investment dealer. He doesn't expect the shares to reap big dividends. In fact, he thinks all the hype means the shares will be fully valued when they come on the market, leaving little room for profit.
All the same, he wants a piece of the action. "I'm a Tim's regular and a Canadian. We fit together."
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Tim Hortons: A chronology
1964: Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Tim Horton, opens first store in Hamilton with partner Jim Charade. Ron Joyce, a former policeman, buys the franchise a year later as Horton and Charade begin to expand into southwestern Ontario.
1967: Joyce becomes full partner in Tim Donut Ltd.
1974: Horton, now playing with the Buffalo Sabres, is killed in a car crash. In 1975, Joyce buys Horton's share of the business from Horton's widow, Lori, for $1 million and a Cadillac.
1985: First first U.S. franchise opens in Amherstburg, New York.
1986: Tim's introduces its now-famous "Roll Up the Rim to Win" contest.
1988: Tim Hortons takes "doughnuts" off its signage as it evolves from bakery to fast-food restaurant.
1993: Tim Hortons expands its menu and moves heavily into lunch business with soups, sandwiches and chili. Bagels are added in 1996.
1996: Joyce sells Tim Hortons to American hamburger chain Wendy's International Inc. in a $620-million deal. Joyce joins Wendy's management. As part of the deal, he gets about 16 million shares in the firm.
2001: U.S. doughnut giant Krispy Kreme challenges Tim's on its home turf with plans to open 32 stores in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
2002: Recently retired from Wendy's, Joyce sells his Wendy's shares saying he is frustrated by the company's poor performance.
2004: The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is amended to included the phrase "double double" -- the way two-cream, two-sugar coffee is ordered at Tim Hortons.
April 2005: Krispy Kreme admits defeat, declaring bankruptcy for its Canadian operations and putting its assets on the market.
July 2005: Wendy's gives in to activist American investors and announces plans to take Tim Hortons public in March 2006. The initial share offering is expected Friday.
--National Post--
