Tim Hortons musical The Last Timbit coming to Toronto
In the last year, Tim Hortons has treated cottaging Canadians to a boat drive-thru, revived its beloved Dutchie doughnut and launched flatbread pizzas.
But perhaps its biggest surprise will come this summer, on the heels of its 60th anniversary on May 17, when it enters a realm so unexpected for a fast-food giant that even its executives expect some people's first reactions to be, “What?!”
The head-scratcher will come in the form of The Last Timbit, a musical for which Tim Hortons has assembled a who's who of Canadian artists to stage at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto this June.
The production is loosely based on a 2010 snowstorm that was so bad, drivers on a highway east of Sarnia, Ont., were forced to hunker down in cars and others had to wait out the inclement weather at a local Tim Hortons.
Turning the story into a theatrical production was the brainchild of marketing firm Gut.
Tims was determined to give Gut as much room to be creative as possible, so it didn't even specify the firm had to come up with an event. All the chain said was to find “something with heart” and that would reflect the relationship the fast-food eatery has with its customers, recalled the chain's chief marketing officer Hope Bagozzi.
When she was pitched on a play, even she was surprised.
“What on Earth would we know about pulling something like this together ... in a really highly professional way,” she said was her reaction.
“Our agency, that's not their specialty.
It's certainly not ours.”
Despite it being new territory and Tims having to wrangle talent well outside its comfort zone, she felt “cautiously optimistic” about the idea.
So Bagozzi and her staff set about making it happen.
Among their first calls was Michael Rubinoff, a Toronto lawyer and theatre producer who turned the story of passengers on planes diverted to Gander, Nfld., after the 9/11 attacks in New York into hit musical Come From Away.
“We didn't imagine that he would actually come on board. We just thought we would try to pick his brain on, `Are we crazy? Should we do this? How would we go about it?' ” Bagozzi recalled.
Rubinoff wasn't fazed by the unlikely caller. Though many would assume he was shocked to hear a fast-food brand wanted to jump into theatre, he didn't find it unusual because “Tims has been part of Broadway for many years.”
“The Tims logo is on one of the backdrops in The Book of Mormon that people don't realize and of course, in the musical I'm involved in, Come From Away, Tims plays a really important part,” Rubinoff said.
Alongside Rubinoff, other talent started flowing in. Nick Green, the playwright behind Casey and Diana, wrote the script and Anika and Britta Johnson of Life After created the music and lyrics.