Feb. 12, 2026 "Tim Hortons tweaking English muffins, espresso and beverage machinery: president": Today I found this article on BNN Bloomberg:
TORONTO — Perceptive Tim Hortons guests might soon notice a few changes at the café chain.
The company is rolling out
an improved English muffin,
adding fountain drink machines to some restaurants
and debuting new espresso equipment,
president Axel Schwan said Thursday.
While he thought Tims already had a “great” English muffin, he told The Canadian Press his company wanted to tweak the vessel for many of its breakfast sandwiches
“to make it even fluffier
and even more enjoyable to eat.”
By the end of this week, the new muffin will have launched in western Canada and by the end of the quarter, it will be in all restaurants across the country.
“It shows you that we are really fully, fully focused ... on guest feedback and then,
we keep improving the core
in addition to innovating,”
he said.
The changes to the English muffin come on the heels of improvements to several other Tims staples.
Last year, its chocolate chunk cookies were made bigger
and pumped with more chocolate
to boost its ooey gooey factor.
The company has also
added more fruit to its apple fritters
and more filling to its Boston Cream doughnut.
These kinds of tweaks don’t just hearken to the “back to basics” strategy Schwan launched after becoming Tims Canada and U.S.’s president in 2019,
but also show how the company is trying to
push itself forward in an ultracompetitive market where customers are feeling squeezed.
In recent years, Tims started taking on most big fast-food players by launching
wraps,
rice-based bowls
and flatbread pizzas
to grow sales in the afternoon and evening.
It also edged into Starbucks’ territory with more inventive and trendy beverages.
It now sells
energy drinks
and beverages boosted with protein
or made with carbonated bases
or cold foam.
In its latest quarter,
cold beverages made up 27 per cent of the company’s total drink sales.
They grew 8.6 per cent despite colder than usual temperatures in December.
New espresso and fountain drink machines stand to fuel even more growth.
The espresso machine took years to develop
but is much faster than Tims’ previous equipment,
Schwan said.
“Think of it like this:
better quality product,
better tasting product
that we can deliver faster,”
he said.
So far, it’s in about 10 per cent of the company’s restaurants but as locations get remodelled and the older machines age, it will become a standard across the brand.
The fountain machines are an even newer development Tims has been working on with Coca-Cola.
They haven’t hit every store yet, but the machines are a way to drive more combo sales and they “play a key role” with many of the other cold beverages the brand has been exploring, he said.
Schwan’s remarks came after RBI, the company that owns
Tims,
Burger King,
Popeyes
and Firehouse Subs,
revealed its fourth-quarter profit fell compared with a year ago
but its revenue rose.
RBI, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, said its profit attributable to common shareholders amounted to US$113 million or 34 cents US per diluted share for the quarter ended Dec. 31.
The result compared with a profit of US$259 million or 79 cents US per diluted share in the last three months of 2024.
On an adjusted basis, RBI says it earned 96 cents US per diluted share, up from an adjusted profit of 81 cents US per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue for the quarter totalled US$2.47 billion, up from US$2.30 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, while system-wide sales amounted to US$12.13 billion, up from US$11.28 billion.
Some segments of the company, especially Burger King,
were hampered by higher beef prices that have come from depleted U.S. cattle herds.
Others grappled with higher coffee costs
— the result of extreme weather events in coffee-growing countries
and tariff uncertainty.
Tims doesn’t have many beef products, so the rising meat costs “are not playing a big role” at the chain,
but it raised coffee prices an average of three cents per cup last year,
marking the first time in about three years that it adjusted the price of coffee.
On Thursday, Schwan said the company was starting to see relief.
Coffee costs have “come down significantly” in recent months, he said.
Patrick Doyle, RBI’s executive chairman, said on a Thursday earnings call that the company has handled the headwinds well.
Its comparable sales in Canada grew 2.8 per cent in the last quarter, outperforming the broader Canadian quick-serve restaurant industry by nearly two points.
Overall, he said last year was “demanding” for restaurant operators,
when you consider the rising costs
and how the geopolitical uncertainty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war weighed on the business and consumers alike.
“Taken together,
it was the kind of environment that serves as a pretty good test of the
fundamentals of a restaurant business,”
Doyle said.
“And in that context,
our performance demonstrated that the underlying fundamentals of our portfolio are not only resilient but improving.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026.
Feb. 27, 2026 "Burger King is updating its Whopper, so that's one less thing that's falling apart": Today I found this article by Natalie Stechyson on CBC:
Do you ever feel like everything is falling apart?
Like nothing is stable?
Like it's all just slipping through your fingers?
Specifically, we're talking about some people's experience of eating a Whopper,
but you'd be forgiven for thinking we're speaking in metaphors.
Fast food chain Burger King announced Thursday that it's updating its signature Whopper burger for the first time in a decade,
adding a sturdier bun
and serving it in a cardboard box
after years of customer complaints about smashed burgers that fell apart.
"Are you one of the people that's been asking me about why your burger is smushed?
I think we have a solution for you,"
Tom Curtis, president of Burger King U.S. and Canada, says in an Instagram video.
The company's news release explains that the "higher-quality" Whopper includes
a premium bun,
a better tasting mayo
and a box "to ensure it makes it to guests exactly the way it left the kitchen."
CBC News has reached out to Burger King about whether the updated Whopper is coming to Canada. The U.S. news release only notes the new Whopper is rolling out "nationwide."
In an email response, a spokesperson for Burger King Canada said it "has been working on some exciting menu changes, including the Whopper," that will be announced next month.
When we asked at a downtown Toronto Burger King food court location Friday, it appeared that the new Whopper isn't available yet.
While some people online rejoiced that "the buns finally won’t be a flattened paste," not everyone is pleased with the changes.
On the Burger King subreddit, some users complained that
buns taste worse now,
they miss the wrappers
and that they preferred their burgers flattened.
"The volume of the new bun offsets the bread: meat ratio, which used to be perfect in my opinion," one person wrote.
"I like the burger diapers," wrote another person, a reference to the burger wrapper that we now can't unsee.
A focus on value
The fast-food industry has struggled in recent years
as operating costs increase
but consumers spend less.
Rival chain Wendy's, for instance, announced earlier in February
that it's closing several hundred U.S. restaurants
and increasing its focus on value
after a weaker-than-expected fourth quarter.
And restaurants overall are struggling to turn a profit,
according to a new report from Restaurants Canada,
which found that 26 per cent of restaurants surveyed were operating at a loss as of November 2025,
while another 18 per cent were just breaking even.
They also face competition from other companies trying to move into that market.
7-Eleven Canada, for instance, is revamping its business model to offer
more diverse
and quality food,
along with in-store dining options.
As Reuters notes, some fast-food chains are offering certain items at lower prices to attract consumers who were turning away from dining out due to high menu prices over the last two years.
McDonald's cut prices on some U.S. combo meals in September.
And in January,
McDonald's Canada announced it's freezing the price of a small cup of coffee at $1 for at least a year
and dropping the price of its McValue meals to $5 for the same duration.
Same-store sales at Burger King U.S. rose 2.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025, but missed estimates of a 3.5 per cent rise, according to Reuters.
Criticized for AI in headsets
Burger King, for its part, has focused on guest feedback with a recent initiative encouraging customers to call or text its president Tom Curtis directly.
And that, according to the company, is why they decided to upgrade its Whopper.
But a glance at Burger King's most recent Instagram post announcing the upgrade suggests the chain might have bigger problems than smushed buns.
Many of the comments left on the post don't mention the Whopper at all,
and instead are critical of Burger King's new initiative testing AI in employee headsets in 500 of its U.S. restaurants.
The system, called "Patty,"
can track when employees say key words like "welcome," "please" and "thank you"
and share that with managers.
"Boycotting until you remove AI," one person commented.
"AI monitoring your underpaid staff? Naaah time to go elsewhere," wrote another person.
Burger King told The Associated Press the intent is to use
Patty as a coaching tool,
not a tracker of individual employees.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/burger-king-whopper-9.7108107
My opinion: I haven't been to Burger King in years because there aren't any close by where I live and I hardly ever eat out.
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