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Here\'s the perfect coffee-table book - a book about coffee. As in Tim Hortons\' coffee. As in Canadian icon. Tales from Under the Rim: The Marketing of Tim Hortons comes to us from Ron Buist, the mastermind behind the popular slice-of-life commercials and hugely successful Roll Up the Rim to Win contests.
\"I first thought of calling it Turn Up the Rim to Win but that sounded like a vegetable,\" laughed Buist, contacted by telephone at his Toronto-area home.
\"The problem I was faced with was to try and incorporate in a name what you had to do.You just couldn\'t say buy a coffee and win, or look under a rim. You had to do something that described it,\" explained Buist.
Roll Up the Rim commercials began appearing in 1985 and rolling one\'s Rs when pronouncing the contest quickly became a Canadian catch phrase.
One commercial even focused on a \"true Canadian\" who attempted to prove his citizenship to a border guard by adroitly rolling his Rs.
Pretty soon, folks returning to Canada began mimicking the commercial, much to the chagrin of border guards.
\"You get sick of it after you hear it a half-dozen times,\" one border guard told the Toronto Sun in 1999.
They must have hated you for that commercial, I suggest.
Buist laughed. \"No, I don\'t think so. I think they had some fun with it. When we did that spot, it really brought out a lot of Canadiana. It was not the initial intent; it was a method of promoting the coffee contest but it just took off.
\"It was one of the most popular commercials we did.\"
Buist was Tim Hortons\' advertising and marketing manager from 1977 until he retired from the company in 2001. During his tenure the franchise grew from 79 to 2000 outlets and became a Canadian institution.
But to the legions of fiercely loyal customers, Tim Hortons is not merely Canada\'s most popular coffee and doughnut chain - but a second home of sorts.
And that\'s thanks in no small part to the True Stories commercials. It was Buist who came up with them, portraying how the coffee shop was a part of daily routine.
They used real people like the woman who walked from her home in Lunenburg to her local Tim Hortons to meet with friends each day, and the engineer who parked his train to fetch his coffee.
\"The first spot we ever did in the True Stories campaign was about Miss Lillian who walked the hill in Lunenburg. But that came out of research. We found that the key factor wasn\'t just the coffee per se - it was what was really woven into the person\'s life. That lady really was a customer.\"
The clever marketing of Tim Hortons is a true Canadian success story in itself. The chain now boasts more than 2,200 outlets plus several hundred in the United States.
It all began back in 1964 when National Hockey League legend Tim Horton was searching for something to do with his life after hockey. He made a couple of attempts with burgers and a restaurant before discovering doughnuts made dough.
\"Tim Horton got his love for doughnuts when he was with the Pittsburgh Hornets, which was the farm team for the Toronto Maple Leafs,\" said Buist.
After he made the big team in Toronto, the defenceman got haircuts at Benny\'s barbershop in Scarborough beside a little doughnut shop and got to know the owner, Jim Charade.
A few things came together and the rest is history.
\"It took one hockey player, one favourite barber shop, one former drummer and one police officer plus the luck that hard work brings,\" said Buist.
\"The first Tim Hortons doughnut shop was (and is) in Hamilton. Ron Joyce, who was a police officer with the Hamilton Police Force, got interested and bought out Jim Charade and became Timmy\'s first partner. So in a very tight nutshell, that\'s how it got started,\" said Buist.
\"This wasn\'t a group of people sitting down with market research. These guys were all Depression-era people. They were used to long hours and working hard.\"
Horton would load flour onto the trucks himself while Joyce taught franchisees how to make doughnuts. Unfortunately, the all-star defenceman died in 1974 in a car accident en route to Buffalo, where he was then playing for the Sabres.
Buist believes Horton would be proud of the organization if he were alive today. \"He was a shy man, but I think this is the kind of thing that he\'d like to see.\"
It was Horton who developed the famous brew.
\"I understand from his daughter, they just keep drinking it and trying it and fiddling with it until they got something that they like themselves.
\"Jeri Horton Joyce (Tim\'s daughter who married into the Joyce family) says she and her mother and dad drank the coffee around the kitchen table. It\'s a mix of coffees. It\'s worked really well.\"
Indeed. Customers guzzle more than three million cups of the stuff each day. And munch more than a million doughnuts. Not to mention those bizarre Timbit thingies.
\"Really, Timbits are a separate bake. It\'s not the centre of the doughnuts like everybody seems to think,\" he said.
And the secret recipe behind the fame and fortune of Tim Hortons?
\"The very first thing in my mind is fairness. They were from Day 1,\" said Buist.
Not the coffee?
\"Well, it is. But when the company first started, it wasn\'t coffee, it was tea. When the company first got going, doughnuts were a novelty item. The doughnuts were something people would come and buy. The coffee brings them back.
\"I think one of the store owners put it best: You may not want a hamburger every day but you\'ll want a cup of coffee,\" he said.
Meanwhile, Tales from Under the Rim: The Marketing of Tim Hortons ($35, Goose Lane Editions) is in stores now.
Despite the interest the book is drawing in the business sections of newspapers, Buist hopes customers of Tim Hortons give it a read.
\"The reason that Tim Hortons is a Canadian icon is because of its customers. And I hope they get that when they read the book.\"