Tim Hortons tried the US for 40 years — brand awareness was 25 out of 100

Tim Hortons is Canada's dominant coffee chain, with brand awareness scoring 100 out of 100 at home. Its first US stores opened in Florida in 1981 and closed quickly. A 1984 return to Tonawanda, New York, stuck to border markets. In 2004, Tim Hortons bought 42 Bess Eaton donut shops in New England, hoping to convert them. The venture lasted six years and cost over $20 million to unwind.

In November 2010, Tim Hortons closed 36 northeastern US stores, acknowledging that sales were less than half the company average and that competition from Dunkin' Donuts, Au Bon Pain and Honey Dew Donuts was too entrenched. In May 2015, it shut its US headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, eliminating 127 jobs. US store counts drifted: 817 in late 2013, down to 683 by end of 2016.

The company admitted it had relied too much on Canadian thinking and Canadian products for US consumers. The name itself was a handicap: Americans did not know who Tim Horton was, and the brand's Canadian identity — its main asset at home — registered as foreign and undifferentiated south of the border. The 2014 merger with Burger King into Restaurant Brands International was partly a bet that Burger King franchisees could crack the US market. They have not.