[SteelTown]

Tim Hortons franchise brewing in Afghanistan

By DANIEL NOLAN
The Hamilton Spectator
(Feb 25, 2006)

Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan may soon be able to get their morning coffee and doughnut at a Tim Hortons coffee shop.

The company, co-founded in Hamilton in 1964 by the famous NHL hockey player and local police officer Roy Joyce, is in talks with the military about setting up a store to serve soldiers on the front line of the war on terror in Kandahar.

General Rick Hillier, head of the Canadian Armed Forces, stepped up the negotiations yesterday by offering to personally take Tim Hortons president and CEO Paul House of Stoney Creek to visit soldiers in Afghanistan to help convince him the idea has merit.

Hillier says soldiers pester him about when they might see one of the coffee shops open at the Kandahar base and he believes it would boost morale to have a Tim Hortons in the Afghan city that gave birth to the radically militant Taliban regime.

American troops serving in Kandahar have their own Subway, Pizza Hut and Burger King outlets.

"I invite the CEO (Paul House) of Tim Hortons to come with me to Afghanistan and see the powerful implications that would come from that," Hillier said.

House was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, but Tim Hortons spokesman Greg Skinner said the company is very honoured by Hillier's invitation.

"If we do end up doing something, people will be heading over there to look at the whole situation on the ground and see how it will work," Skinner said from the company's Oakville headquarters.

"There's a lot of considerations."

Skinner said Tim Hortons and the Canadian military have been in talks for the last few weeks about setting up a Kandahar outlet.

He said the company always gets calls from "our customers in the military" and appreciates that they like Tim Hortons products.

"We're both exploring the possibility and that's really where it is at now," Skinner said. "Both sides are going to do what we can do to make it happen, but right now there's no timing ...

"It's pretty far away to set up a store ... You don't want to build up expectations, but we're looking at it seriously."

Captain Tim Fletcher of the 31 Canadian Brigade Group in Hamilton, which oversees the operation of 14 army units in southwestern Ontario, said a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Kandahar would be well received by the troops. He said Tim Hortons coffee is one of the most requested items soldiers ask for in care packages from home.

"A common phrase I hear from soldiers who just come back is the first thing they do is head to Tims," said Fletcher.

"It's a unanimous opinion that the first thing they hit after family is the local Timmys. You can see what it occupies in their psyches. It's home. There's no doubt about it."