In the brief period when they were still baking in store and indoor smoking was banned, it was a pleasant experience to go into a Tims, even if you were just getting a coffee.
I used to live near the first Tim Horton's. A tiny, smokey storefront on the east side of Hamilton.
You could taste the cigarette butts in the crullers
The coffee was so weak it tasted like the cardboard-and-wax cups it came in. There's a reason why they marketed ordering "double-double" (double cream, double sugar), it's the only way to get any flavour!
In the early nineties they opened a fancy new non-smoking one in Westmount, and the donuts were freshly baked in-house. I would go out of my way to visit that one, the crullers would melt in your mouth, and the chocolate walnut actually tasted like chocolate and walnut.
It wasn't too long before the donuts were centrally distributed, and with that they became completely artificial. Nowadays every flavour tastes the same - sickly sweet with lingering sour-chemical note.
Personally I'd rather have the cigg butt taste back.
