Tim Hortons bets on branding in China despite political tension

Tim Hortons opened its first Chinese store on Tuesday, and the iconic Canadian coffee and doughnut chain is making no secret of its ancestry despite simmering political tensions between the two countries.

The store in Shanghai — the first of a planned 1,500 — has hockey sticks for door handles and abundant maple leaves, on cups and dusted on the tops of lattes.

“I’m not the political expert,” Tim Hortons president Alex Macedo said Tuesday. “We can’t judge when or how or where this is going to end. ... If we can provide good service and a good restaurant environment, then that’s the best we can do.”

When Macedo talks about the China expansion, he’s fond of repeating some version of this phrase: “We try to focus on what we can control.”

And he cannot control what happens with Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive who was arrested in Vancouver late last year at the behest of U.S. authorities, an act that infuriated Beijing and set off a diplomatic spat between Canada and China.

What Macedo can control, though, is how much Tim Hortons reveals about its Canadian roots to Chinese consumers. He wasn’t willing to tamper with the brand’s two main pillars: Canada and hockey.

“Our brand has an essence and a spirit,” he said.

“When we tested the brand and our products, people were fine. I don’t know. We didn’t test anything political, I don’t think. We had, you know, two-hour wait lines today in the restaurant. So I think it was a good day.”

The China expansion is out of the Restaurant Brands International Inc. playbook. RBI, which owns Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, expanded Burger King in China by signing a master franchise deal with the private equity firm Cartesian Capital Group — essentially designating a single franchisee to build out the market.