The Lesson of Coffee Time

Some brands thrive, others falter. What truly sets a successful brand apart from its competitors is an ability to not only convey what it offers to its customers but to connect with an audience on an emotional level. 

Coffee Time’s ongoing difficulties in maintaining its brand underscores the imperative for every business of articulating a coherent set of values and qualties with which an audience can identify. Its failure to deliver on the promise of a quality consumer experience and to successfully navigate recent trends in the business environment (notably, the public’s growing health consciousness) has resulted in a loss of trust.

A CBC investigation probing food safety at Canada’s coffee chains in early 2007 revealed that the store had more than double the number of health and safety violations as compared to its main competitors. For every 100 health inspections, Coffee Time had 78 infractions. Reports surfaced of insufficient handwashing among staff, unprepared meat and dead flies on doughnuts.

Yummy.

Exacerbating the company’s misfortune, it was announced in January 2008 that the owner of a Coffee Time franchise at Queen and Sherbourne was arrested for allegedly selling marijuana, crack and illegal cigarettes out of the store.

Tim Hortons, on the other hand, is a study in contrasts. It has assumed the status of what Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide, calls a “lovemark,” a company that generates “loyalty beyond reason.” Just as “FedEx” has become synonymous with overnight delivery, so has a trip to “Tim’s” with coffee and a light snack. No greater example of the company’s grip on the public’s imagination can be found than the decision to open a store for the Canadian Forces in desolate Kandahar. As reported by Bloomberg News, Tim Hortons commands 76 per cent of the Canadian market for baked goods and 62 per cent for coffee.

Buttressing its reputation is a sophisticated and extensive communications effort. A defining characteristic of the Tim Hortons brand is transparency. In contrast with Coffee Time, its website is frequently updated and news releases are posted frequently with information on new products or involvement in local communities. Visitors can readily access Tim Hortons’ mission statement, organization charts and company structure, financial reports and extensive information on its coffee beans.

One searches in vain for these items on Coffee Time’s website.

A recovery is not out of the question for Coffee Time. Key to this would be a disciplined, open and consistent message that caters to its audience’s needs, values and interests. It needs to stop trying to replicate Tim Hortons and streamline its operations by de-emphasizing those goods in disrepute (like the tasty meat) and focusing its efforts instead on making coffee.

A consistent visual and verbal message would need to push this new focus on coffee and, above all else, address the outstanding concerns about its food safety by satisfying the public’s need for information and detailing the actions it’s taking to rectify the situation. Like Tim Hortons, Coffee Time needs to gain the public’s trust by being transparent and more forthcoming than it has hitherto.