A Month Of Mornings With Bomb Energy Drink Instead of Coffee

Coffee. It is the way the majority of adults I know get their days started and how they can function when they drag themselves out of bed in the early morning. I absolutely love coffee but I also know that, at the end of the day, it is the caffeine my body really craves (and is addicted to!). I generally start my day with a 20 oz cup of coffee (591 ml) and if I don’t have it I can expect a headache by noon.

 

 

When my friends over at Bomb Energy Drink asked me to come up with a fun way to try Bomb out for my blog I knew I had to come up with something special. After thinking about it, I decided that it’d be fun to get my morning caffeine jolt from a can of Bomb Energy Drink instead of a large coffee for a month and see the results – for science! Before I get into the results, I feel I should mention two things:

First of all, this was not the first time I have replaced my coffee with a different caffeine source. Often, when I know I have to wake up super early or will be in a rush to get somewhere I will pick up a bottle of soda or a can of energy drink to get my morning caffeine fix. But a whole month without coffee in the morning? I had never done that before!

Second, the question I got asked most by my friends was if I was still drinking coffee in that month and my answer was an emphatic, yes. My condition for the test was merely to replace my morning coffee with Bomb Energy Drink, it wasn’t a ban on coffee for a month outright! (Did I mention how I love coffee?)

Now, on to what I learned:

Repurposed Art Deco Allenby Theatre On The Danforth: Exploring Toronto Part VIII

A while back I was driving down Danforth Avenue and I passed an Esso & Tim Hortons which was – to say the least – different from most every other I have seen. The address for this building is 1213 Danforth Ave (map).

I grew up in North York and didn’t spend a lot of time in The Danforth area of the city so seeing this structure was completely new to me. What struck me was that it clearly was no longer a movie theater even though the facade appeared to be one. And those movie titles…”Tim Hortons”? “On The Run”? Those weren’t movie titles, they were store names! I looked into it some more once I got home to a computer and found this document from the City of Toronto – 1213 Danforth Avenue (Allenby Theatre) – Alterations to a Designated Heritage Property (PDF Link) – which identifies the theater building as a “Designated Heritage Property” as the title indicates. It also gives some great details into the history of the building which you can find quoted below the next picture:

Looking from the east side of the building.

The Allenby Theatre (more recently known as the Roxy Theatre), was constructed in 1935 by the partnership of Kaplan and Sprachman, the firm responsible for between 70 and 80% of all movie theatres constructed in Canada between 1921 and 1950.

The Allenby Theatre was designated by the City in 2006 as a representative example of the style of theatre constructed between World War I and II with notable Art Deco / Art Moderne detailing…

 

For more on the theater and for more pictures check out this article from Torontoist dated October 19, 2010: “From Double Feature To Double-Double.”

Pretty interesting redevelopment of an old building isn’t it? I love finding these cool little things in a city and if you know of any in Toronto/The Greater Toronto Area you think I should check out let me know!

Also, if you or your family members have any memories of going to the Roxy/Allenby I would really love to read them in the comments below.

 

Tim Hortons Extended Breakfast Hours? Awesome! PLUS: Some Suggestions For Other Changes

I went by a local Tim Hortons for a first time in a while this AM – usually I just make my coffee using the tin and a filter at home or work and saw the sign you see on the door above, much to my delight. This was apparently announced in mid November as per the press release here. According to Donna Finelli, Director, Brand Marketing for food at Tim Hortons in the press release, “We heard from our restaurant owners that many times guests would come in and ask for breakfast beyond 11 am only to find they had missed the window. We felt we needed to respond to our guests’ needs.” This, in my opinion, is the reality in our new world ever changed by technology. So many of us telecommute or work from home that “breakfast time” is no longer a fast and hard specific period in the morning it can happen anytime of the day or night. Also, we are used to having every option in the world available to us so why limit us to getting something during specific hours – it isn’t as if they deliver those biscuits they use for the breakfast sandwich from Tim Hortons head office every morning at 5am.

This is another. in my mind welcome, change since they introduced a larger size cup in test markets in August – although we haven’t seen that spread to a wider area since. I have been saying that they needed to do this for years – pretty much since they introduced their breakfast – although I never said they should be extending their hours across all their stores. My idea was always to extend the hours in locations which were on university or college campuses because, let’s be honest, students in post-secondary institutions decidedly do not obey the rules of normal hours.

Beyond extending the hours for university and college locations – which I still think is a fantastic idea and should still be done even with these new extended hours by maybe making breakfast go until 1 or 2 pm daily – I have a few other suggestions for Tim Hortons:

1. SERVE BREAKFAST ALL DAY EVERY DAY! It’s that simple. People sometimes like to have their breakfast whenever and it shouldn’t really be SUCH a big deal to have it available all the time – in my opinion. Granted I haven’t done any research and don’t know any of the costs associated but this is my blog so I can say whatever I want. Also, the way I figure it, if Dunkin’ Donuts locations do it across the USA then it can’t be such a big deal.
2. COFFEE ONLY LINE. Maybe this could only be during the morning hours/rush hours but I don’t understand why this has never been contemplated before. People who are buying coffee and only coffee specifically in the morning hours should have their own line. If you’re a coffee drinker then this probably resonates with you big time. I can’t begin to count the times I have been to a Tim Hortons in the morning trying to be on my way as soon as possibly only to be held up because 3 people in line are busy deciding what kind of bagel they want when they get to the front and not before. For us coffee drinkers who just want our fix in the morning this kind of line would be a godsend. You know that the only decision anyone in front of you is making is the size of coffee and if they want cream/milk and sugar/sweetener (and most of us regular coffee drinkers already know exactly what we want and how we want it). No big decisions, no trying to get one thing only to find out they’ve run out and then needing to make a new choice just coffee in that lineup, that’s it. No lattes, no cappuccinos, no teas, just coffee (and maybe not even decaf coffee).

Tim Hortons Test Marketing A Bigger Size XL & Elimination Of The Current Small Cup Size, Canadians Think It’s “American Style”

Since August 29th, some Tim Hortons locations in Kingston, Ontario and Sudbury, Ontario have changed up the sizing of their cups eliminating what is currently referred to as “Small” and re-dubbing all cup sizes down a notch. What is still a “Medium” at every other Tim Hortons in Canada is now a “Small” and so on. Because this change would otherwise also eliminate the size of Extra Large (XL), Tim Hortons has also introduced to these test locations a new, bigger extra large cup which comes in at 24 oz (which translates to 710 mL [millilitres] or, to be exact, 709.76471 mL). I was alerted to this change via my friend, Valerie @ValTorontoGal‘s blog post “Some Bits and Bites to Get You Through Hump Day.”

I found this article in the National Post which has this awesome graphic explaining the new sizes:

You may remember when I went to the Tim Hortons in Syracuse, NY in late July and I commented on the differences that were present vs their Canadian counterparts.

Tim Hortons USA Vs Tim Hortons Canada – It’s The Little Differences

This is a post I am writing after my road trip to the Syracuse, NY area – as I mentioned yesterday, I was there for the weekend. While in Syracuse I, being a Tim Hortons coffee drinker in Toronto (although I do frequent many other coffee houses, Tim Hortons is a good, simple go-to) I was delighted to find that there was one relatively close to our hotel in Syracuse, NY. But, as The Simpsons mentioned when they ripped off Pulp Fiction, it’s the little differences when you go to a popular place in a different country (or in The Simpsons’ case, city).

As an example of what I mean by this check out this picture of me below.

If you zoom it in to full size of the picture you will see that: