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American Block Redevelopment | 3 fl | U/C
As a tea drinker I actually seek out Tim's, they're one of the few places that have pre-steeped tea and don't stick you with the bag (or worse, add the milk before the tea can properly brew). Not big on their food offerings, but I'll grab something convenient from time to time.
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Only place I know I can take the whole fam out for breakfast with $20 in my pocket!

Me at Tim's:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes
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(01-07-2020, 07:38 AM)jamincan Wrote:
(01-06-2020, 06:00 PM)clasher Wrote: I'm surprised to see a timmies open up in KW without a drive-thru.

My local Tim Horton's (Ottawa and River) doesn't have a drive thru.

It's honestly my go-to coffee place. More upscale coffee places nearby aren't open when I'm typically grabbing coffee to go, and I stopped going to McDonalds because the person at the till had a rather unsunny disposition (although not unkind). The staff at my local Timmie's are really friendly, know me, and it keeps me coming back.

The one at Weber and Northfield also lacks a drive-thru though it seems like the kind of spot one would expect a drive-thru. I don't like the coffee so much but the espresso goes down fast and is cheap. Their vegan junk food offerings have made me a customer again, gotta admit.
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I'm surprised that there's any Tim's not inside a mall that doesn't have a drive through. We need more fast food places to not have drive throughs.
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(01-07-2020, 08:06 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: I think a lot of people associate Tim's as a blue collar coffee place and as such, they want to pride themselves on the fact they dont patronage it.  I prefer smaller non franchise coffee shops when I have the time however, going to work Tims is convenient, provides a quality product and dependable service.  I would like to add that it is a Canadian company as well.  I am thankful for places like Tims and MacDonalds because I work horrible hours and I know I can depend on them to be open.

Ultimately it's majority-owned by 3G Capital, which is a Brazilian company.
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yeah yeah... you get what I mean though...(At least I hope you do)
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I do, yes. Smile
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Sad 
The Tim's at Weber and Bridgeport does not have a drive through either.
In my opinion, drive throughs embody much of that which is wrong with certain aspects of North American society.
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(01-08-2020, 10:12 AM)Elmira Guy Wrote: The Tim's at Weber and Bridgeport does not have a drive through either.
In my opinion, drive throughs embody much of that which is wrong with certain aspects of North American society.
Completely Agree with this statement. If I were in charge in the region I would implement a regional tax on all drive-thru purchases. Not only are drive-thrus bad for the environment. They provide an unhealthy and car centric built environment. They Also give an unfair advantage to Multi-national food corporations. I think by adding a 5-10% tax on them would be a great alternative to banning them all together. This would dissuade them from new ones being built. It punishes people that Idle for 5 mins for a coffee. It would also raise some important money that could be used towards housing, and transit.
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While I understand the thought process behind this, change need to happen at the corporate level as well.

I'll pull into a Tims, see 10 cars in the drive thru, and an empty parking lot.  I go in, and wait forever while 5 or the 6 staff are servicing the drive thru customers, and the one person working store front takes forever to deal with one customer.  These places have taught me that if I want faster service, don't get out of my car [which is the wrong message to send].  While I wait for my coffee to be poured, I watch that 10th car drive away already....

Coke
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That's a good point. But I do think those operational priorities are managed at the store level -- which might be either a franchise or a corporate-owned store, depending on the company.
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(01-08-2020, 10:38 AM)westwardloo Wrote:
(01-08-2020, 10:12 AM)Elmira Guy Wrote: The Tim's at Weber and Bridgeport does not have a drive through either.
In my opinion, drive throughs embody much of that which is wrong with certain aspects of North American society.
Completely Agree with this statement. If I were in charge in the region I would implement a regional tax on all drive-thru purchases. Not only are drive-thrus bad for the environment. They provide an unhealthy and car centric built environment. They Also give an unfair advantage to Multi-national food corporations. I think by adding a 5-10% tax on them would be a great alternative to banning them all together. This would dissuade them from new ones being built. It punishes people that Idle for 5 mins for a coffee. It would also raise some important money that could be used towards housing, and transit.

A better idea would be a carbon tax (to capture the externalities associated with burning fossil fuels), a congestion charge (to capture the externalities associated with driving on the roads at busy times), a mileage fee (to capture the costs associated with actually using the roads in wear and tear), and possibly other similar fees that don’t get into the details of what the person is doing with the car or how the property owner is using their property within their boundary.

Just banning drive-thrus would just inconvenience car drivers without actually making much difference to how much driving happens. The above measures by contrast would actually cause the costs associated with driving to be paid by drivers rather than by the population (of the world, in the case of the carbon tax) at large. This in turn would reduce the use of and therefore economic viability of drive-thrus.

I might be able to be convinced that in dense urban areas drive-thrus should be banned as a zoning matter, but even there I doubt that a drive-thru would be viable anywhere that it would be banned under zoning. For the same reason, there is no need for a rule banning single-story buildings at Yonge and King in Toronto.

This is a similar consideration to campaigns against idling. I totally ignore those campaigns. If it is convenient to me to idle for a few minutes (usually due to heating or air conditioning), I do so. Since I usually walk or bike to work and even on those occasions when I drive (usually due to an errand immediately before or after work) the distance is 2.2km, almost anybody who regularly drives to work but never idles is still causing way more emissions than I do. It makes no difference whether the carbon is emitted while idling or while driving; I choose to spend my emissions budget partly on idling when it is convenient. If somebody else spends it in a drive-thru line I don’t really think that’s my concern.
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(01-08-2020, 10:38 AM)westwardloo Wrote:
(01-08-2020, 10:12 AM)Elmira Guy Wrote: The Tim's at Weber and Bridgeport does not have a drive through either.
In my opinion, drive throughs embody much of that which is wrong with certain aspects of North American society.
Completely Agree with this statement. If I were in charge in the region I would implement a regional tax on all drive-thru purchases. Not only are drive-thrus bad for the environment. They provide an unhealthy and car centric built environment. They Also give an unfair advantage to Multi-national food corporations. I think by adding a 5-10% tax on them would be a great alternative to banning them all together. This would dissuade them from new ones being built. It punishes people that Idle for 5 mins for a coffee. It would also raise some important money that could be used towards housing, and transit.

I have no issue with having some sort of tax for the customer of drive-thru's, like 5 or 10%, but I don't see it as 'punishment'. Drive thru's exist, and have for a long time, to some extent for a large group of people that simply can't get out to their car for whatever reason. You have a mom or dad with two toddlers, dragging them out of your car to wait for 10 minutes for your coffee is hardly a solution, nor is it a solution if you have someone with limited mobility, in particular to our winters with the risk of slip and falls. In both cases, speaking from experience when my children were young, and now that my mother is 80, we occasionally go through the drive-thru, and quite often the walk into the store is more a risk (she already had a slip and fall and broke her wrist). Just not worth it, plus the OHIP costs in here case were in the $10's of thousands.

I would point out that drive-thru's aren't the problem with our environment; people taking vacation flights, cruises, speeding, unmaintained cars, etc. These are what hurts our environment more at a people level (as in, what can you do to make it better).
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(01-08-2020, 12:37 PM)Coke6pk Wrote: While I understand the thought process behind this, change need to happen at the corporate level as well.

I'll pull into a Tims, see 10 cars in the drive thru, and an empty parking lot.  I go in, and wait forever while 5 or the 6 staff are servicing the drive thru customers, and the one person working store front takes forever to deal with one customer.  These places have taught me that if I want faster service, don't get out of my car [which is the wrong message to send].  While I wait for my coffee to be poured, I watch that 10th car drive away already....

Coke

That's so (unfortunately) true
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(01-08-2020, 02:42 PM)jeffster Wrote:
(01-08-2020, 10:38 AM)westwardloo Wrote: Completely Agree with this statement. If I were in charge in the region I would implement a regional tax on all drive-thru purchases. Not only are drive-thrus bad for the environment. They provide an unhealthy and car centric built environment. They Also give an unfair advantage to Multi-national food corporations. I think by adding a 5-10% tax on them would be a great alternative to banning them all together. This would dissuade them from new ones being built. It punishes people that Idle for 5 mins for a coffee. It would also raise some important money that could be used towards housing, and transit.

I have no issue with having some sort of tax for the customer of drive-thru's, like 5 or 10%, but I don't see it as 'punishment'. Drive thru's exist, and have for a long time, to some extent for a large group of people that simply can't get out to their car for whatever reason. You have a mom or dad with two toddlers, dragging them out of your car to wait for 10 minutes for your coffee is hardly a solution, nor is it a solution if you have someone with limited mobility, in particular to our winters with the risk of slip and falls.  In both cases, speaking from experience when my children were young, and now that my mother is 80, we occasionally go through the drive-thru, and quite often the walk into the store is more a risk (she already had a slip and fall and broke her wrist). Just not worth it, plus the OHIP costs in here case were in the $10's of thousands.

I would point out that drive-thru's aren't the problem with our environment; people taking vacation flights, cruises, speeding, unmaintained cars, etc. These are what hurts our environment more at a people level (as in, what can you do to make it better).
We are getting a bit off topic, but I have to respond to this. Ok I understand that for some people it is more convenient for them to go through a drive thru. That is kind of the point. This doesn't make them complete necessity for people with children or the elderly. Drive-thru's tend to be unhealthy fast food chains. By eliminating them, maybe the people that feel like they have to stay in their cars for safety reason will just make food/ coffee at home or they will chose to walk into a restaurant with healthier food options.

Haha that argument is like people that thinks we shouldn't do anything about the environment because china is the real polluter. There are always little steps that can be taken to do our part towards the environment. I personally want to see the Region become a leader in this front. It is an issue that will become more and more important as demographics change from the baby boomer/ gen x generation to the millennial/ gen z generation.  

My biggest issue with drive thru's is actually not environmental, but with the built environment. They create a completely inhospitably pedestrian environment. Drive thru's require a larger site footprint and pretty much guarantees that all four sides of the building are dedicated to cars. They are also are almost always fast food chain restaurants that don't add anything to the urban environment. Look at roads like Victoria, Fairview or hespeler. Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto have all banned new drive thru construction. I think it is time for the cities in this region to start acting like urban cities and follow suit.  But I am an urbanest with very ideological views on how a city should be built. Obviously people that love the suburbs with strip malls and fast food drive-thru's will complete disagree with me and say that I am creating a war on their precious cars.
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