Tim Hortons
7860 Transit Rd., Amherst NY 14221
Web: Tim Hortons
Phone: 716.626.0413
Rating:    [learn more]
Pros:

Easy-to-find donut and coffee stores with strong Canadian roots; middle of the pack pricing by cheap chain standards. Drinks can be OK at some locations, some donuts, too.

Cons:

Worst coffee and least impressive donut of the bunch on our comparison day; drip coffee tasted awful and specialty drinks weren't far behind. Cheap, but quality explains it.

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"There wasn't a lot of sugar in the drink, which might otherwise have helped conceal the fact that the coffee was absolutely burned, tasting like the contents of an ashtray."

Like McDonald's, we've never thought much of Tim Hortons - except, of course, to the extent that it has become a successful business. As a 45-year-old Canadian coffee and donut chain, Hortons is, like Swiss Chalet, a comparatively smaller player in the United States. Yet there are 400 American locations, with over 30 in Western New York, most if not all offering 24-hour drive-through service. This convenience helped the chain develop a loyal local following prior to the appearance of Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts premium coffee drive-throughs, and even today, some people still swear by their morning Tim Hortons coffee and donuts. Our experiences would definitely lead us to pick other places - or even a $20 kitchen coffee maker - first.

Sizing and Pricing: Tim Hortons' small coffee drinks come in 10-ounce cups, smaller than McDonald's and Wilson Farms "small" cups, but the same size as Dunkin' Donuts. Plain coffee sells for $1.11, with $1.29 for a vanilla cappuccino, and $1.44 for a mocha. One donut was $0.79, bringing our total bill for three drinks and a donut with tax to $4.97, which while middle of the pack overall is the lowest price for a drive-through coffee and donut shop.

Frills: According to the Tim Hortons web site, the company guarantees that every cup of coffee is served within 20 minutes of its brew time, a fact apparently established by 20-minute timers on its coffee pots. We didn't see any evidence of this during our drive-through visit, and never knew to look for the timers when we've been inside of locations, but for reasons explained below, that's a surprise.

Oddities: For a place that claims to prepare coffee fresh, the people who serve it seem to have either very little control or concern over what they turn out and what can be added to them. Unlike McDonald's, which asked us how much sugar we wanted in our coffee, Tim Hortons either adds it or doesn't. Want a double cappuccino - with a second shot of espresso? Not available. The coffees appear to be machine-made and only slightly human-handled thereafter.

The Plain Coffee: We ordered our plain coffee, as with all places, black with sugar. After the first taste, we noticed that there wasn't a lot of sugar in the drink, which might otherwise have helped conceal the fact that the coffee was absolutely burned - to the point of tasting like the contents of an ashtray. This drink was simply horrible, like an overcooked freeze-dried brew made from Yuban or Sanka. In the words of our coffee aficionado Christina, "I would never order it again or send people I like to this place. It sucks (expletive deleted), and you can print that."

The Cappuccino: As bad as the plain coffee was, the specialty drinks on our test day set an all-new low on our scales of how bad things could get. Putting aside the fact that it wasn't an accurate cappuccino, consisting entirely of liquid with no foam, the drink didn't taste like a latte, either. "Horrible," Christina said, noting that the cappuccino had been ordered with French Vanilla flavor with the only alternative as English Toffee. "There's something wrong with this. It's water with no coffee flavor. This is the grossest thing I've ever tasted." Yet we shared the experience with someone the next day, and tasted their English Toffee version, finding it completely different - similar to a Wilson Farms cappuccino in thickness, only more artificial in flavor. It wasn't great by comparison with the other places we tried, but it wasn't as bad as the drink we originally tested.

The Mocha: Just like the first cappuccino, the cafe mocha we ordered was awful, another drink that tasted like hot water with flavoring - too little flavoring - added. Here, it was a vaguely chocolate-flavored and slightly freeze-dried coffee ground-muddled water with tiny chocolate chunks, apparently small chocolate chips, floating on the surface. By "slightly," we mean to say that one of us couldn't taste the coffee part at all. How representative this drink was of the typical Tim Hortons mocha is questionable, but we can't believe a restaurant could serve drinks this poor and still have any customers left.

The Donut: Though we're not big fans of Tim Hortons donuts, and have had more than a few that taste more like lightly glazed bread than real donuts, the one we ordered on our test day - a chocolate-glazed ring - wasn't bad. While it wasn't as good as the nearly identical-looking Dunkin' Donuts version, thanks to a more bland chocolate topping, we finished eating it, as we have with more completely chocolate donuts we've had at Hortons in the past. That's more than we can say for other donuts served here, which we've thrown away after only a bite or two.

Rank and Conclusions: With the worst hot coffee we tasted in any of the three categories - so bad, initially, as to redefine bad cappuccinos and mochas forever in our minds - we felt that Tim Hortons had basically nothing to recommend it over other options save for its pricing, and a decent variety of donuts that range from bad to okay. Part of its pricing is clearly achieved through smaller-serving cups than competitors, the other part apparently through either miserable or inconsistent quality that we'd consider unlikely at the other chains. It's possible that all three of our drinks were just unusually bad, but based on other mixed experiences we've had at Tim Hortons, it's easy to imagine otherwise. We'd sooner advise you to buy your own coffee maker (link) than risk getting coffee as bad as what we were served here. But your experience may - and hopefully will - be better than ours. The 1.5-star rating's higher for the donuts than the drinks.