We welcome guest blogger Janan Chan 陳臻 back this week; see his first BILD post here. Janan is a graduate of Concordia University in Montreal and Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec. He lives and works in Shanghai.

This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

For many Canadians, Tim Hortons represents not only comfort food but a symbol of Canadiana. Tim’s became meaningful to me after the many cross-provincial road trips our family took during holidays. Driving along Highway 401, we’d stop at On-Route service stations to refuel or use the washroom, and often ordered Tim’s, as they were always there. Even during the 2020 lockdown in Montréal at the height of the pandemic, I visited Tim’s when I could to remind myself of those better times. My personal nostalgia with Tim’s was hard to escape.

In August 2021, I accepted a job offer as an English teacher in Shanghai. Arriving in the city, I was placed into my two-week hotel quarantine, and upon release, Tim’s was the first restaurant I went to.

I was unprepared for the visual experience of Chinese Tim Hortons. Decaled on the glass front doors were the English words “All Welcome” and “Home of the – Fresh Coffee – Freshly Made Sandwiches – Nice People” (Figure 2). The door handles were rounded and sanded-down hockey sticks (Figure 2). Staff members wore red-and-black flannel shirts as a part of their uniform (Figure 4). And although it was not in this particular Tim’s, some in Shanghai feature a quilt-like wall decoration composed of various red and red-and-black flannel fabrics forming a Canadian flag (Figure 3). Other texts on the walls also detail the beloved nature of Tim’s in Canada, often suggesting it was “Canada’s Favourite Coffee”. All these signs drew attention to and exaggerated Tim Hortons’ Canadianness. Its packaging and higher quality of food than in Canada signaled that this was to be taken as a luxury. A colleague later pointed out that Tim Hortons in China was nearly on par with Starbucks as a foreign luxury commodity.

In 2014, Burger King purchased Tim Hortons and the two were merged into Restaurant Brands International, a company mostly owned by 3G Capital, a Brazilian investment firm (Kirby, 2020). With this merger, Tim’s began to focus on international expansion. Its first China location opened in Shanghai on February 26, 2019 with an initial plan for 2750 Chinese locations in the next five years (The Canadian Press, 2021). According to the CBC in 2021: “Tim Hortons currently has 199 locations in China with plans to nearly double the chain’s footprint by the end of the year” (ibid). Its expansion is aggressive and Tim’s in China is estimated to be worth nearly $2 billion USD (ibid). Although coffee culture in China has risen, what makes Tim Hortons in China successful, and what sets it apart from its competition, is its promise of providing consumers with a hyper-Canadian experience.

Sociolinguist Jan Blommaert (2010) once passed a high-end chocolate shop in Tokyo which had a French name, “Nina’s Derrière” (meaning “Nina’s Bottom”) written in a “stylized lettering” (p. 29). Blommaert argues that the linguistic meaning of the words is irrelevant in this Japanese context where the majority do not speak French; rather, it is its implied “Frenchness” combined with its aesthetic display that signals “French chic” (ibid). He writes, “Its Frenchness was semiotic rather than linguistic: important was not its linguistic function as a denotational sign, but the emblematic function it had in signalling a complex of associative meanings, the things I captured under the term French chic” (ibid).

In a similar vein, the hockey-stick door handles, the red, black and white wall quilts, the maple leaves, wood décor, red-and-black flannel staff uniforms, the English slogans found in Tim’s in China promote Canadian “politeness”, “warmth”, “welcome”, and “inclusiveness”, all indexing associative “ideals” of how Canada is perceived in the global discourse. To build a market in China, Tim’s plays up Canadian stereotypes to allow customers to consume what they believe to be “Canadian” cosmopolitanism.

In some Chinese Tim’s, it is hard to miss an ad above the counter which furthers this idea. In it, we see two smiling attractive young people: an Asian woman and a white man. The white man stares intently into the audience, smiling gently with a light beard, and a bit reminiscent of a dreamy Justin Trudeau. His demand gaze invites us to join him on an adventure, and now he awaits our response. The Asian woman, smiling brightly, tilts her head, suggesting flirtatious undertones, and it’s easy to imagine that these two people are on a coffee date. There’s flirtation, chemistry and the promise of adventure and new experiences, none of which would have been possible without “Canada’s favourite coffee”: Tim Hortons.

Over her forehead reads the copy: “Becoming a Timmy”, and between the two images is a Canadian maple leaf reminiscent of a red heart. The leaf itself is neither opaque nor one solid colour but translucent and composed of various pieces tinted slightly different, like a mosaic or puzzle. The letter i in the word “Becoming” has two dots: one red, one green; and their edges overlap, like two heads close together or two entities becoming one. The slogan “Becoming a Timmy” brings everything together, enticing customers to not only purchase Tim’s but to also become the type of person who embodies and identifies with the Canadianness as represented. By “Becoming a Timmy”, one can become potentially attractive to Canadians who here refers to white-Canadians, a reductive and Eurocentric perception of who Canadians are.

This same advert would not have worked if both people were Asian or other visible minorities. Here, the quickest way to signal Canadianness is to use a white man. Likewise, if this ad featured two women or two men, it would not have worked either as it would no longer conform with the heteronormativity of broader Chinese society. In a restaurant which clearly plays up and into its hyper-Canadianness, it becomes clear that Eurocentric, heteronormative relationships are regarded as what represents Canada and are deemed worthy of public display and representation.

References

Ann [@annnie711]. (2019, April 26). Home of the fresh coffee freshly made sandwiches and NICE PEOPLE #socanadian #timhortons #timhortonsshanghai #shanghai [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/BwtjIGFBVoC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge University Press.

Kirby, J. (2020, February 10). Tim Hortons, the Brazilian coffee chain that wants to be Canadian again. Maclean’s. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/tim-hortons-the-brazilian-coffee-chain-that-wants-to-be-canadian-again/

The Canadian Press. (2021, August 16). Tim Hortons plans to have 2,750 locations in China within 5 years. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-china-1.6142586

농호! [@nongho_shanghai]. (2019, March 10). 상하이의 첫번째 팀홀튼 황피베이루의 빌딩의 1 [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu0UX-Unp46/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y