After a couple years of testing, Tim Hortons is expanding its pizza nationally.
According to a report from The Canadian Press, Tims wants to “stretch the brand” and offer more options in the afternoon and night in hopes of drawing in more customers. That most recent effort is flatbread pizza, which first started showing up in some locations back in 2022. Now it’s going national.
“We are really strong in the morning … but we saw that opportunity existed in the afternoon,” said Hope Bagozzi, Tims’ chief marketing officer, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Part of the pilot was testing out flavours, but the company settled on four varieties for the national launch: cheese, pepperoni, bacon everything, and chicken parmesan.
Bagozzi also highlighted logistical concerns when talking with The Canadian Press. For example, kneading dough in stores wasn’t really an option because adding a new station behind the counter was costly. Instead, Tims decided to ship the flatbread bases to stores and then equip existing sandwich stations with squeeze bottles for sauce and containers for cheese and other toppings so employees could assemble pizzas on-site.
But as Tims tries to break into afternoon and evening with more menu options, it remains to be seen if those options are good enough to get people to spend their money. Canadians have plenty of options for pizza — why should they choose Tims’ pizza?
Header image credit: Tim Hortons
Source: The Canadian Press
