Tim Hortons — Restaurant in Norton Shores

Tim Horton’s can be a nice breakfast experience…if you’re lucky enough to receive your food as ordered, in one piece, at the proper temperature. I’ve eaten breakfast from this location 3 times—twice by DoorDash, once via the drive thru—and none of those meals would receive a passing grade. However, I kept returning anyway to spend accumulated gift cards.

Both times I ordered for delivery I received the correct croissant sandwich, which had almost completely fallen apart by the time it reached me. By “fallen apart”, I mean sausage patties and half the melted cheese lying completely outside the croissant, stuck to the packaging. The first sandwich was lukewarm to cold, and the second had a tiny piece of egg (approximately half the usual radius) in the center of the croissant. I wasn’t happy about mediocrity of the main course, but I also got TimBits with both delivery orders, which cheered me up enough to let it slide. TimBits are amazingly delicious in my experience; they’re always fresh, soft, and flavorful.

What prompted me to write this review was my drive thru experience today, where I spent the remainder of our gift cards. I ordered a croissant sandwich with only egg and cheese (my partner doesn’t like most meats), and also a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant for myself. When my order was repeated back to me by the girl at the window, she said “I have (1) croissant with egg and cheese, and (1) croissant with only sausage…” I replied “No, that croissant should have egg AND cheese AND sausage”. The girl said “Oh, OK! That’s why I was checking, because I thought you might be very disappointed to receive a croissant with ONLY sausage, but no egg! [laughing]” I said “Oh definitely! [laughing] Who would want that?”

I pulled up to the window, paid, then was handed a bag and told that the croissant with sausage, egg, and cheese was on top. Perfect! I had my dogs in the car causing a ruckus, and since we’d specifically discussed the details of my order, and the girl at the window’s comment was consistent with that order, I didn’t bother opening the bag to check for accuracy. I pushed my dogs away from the bag and drove ~10 minutes home.

Being very hungry, when I arrived home I immediately opened the bag, grabbed the top sandwich, and started eating. It was all in one piece, warm, and exactly what I ordered. When my partner asked for her croissant, she opened the wrapper to find a croissant with ONLY SAUSAGE, letting out a sad whimper. By then I’d already eaten half of mine, so there was only half of an egg patty left; I removed the sausage, gave her the remaining half, then ate a sausage-only croissant with 2 stacked patties, which was…not good.

My partner couldn’t understand why I hadn’t checked the accuracy of the order, whereas I couldn’t understand how I could possibly be given the exact item that the cashier clarified that I DID NOT want, and that we joked about no one ever wanting. It just blows my mind; who could be responsible for such an egregious error? Is there any quality control? Did they do it purposefully? Is the cook having a stroke?…I would’ve gone back to get what I ordered if it wasn’t a 20-minute round trip by car.

Obviously fast food restaurants have been rocked by the late-stage capitalism we’re living through, and Tim Hortons seems to be no different. I’m sure understaffing has been a huge problem since COVID-19, when the working class finally realized how much we’re being screwed; when employers insist on arbitrary/capricious rules for control/uniformity, not paying a living wage, not offering real benefits, upward mobility, or a sense of belonging, etc., then job stability suffers and turnover rates explode, which causes chaos. Order falls apart, procedures get ignored, mistakes compound, food and service suffer, and customers get angry. Sometimes enough employees quit to shutter the business.

TL;DR—Delicious donuts, especially the TimBits, but mediocre croissants. Friendly employees, but no discernible quality control, sloppy/inconsistent food prep, poor communication...

I unfortunately have to give this place 1 star instead of zero. Keep in mind every other Tim Hortons I've been to has been excelent. However, this is not the case with this location. I yet to have my order be correct. Seriously, my order has never been correct. I've tried going back to give them a 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th try but to no avail, my orders are incorrect.

The worse experience was back in December of 2013 when I ordered a sandwich. Come to find out, they had none of the ingredients to make it. They asked if I could wait an hour for more chicken to be made and unfortunately I was on my way to work so naturally I could not. To top it off I couldn't even get a refund because the girl at the counter couldn't do refunds and she needed a manager. I understand that part, it's not her fault she can't give refunds. I get it. What I don't get was why there wasn't a manager there that could.

What the cashier DID do was apologize and write her managers name and number on my receipt to come back in later to get my refund. Okay, that's reasonable. She did the best she could under those circumstances.

Well I tried going back at LEAST 4 times and there was never a manager there. Different times of the day and still no manager to give me my refund. I contacted corporate and they gave me the run around of "Oh, we'll look into this matter and we'll get back to you."

July. Still no answer from corporate, still no refund for the sandwich I paid for and never got to eat. Ridiculous. Tim Hortons really needs to get their act together at this location as far as training people to make orders correctly and have managers available.

I understand human error and making a mistake happens, I've worked in the food industry. What I do NOT understand is how I have to lower my expectations when going into a place knowing that my order will be wrong. Every. Time.

It's sad that I have to drive right past this location and go ALL the way out to the Grand Haven location just to get...

I went thru the drive thru for ice cream. Usually this isn't an issue as I go at off times and I only ever order the signature creations. I've never been told I couldn't go thru the drive thru. However this time the service was incredibly slow. I ordered two ice creams. There was no one behind me for quite a while, then there was someone. And it was taking forever. I never saw anyone come to the window. They never ask you to pull over or park you.

In fact, I've tried to use the Cold stones app to pre-order my ice cream so all I have to do is drive thru and pick it up, but this store won't use the Cold stones app, only the tim Hortons app. That's crazy to me.

So anyway, to continue, it's taking forever to get the ice cream I ordered. I can't see inside so I don't know what's going on, but the car behind me is losing his mind. He's waving his arms and honking his horn and just getting ready to have an aneurysm or something.

I've already paid. I've been sitting there a bit too, it's gotta be almost done and I'm not leaving. So Mr Drama Queen behind me backs himself out of the drive thru, which he's able to do because it's an off time and there isn't another soul there.

Right afterwards, I get my ice cream delivered to the window and I go on my merry way.

I'm not feeling too bad about the guy behind me. He lacks patience obviously, but I do think the drive thru needs to implement some rules. And I already know it's going to end up being no ice cream in the drive thru which isn't that fair but that's how it was before COVID so it's gonna go back that way I'm sure. It just seems like they could get the preorder thing going on the app. That would be great for...