Long line-ups at the St. Thomas University Tim Horton’s are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
While some students complain about not being able to fit the long wait for a coffee or a snack between classes, Wyn Gruffydd, district manager for food services provider and Tim Horton’s franchisee Aramark, said little can be done.
“Everyone here was demanding that we get credit and debit (systems), so we brought them in,” he said.
Gruffydd said paying with debit or credit adds about 30 seconds to a transaction, roughly doubling the time it would take to place an order. A recent review found that almost half of purchases at the Tim Horton’s were paid with debit or credit.
Liam Keith-Jacques, a fourth year interdisciplinary major at STU who drinks coffee daily, said he felt the lines were longer this year, especially for card users who are stuck waiting for the one pay-point out of two that accepts debit and credit.
“I only have 10 minute breaks between classes,” he said. “I rarely manage to get my coffee from Tim’s. I always have to get it before or after my stack of classes. Sometimes I find I should have came earlier.”
Kieth-Jacques said he drinks one or two cups of coffee a day, and if he doesn’t have time to purchase one before his first class, he’ll go to the cafeteria to get one between classes.
Gruffydd said aside from the wait associated with debit and credit, the ever-expanding menu options have slowed all Tim Horton’s service down.
He said sometimes customers are stuck waiting behind a complicated meal order, or an indecisive customer.
“A customer might come up, and our person will say, ‘What can we get for you?’ The customer says, ‘Well, I’d like a bagel.’ ‘What kind would you like?’, and the customer asks ‘What do you have?’”
And on the example went, the hypothetical server in the one-man conversation listing several types of bagel and spreads, offering to toast it, and then finally relaying the message to another employee.
“Again, we’re not talking minutes,” he said. “Seconds add up.”
