Tim Hortons guts its Roll Up the Rim contest

Roll Up the Rim to win, an iconic Canadian tradition and the promotion that set Tim Hortons apart from other fast-food chains is about to change, for the worse.

Tim Hortons profits dropped in the last quarter and their response is to make up for the loss through recalibrating the Roll Up the Rim contest.

The company recently announced a new set of rules for its annual Roll Up the Rim contest and it doesn’t look good. Remember the good old days when you’d look under the cap of a coke bottle to see if you’d won a free coke or not? Wasn’t that a sweet and simple time?

Now, of course, you have to punch in some code on a website and enter a draw or redeem your points online or some hassle like that. Tim Hortons would never do that to us though right? All you have to do is rip off the winning rim and bring it up to the counter. Not anymore, now Canadians will be expected to collect “rolls” through their Tims Rewards account, then you have to download the Tim Hortons app and redeem said “rolls” online.

Remember when you were a kid and you’d ask your parents if you could roll up their rim? Gone are the days.

Hope Bagozzi, the company’s chief marketing officer said the digital app will allow Tim Hortons to learn more about its customers’ habits. So you know, at the end of the day, they’re really just doing it for us.

Roll Up the Rim will run only for weeks this year, from March 11 until April 7 according to their recently published rules. Traditionally the promotion had a 10 week run so it’s a significant cut in time compared to last year’s Feb. 6 – April 17.

Last year’s budget for Roll Up the Rim prizes was set at $71.3 million which must have been a little too generous for Brazillian owned corporation as this year the budget has been more than slashed in half, set at $29.9 million.

Maybe that just means more small scale prizes like more free coffees and donuts, I could get down with that. Unfortunately, however, the odds of winning have gone down as well. Last year’s odds were one in six, this year’s odds are now one in nine according to Global News.

All this comes amid a growing sense of alienation from Canadians towards the foreign-owned company that is desperately trying to cling to its former reputation as our nation’s personal coffee brewer.

“We intend to start swinging back very hard everywhere that someone says that we’re not Canadian,” said chief corporate officer Duncan Fulton.

Mr. Fulton is going to have some tired arms.