Global operators of the Tim Hortons and Popeyes brands have picked up the development pace lately.
At Tim Hortons, global franchisees have built another 300 locations over the past 12 months, a growth rate of nearly 26% and giving the coffee-and-doughnut chain more than 1,500 restaurants outside of its home market of Canada.
At Popeyes, they developed another 156 restaurants outside the U.S., or 17% growth, giving that brand more than 1,000 international locations.
“Our mix of growth is shifting,” said Jose Cil, CEO of parent company Restaurant Brands International, which also operates the Burger King and Firehouse Subs brands. “From 2017 to 2021, Burger King drove just over 70% of our net restaurant growth. Currently, in the last 12 months, it’s approximately 45%. So Popeyes and Tims have doubled their contribution.”
International growth is a key tenet of Restaurant Brands International. It all makes sense. The U.S. market is mature and mostly saturated. Global growth is vital for large-scale brands and, increasingly, mid-sized concepts. Any company looking for long-term growth has to focus on the global markets.
The company’s genesis was in 3G Capital’s 2010 acquisition of Burger King, which triggered a remarkable run of development outside the U.S. The number of international Burger King units has well over doubled in the years since then.
Burger King merged with Tim Hortons in 2014, creating Restaurant Brands International, and the company acquired Popeyes three years later and then Firehouse Subs in 2021. In both cases, RBI saw strong potential for the brands internationally.
Tim Hortons was a particularly interesting case. The company is a powerhouse inside Canada, where it is the dominant fast-food chain. But it has struggled to get any sort of footing in the U.S. or anywhere else. Canadian regulators all but insisted that RBI work to expand that brand elsewhere.
That international growth has been relatively slow in part because of weakness in the U.S., where unit count is down by 19%. Tims is now shifting its focus. It recently opened its first location in Houston with a smaller footprint and menu.
But the company has taken off in China. Tims opened its first location in the country in 2019. It now has 500 locations there.
But Cil in an interview noted there are other markets where Tim Hortons is doing well. He specifically mentioned Mexico. “It isn’t the most intuitive place to develop Tim Hortons,” he said. But it’s working. “They’re mostly drive-thrus, container locations principally. And they’re doing really well.”
The brand also operates 60 stores in the United Kingdom now and just opened another market for which it has high hopes: India.
Popeyes, meanwhile, had more of an established international presence than its new sister chain before the 2017 acquisition.
But the brand’s development has accelerated under RBI, with locations opening in places like Spain, the Philippines, the U.K., Mexico, South Korea, France and Indonesia. Popeyes’ unit count grew by 8.9% over the past year, adding well over 300 locations to the brand and giving it more than 3,900 units.
And Popeyes gave RBI something it hadn’t had before: U.S. growth. The brand has added 165 U.S. locations over the past 12 months, or 6.1% growth, more than any of the company’s other brands combined.
RBI now has hopes to have some similar success with Firehouse, which operates more than 1,200 locations, only 54 of which are outside the U.S. But sandwiches work well internationally.
Overall, Cil said, the company has a lot more growth coming. “We’re excited about the pipeline,” he said. “We’re excited about the long-term. We think we can ramp up unit growth internationally.”