Coffee! It’s Canada’s most consumed beverage and to grow, companies must innovate. Innovation has been driven by specialty coffees, increasing from 13% in 2013 to 19% in 2016.
When Tim Hortons (Tims) first introduced specialty drinks (espresso, latte and cappuccino) in 2012, they achieved a 33% market share. This has since declined by 3.6%, while the competition (Starbucks) has increased by 5.2%.

Through research, Tims found that a new blend of espresso beans, combined with an innovative machine, resulted in 61% preferring Tims’ latte to competitors’ in a blind taste-test. However, only 37% of them claimed to prefer Tims’ lattes before the taste-test. Canadians didn’t believe that Tims could make a “real” latte and defaulted to competitors.

Tims wanted to prove that it could make great, simple, authentic lattes, but in an environment where Canadians feel at home. To do this, it had to reinvent Tim Horton's lattes. In April 2017, it opened an unbranded café in the Queen West neighborhood of Toronto, called “Perfectly Uncomplicated Lattes.” It served only one item, a latte.

The café operated with the attention to craft and detail you would expect from an independent shop, from the furnishings to the cups to the staff uniforms and with only one product on the menu.

Two weeks after the grand opening, through PR, social media and a live Breakfast Television broadcast at the café, it was revealed that the perfectly uncomplicated latte everyone was enjoying was indeed Tim Hortons. Canadians were stunned.

Reactions were captured on hidden cameras strategically placed around the shop, enabling Tims to tell the story from the “making of” to the public reveal. The “perfectly uncomplicated lattes” concept was brought to life through a fully integrated campaign, which included Restaurant POP, a multi-media campaign, and sampling activations across the country.

Tim Hortons has experienced a 290% increase in units & 307% increase in latte sales compared to pre-campaign numbers. Further, the campaign and approach taken got noticed, achieving 188 media stories with an estimated total reach of 48.3 million impressions overall.

What’s more, the campaign reinforced Tim Hortons’ coffee credentials by showing that Tims can deliver a real latte experience. It also established credibility with authentic positive reactions to the latte (flavour, simplicity, and value). The campaign drove trial of non-believers by shifting brand and product perceptions and it created a story and intrigue for the national launch.

And the icing on the cake? All the sales proceeds from the Perfectly Uncomplicated Lattes shop was donated to the Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation.