Tim Hortons launches pizza nationally to ‘stretch the brand’ to afternoon, night

Tim Hortons executives and chefs have collectively eaten thousands of flatbread pizzas over the last several years.

There were versions that were spicy, others that begged for flavoured oil to be added to the base and a slew designed to figure out which combination of cheeses would nail the “ooey gooey factor.”

The fast-food chain’s aim was to craft a slate of flatbread pizzas hitting restaurants this week that would satisfy their youngest and oldest customers alike, but there was also a deeper mission: get diners in the door beyond breakfast.

“We are really strong in the morning ... but we saw that opportunity existed in the afternoon,” said Tims’ chief marketing officer Hope Bagozzi, sitting in the chain’s Toronto test kitchen on a recent evening.

“With single-digit market share for a player of our size, that’s really not tapping into the potential in the afternoon.”

Tim Hortons is hoping to turn that around when it follows up a two-year flatbread pizza pilot with the national launch of cheese, pepperoni, “bacon everything” and chicken Parmesan varieties Wednesday, a month before its sixtieth anniversary.

The release marks Tims’ entry into a crowded but quintessential corner of the fast-food market. Restaurants Canada named pizza, along with panzerottis and calzones, as the country’s sixth-most ordered items last year, figuring into 4.5 per cent of restaurant receipts.

Much of it is sold in the afternoon or evening, a period when research firm Circana estimates one quarter of all quick-serve restaurant visits are made.

“There’s only so many people they can serve in the morning, but there is operational capacity and some efficiency to be had by getting people in at the other times of day,” Circana food industry analyst Vince Sgabellone, said ahead of Tims’ announcement.

“Every operator, regardless of whether it’s Tims or something else, has their peaks and they’re trying to fill other times of day.”