I have read your treatise on the varying degrees of terrible idea it is to purchase tea from Tim Hortons and first of all I was riveted. Secondly, why don't they want you to put your own milk and stuff in? Did something bad happen? Also I am curious to know what proportion of customers chose bag in vs bag out.
Well! Ok. I have to say -- I am old enough to have worked at what is now really the EXTINCT Tim Hortons. I worked at one in a small town and we had a bar with stools, a baker who worked overnight to make the donuts on site and we even sold cakes.
Tims got rid of the bars where the old guys would sit all day, and the cakes, and expanded into soups and sandwiches and now it's basically just a coffee-forward fast food place. But the one thing it hasn't changed is that there is no area of the restaurant where you can fix your coffee how you like. You have to give the instructions when you order.
My big theory as to why? The coffee at Tim Hortons isn't great but it's still a THING here. Specifically the "double double" -- which is just coffee with two cream, two sugar. But Tims doesn't use regular half-and-half, the cream you find in most coffee places. They use 18% cream. And that is basically their entire appeal. So at this point, I think it's a) to maintain control of the 18% cream and b) regulate the flavour of the double-double. I cannot understate the national profile of a Tims double-double coffee. It has probably been on a stamp at some point.
You CAN order things on the side but that means you get tiny cream containers and packets of sugar. The packets are fine but you are downgrading your cream/milk situation dramatically.
The Bag Out People: I'd say about 1/4? Like not the majority but a significant enough portion that I had to ask EVERY TIME. But now the plot thickens because I was with my BFF yesterday afternoon and I told her about this ask and she told ME that she was once in a coffee shop with a friend who ordered her tea bag-out and was FURIOUS when they gave her a cup of boiling water with a tea bag on the top. "That's not bag out! Bag out means you PUT the bag in and then take it out before you give it to me."
So congratulations to that girl, because that's even WORSE tea management than ordering it bag out in the first place. If I were to do that, your tea wouldn't steep 30 seconds! Why are you even ordering tea in the first place? Why not just DRINK the boiling water?
Tim Hortons DID start selling steeped tea several years ago Though I don't know the current status on that product, but you could still order non-steeped tea, bag out, if that was your jam.