Supersizing Timmy

Did you hear the latest? Starting tomorrow at select Tim Hortons locations in Kingston and Sudbury, the small coffee size will no longer be available, the medium and large will become the small (10 oz) and medium (14 oz) respectively, and the new extra large will be a whopping 24 oz — that outsizes Starbucks’ Venti by four ounces.

That’s more than 2/3 of a litre of coffee, folks, and the entirety of the daily recommended caffeine intake.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve always found the small size a bit of an anachronism, and Beloved and I refer to it as the “kiddie size”. On the other hand, I’ve got a 2XL a day habit, and I do love my coffee. There is no doubt in my mind that I have a bona fide addiction to coffee. In fact, it will be a conscious decision on my part to not supersize my XL with three milks, and to resist the the temptation to wring a few more milligrams of caffeine into my system.

63:365 Please play again

Apparently this brings the Canadian Tim Horton’s coffee sizes into alignment with the larger sizes south of the border in the United States. Nothing against my American cousins, but in the age of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and all the general movement toward more reasonable portion sizes and an appreciation of restraint over gluttony, is this a smart move on the part of Tim Horton’s?

Do we really need to supersize our coffees? And more importantly, will I be able to resist the siren song of four more ounces?

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

14 thoughts on “Supersizing Timmy”

  1. I think even mine would be cold at that size before I finished. I drink mine black and hot.

  2. I was in the States in July and ordered a large iced coffee. I almost died when I saw a cup the size of a big gulp get passed to me.

    Crazy!

    However, I can see them phasing out the small size. I laugh whenever I see it. I will probably stick with the old extra large size when the new sizing come our way.

  3. It doesn’t surprise me that the old small woudl be on the way out. Apart from children, it’s probably rarely ordered … and even among children I’d think the medium would be mroe popular. I’d like to stick to my same size (Medium), but a “small double-double” somehow just sounds wrong.

  4. This is just sad and gross. Nobody needs THREE CUPS of coffee at a time. And it won’t even be warm by the time you get to the bottom!

  5. I don’t even drink coffee and yet this still makes me angry. If we want a small coffee we should be able to buy one. And we certainly don’t need any more supersize menu items.

  6. My FB feed has a young man who has spent several days at the hospital recently due to heart palpitations after too much caffeine. Gotta make you wonder! I used to love the smell of coffee (never liked the taste), but having a coffee machine going for 10 hours a day and wet grounds moulding under the sink for a couple months cured that! (My Dad’s IT company moved to our house in between offices for a summer)

    I don’t think kids should be drinking coffee anyway. But hopefully the adults realize what they are doing when they order the large size.

  7. So I think two things about this.

    1) Thank goodness they are getting rid of that small because it’s kind of silly 😉 Tim Horton’s coffee sizes have bugged me forever and it’s very confusing to order a large at McDonalds and get something possibly slightly bigger than an extra large at Tim Horton’s.

    2) Do I think they need a new BIGGER XL. No. They could happily just rename the sizes and leave it at that. I think even *I* who drink WAY too much coffee wouldn’t get to the bottom of a bigger XL without it getting cold.

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