Tim Hortons coffee and baked goods (courtesy of Tim Hortons)
Watch out Dunkin’ Donuts: The Canadians are coming.
Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, last month opened its first location on Long Island—actually several locations spread across Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale.
It’s an appropriate place for Tim Hortons to dip a toe in the market. Canada’s biggest fast-food chain is named for its founder, who was a Canadian hockey player from 1949 to 1974. The coliseum, of course, is home of the Islanders, the NHL team whose fans could use another draw to see them take to the ice amid an 11-game losing streak as of Tuesday.
This is not the first location in New York. Tim Hortons flagship location in the region is in Time Square, and there are 16 other locations across the New York City, most of them in midtown Manhattan. There is also one in downtown Brooklyn.
Tim Hortons does more than just doughnuts, however. The Oakville, Ontario-based company serves up heroes, soup, salads and other lunch-menu offerings as well. But instead of “munchkins,” the doughnut holes at this baked-goods shop are known as “Timbits.”
The expansion comes just as the company closed 36 money-losing restaurants and 18 kiosks in New England. The company closed all its locations in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut last Wednesday.
It also closed two of its stores in the Portland, Maine, area, although more than two dozen other locations remain in Maine, now the only New England state where the company is operating.
Tim Hortons moved into southeastern New England in 2004 when it paid nearly $42 million for 42 coffee shops belonging to the Rhode Island-based Bess Eaton chain of coffee shops. It previously closed about 15 of those shops in 2008.
Tim Hortons is left with 567 locations in the United States, and plans to open 300 more stores by 2013, a company spokesman said. It has 3,100 locations in Canada.
If Timbits fans approve, the newest doughnut shop in town will last longer than the only Krispy Kreme on LI, which closed not long after opening in 2001 down the road in East Meadow.
-With Associated Press
