Anneleen Naudts, writes at Citynews.ca that Tim Horton’s has arrived in Manhattan. “It’s all the buzz,” says Pat Kiernan, morning anchor of NY1 in New York City.
The ubiquitous Canadian coffee chain recently moved into some of the Big Apple’s most famous locations, including Times Square, Madison Square Garden and Penn Station.
And the takeover happened virtually overnight. The Dunkin Donuts coffee shops occupying the sites on Friday were transformed into Tim Hortons over the weekend, ready to open in time for the Monday morning commute.
“It’s a glorious day for Canadians in the city,” Kiernan told the New York Daily News. As a Canadian, he’s been the go-to guy to weigh in on the subject of double-doubles and Timbits making their debut on Broadway.
The busy TV host, stuck in Manhattan’s congested traffic when CityNews.ca spoke to him, admits he hasn’t had time to actually visit one of the new outlets.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an affinity for Tim’s. Each time he flies to the States from Canada, he stocks up on donuts.
“The last thing I do is buy Tim Hortons apple fritters to eat on the plane,” says the Calgary-born Kiernan.
The new stores have been causing a stir, with the coffee giant’s arrival in The City That Never Sleeps seen as a new competitor to reckon with. Its chief rival, Dunkin Donuts, still outnumbers Hortons by a wide margin, with more than 400 locations in New York City.
“Tim Hortons is a Canadian-based chain looking to caffeinate the world and wage a little war on the U.S. coffee front,” mused MSNBC’s Today Show Jenna Wolfe when reporting from outside of one of the new locations.
“A steady U.S. invasion is now underway,” Wolfe added.
The word ‘invasion’ is used in several newspaper headlines throughout New York.
But this is by no means the first Tim’s in the U.S. – in fact there are more than 500 stores across 11 states. North America has close to 3,500 locations, accounting for a total of 2 billion cups of coffee sold each year.
