AKA: Tim Horton's Coffee and Donuts. A chain of coffee and donut shops, especially prominent throughout Canada but also found in the United States and possibly other countries.

A veritable institution, Tim Hortons'¹ establishments play a number of valuable roles in Canadian culture. Unfortunately, these coffee shops haven't made quite as large an impact (if they've made any impact at all) in other countries.

Tim Horton's provide everyone with an expected level of quality. Unlike McDonalds², where you can expect a consistent level of mediocrity (and thus avoid any chance of poor quality food at the expense of the chance of good quality food) at Tim Horton's you can get excellent tasting coffee, and very good donuts (at more than reasonable prices). This partially explains the chains proliferation.

TH franchises exist at a ratio to Canadian citizens of approximately 1:5000. Thus a town of population 20,000 typically has 4 Tim Horton's, and any town larger than 5000 will likely have at least one. The exception to this rule seems to be Moncton Ont. which has a ratio closer to 1:50. It can be happily noted that the number of Tim Horton's in Canada far exceeds the number of Starbucks.

In smaller urban centres, Tim Horon's often become the equivalent of underage-bars. Since the Canadian drinking age is 19, most highschool students are unable to enter bars (or "pubs" as some bars like to try to pass themselves off as), so instead of getting drunk, students hang out at Tim Horton's and instead become extremely hyper from caffiene overdoses. Most stores advertise a minimum purchase requirement for anyone to remain in the store, but most students assume that this is a "group" purchase amount, so that if 20 of them share a large coffee, they're okay.

Perhaps one of the greatest features of some of the Tim Horton's built in the early 90's are the glassed-in smoking areas, which allow non-smokers to watch smokers as if they were some sort of rare aquatic life.

Tim Horton's Coffee also has the interesting acronym "THC"