Tim Horton's Highway 97 and 39th Avenue (Vernon Matters photo)

By Kevin Rothwell

Closed three years ago

Deal on Highway 97 Tim Horton’s property close

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The signage promising a new Tim Horton’s drive thru at the corner of Highway 97 and 39th Avenue in Vernon has been up for several months, and there may finally be some movement on a new restaurant on the site.

Local Tim Horton’s franchisee Dan Currie is in negotiations with Tim Horton’s corporate over the future of the property. Currie purchased the adjacent property after a derelict house burned in October 2021.

“I own the property on the corner and they own the property on the inside with the old building, so we need to come to an agreement between the two of us to develop the property combined,” Currie told Vernon Matters.

Together the properties would be nearly a half acre, with road access to accommodate a modern Tim Horton’s. The plans for the site have already been approved by the City of Vernon.

“In 2020 it closed with COVID because with no drive-thru, the business didn’t make sense, so it is very important to get a drive-thru,” Currie added.

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The labour shortage further exacerbated efforts to move forward with a new restaurant.

“That was part of the problem. We have had a lot of foreign workers come to work for us in the last three or four years. We were struggling to find people to work at the time, then COVID enhanced a lot of those issues,” Currie stated.

The labour crunch continues and a hike in the minimum wage on June 1 to $16.75 an hour could put a further squeeze on the labour-intensive business.

“We are pretty much paying more than that right now, just to retain staff. What it does is that it puts pressure on the staff that is already making say 17 dollars an hour, so now you are paying someone that has never worked before $16.75. It’s pretty big because you have to bump up all those other employees,” Currie explained. “It impacts all the small businesses because we are paying more than $16.75 now.”

Like many food service businesses, the triple whammy of COVID-19, labour shortages, and inflation have impacted the business.

“Everything is going up, inflation, labour. We have probably had the worst year we have had in 25 years, just from all the pressures,” Currie concluded. “We are still busy, but the bottom line has shrunk.”