I'd challenge that by saying that most Tim's franchise owners are not my peer group or neighbours. Take a good look at who's working the counter for minimum wage next time you're there, not the owner that's for sure. Tims takes a cheap to produce commodity, adds in low cost labour and then has a huge markup. The return on investment is pretty high, and therefore there's a reason the buy-in to the franchise is HUGE. Lots of owners have more than 1 location. Let's be clear - Me boycotting Tims isn't putting a dent in anyone's pocket. Its about principle on my level, on many levels that have already been pointed out, at what point will we stop being so nice stand up for ourselves as a country. I'm not expecting this to go national, and I'm sure it will be over once the next Ebola or NPD budget or whatever makes the news next week. There's like a dozen coffee shops on the way to my office, just as easy to hit another brand though.
As mentioned, most of the sigs on the petition were from people who don't live in AB. How do you know that most of the sigs on the petition didn't come from out of work oilfield labour in the US, where they don't really have Tim Hortons anyway? Probably not, but its silly to allow people who don't use/support your business to impact your business decisions with simply an uninformed OPINION. If someone in Louisiana signed a petition to ban sled sales in Canada, or to close a certain riding area (maybe like...oh....Jumbo?) wouldn't you like to know that folks here wouldn't allow uninformed foreign OPINION to dictate our domestic policy? Its easy to say that it won't happen, and then all of a sudden it just did.
I won’t argue the signatures, I think it is all a load of BS and the Tim’s should not have pulled the ad. Majority of the people who have signed the petition were not likely Tim’s customers anyways, they are probably the Starbucks or the independent coffee shop crowd.
Having met you in the past at suds nights and when you helped with my sled once, I would say we probably run in the peer group, and personally knowing 3 owners (all brothers, but close friends with one of them) I would argue that ‘some’ Tim’s owners are in ‘our’ peer group. My close friend has rented a sled before and spent days in Golden, and who knows, maybe somebody reading this may have even helped dig him out of a snowdrift! They have all had to enter partnerships to get into ownership as the investment to get into a Tims is, as you say, HUGE, but that wasn’t cash money they put down. I don’t know of anybody who starts a business with cash, it is all loans, and they work to live just like the rest of us.
Personally, I don’t drink coffee anyway, I just have a vested interest where it effects my friends.