Tim Hortons Says Now Is the Time to Shower London in Iced Capps and Doughnuts

London will finally be bestowed with what it lacks: perfectly average coffee and doughnuts ... from Canada. Tim Hortons, the chain famed for those things, is opening at Park Royal’s Leisure Park, in what marks both its first London drive-thru and a continued growth in the number of transatlantic behemoths looking across the ocean and saying “yes, this will make money.”

Park Royal is already home to numerous superb book cafes and patisseries serving pastries from the Levant, Anatolia, and Palestine, but now it has “celebrity and influencer favourite” Tim Hortons, iced cappuccinos, and Timbits, which are shrunken doughnuts.

The brand has 4700 restaurants worldwide and already has 50 in the U.K., but has taken a curiously long time to get to London. Recent evidence, however, suggests that once-reticent brands are more amenable to making the move, particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19 hollowing out the casual dining economy in the U.K. Hortons is following Wendy’s (still here), Popeyes (still here) and Chick-fil-A (forced out via detour to the Highlands) in opening in London and its immediate surrounds in recent times.