Tim Hortons — Restaurant in Scotland

Right, this is one that falls under fail to prepare and you prepare to fail.

TH isn't a widely available chain in Scotland yet. I've been to the one in Glasgow some years ago, and this one in Stirling just opened recently.

The building itself is very nice. Plenty of comfortable seating, power outlets everywhere, in case you bring your laptop for work, bright and airy. At the time we visited, occupation was at ca 40% and the AC did not reflect that. It was chilly, but we had hot drinks, so we managed. Ordering is via consoles, which was well organised into categories and made it easy to filter for keywords (vegans, you'll cry a little). There wasn't much space to wait for orders and the entrance felt cluttered, especially with people leaving and arriving having to cut through the crowd. Access to the drive through could have been handled better, as cars queuing block in patrons in the disabled spaces (our octogenarian got a bit ruffled about that - manager, you may thank me for keeping her from finding you and complaining about it).

The food: this is where research would have saved me the trip. 2022 and TH is not vegan friendly. Roughly 20 kinds of donuts and Tim Balls™️ and not one - not ONE - that's suitable for vegans. Did a quick Google search to see whether it's because of the sugar, as that wouldn't deter me, but apparently all of them have dairy in them. Massive letdown, even the Costa next door offers vegan cakes with their coffees.

My partner had the vegan Chickn wrap, which I tried, and which was nice, but I came here for the donuts and I was disappointed.

Nice touch, on the ordering console you can filter for vegetarian and vegan items. If you pick vegan, your choices will drop to two items. Two doors down the road is a Burger King which will serve vegans better.

Coffee sizes are misleading on the order screens. Honestly, unless you're planning an overnight road trip, the small one will probably do you. The medium was huge (which is great, and justifies the price, but a small one would have been sufficient).

There are plenty of individual gender neutral toilets. When I visited, my toilet was clean and well stocked.

Plenty of parking, but be mindful of the flow of drive through traffic.

Overall, it's probably a nice place with nice food, but it...

To be fair to the staff it hasn't been open very long and I think we just arrived at a particularly busy spell but that being said...

We were crammed into the lobby area like sardines because there was such a queue for the self serve order machine and it didn't seem like there was any option to order in person at the desk.

We waited quite a while, but eventually did get our order put through - no complaints about that. It's quite simple to use (same as the ones at McDonald's). 1 adult and 2 kids, a main, a drink and a donut came to just under £30.

We then tried to find a table. There were plenty - however they were pretty much all dirty. With people's leftovers, sticky spills etc, and there were no staff members front of house cleaning at all. The bins were overflowing too.

We waited about 15mins on our food to be called. There isn't a sign, it's just a staff member shouting your number so it's easy to miss it. There were a lot of people waiting and you could see some getting quite impatient but 15mins is a long time to wait really.

The food was okay. I don't think I'd rush back for food. The donuts and shakes were delicious though.

To give the staff their due, as we were getting sorted to leave the rush seemed to have died down, there certainly weren't as many people waiting about for food, a girl came out and started clearing up and a boy came out and emptied the bins.

They also have a drive through which seemed to be running smoothly throughout - I can only assume they are prioritising the service for the drive through at the expense of the dine...

Ate inside this location instead of using the drive thru today. It's clear that drive thru receives the main priority, as I've received great service there regularly. Walked in to a 6 person line that was waiting on service from one individual however. They were great at moving the line through quickly, but walked away from multiple unmade drink orders. 4 other individuals and myself were left standing there for a few minutes waiting for a staff member to approach the front counter to even ask what we're waiting for. The staff member that approached and made the drinks was incredibly quick at least. I then waited for another 5+ minutes for my flatbread to be made. However, it appears to be a constant situation where guests are left waiting at the front counter with little to no attention for quite some time. Not including the wait time for their actual purchases. As of writing this review, a gentleman was left waiting 4-5 minutes at the till to purchase a gift card with only one other guest in the dining room...