You don't have to do it perfect. Just do it well.

I am here today to sing the praises of McDonald's.

Yes, you read that right.

Before we go any further, I think I should tell you that I'm not a fan of McDonald's food. I liked McDonald's when I was a kid and even when I was in college, I guess, but I don't really like the food there. I think I've eaten there once in the past few years and that was only out of necessity when I couldn't find anything else open while I was out of town.

There are two things I don't like about the Golden Arches. First off, they're a MegaCorp. In general, I'd prefer to eat/shop local. I make exceptions, of course, but to my mind, McDonald's is like Wal-Mart. They don't need my dollars.

That being said, I was in a hurry and heading out of town one morning and swung through a McDonald's drive-thru for coffee. I had heard that their coffee was good, so I grabbed a cup of coffee. In short, it was a good cup of coffee so I made the same stop a couple of weeks later when I was on my way out of town.

Here is what McDonald's does right:
1. When you order your coffee, they ask if you want cream and sugar.
2. They put the cream and sugar in the coffee and stir it.
3. The cup they use has some insulation that allows you to actually hold the cup without burning your hand.
4. They use an easy-open, easy-to-drink-from lid.
5. The taste and smell of the coffee is very good.
6. For less than $1.50, I get a good cup of coffee and friendly service.

Still, though, I felt a little guilty about patronizing McDonald's so the next time I was headed out of town I decided to try something different. I tried Tim Horton's. For anyone not familiar, Tim Horton's is a chain based out of Canada. They are much smaller than McDonald's and specialize in soup and sandwiches, donuts and coffee. The food is pretty good and Tim Horton played in the NHL for 24 years. What's not to like about them, right?

To my surprise, the answer is that there are many things to not like about Tim Horton's.
1. When I pulled up to the window--I'm the only car in the drive-thru--the girl at the window seemed bothered by having to deal with me.
2. The coffee comes in a flimsy-ish cup that gets really, really hot. It actually hurt trying to hold the cup for too long.
3. The lid on the coffee is cheap and not moving-car friendly for drinking.
4. They didn't ask if I needed cream or sugar and when I asked for some, she seemed bothered. Again.
5. A minute later when she came back with the cream and sugar she just handed them to me and couldn't get me out of there fast enough. Luckily the third-degree burns on my hand allowed me to stir the coffee with my finger with only a modest amount of additional pain.
6. The coffee sucked.

Bad service, bad cup, bad lid, bad coffee.

Tim Horton's has all of these ads on TV about their fresh food and no heat lamps and so forth. They throw their coffee away if it gets 15 or 20 minutes old and make a fresh pot. The ads are slick and some are even kind of cute. But what's the point of spending money on an ad campaign when your product can't deliver what you promise?


There's an old Woody Allen quote (it's attributed to him, although I can't say where or when it is from) that says that eighty percent of success is just showing up. It's not that McDonald's blew me away with the best cup of coffee in the world, but they gave me good coffee, great service, a fair price, and had me in and out of there in under two minutes. They just showed up and did what I expected.

Tim Horton's, on the other hand, did everything in their power to turn me away. And you know what? It worked.