A $2-billion lawsuit against Tim Hortons dies, allowing parbaked doughnuts to live on

On Tuesday, Tim Hortons franchisees lost their $2-billion class action suit against the parent company—which means we’re in for parbaked doughnuts for the foreseeable future. See, several years ago, Timmies switched to a deeply paradoxical “always fresh” frozen doughnut system, whereby franchisees buy flash-frozen partially baked items from a centralized plant and finish baking them in store. The new parbaked goodies kind of suck (even Tim Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce thought so), and they cost franchisees double what it cost to bake them from scratch. Their attempts to sue have now been stymied by a judge, who argued that they make a mint off the company’s trademarked coffee and should accept lower margins on food. The media, meanwhile, trotted out some puntastic headlines to mark the occasion. Read the entire story [National Post] »