Regional product blogs.

Tomorrow is ritual clean-up day around here, part of the disposal of the Old Year, so I may well knock off the blogging till the early days of ought-five. Happy New Year to all.

An article of mine about Tim Hortons ran today at GlobeSt.com/Retail. That piece was on the back burner so long it fell off the stove, but this week I finally got around to finishing it. The gist of the article is that Tim Hortons, a Canadian purveyor of coffee and doughnuts, wants to expand further in the United States, and is executing plans to do so. Maybe they should. Their doughnuts are good, I ate several in Montreal, and coffee drinkers say the same thing about the coffee.

But then I think that some regional products ought to stay regional: it makes them better, gives them a certain cache. Krispy Kreme should have stayed in the South, Coors should never have ventured east of the Mississippi, and you shouldn’t be able to wander into any supermarket here in the Midwest and buy Ghirardelli.

But no. Business doesn’t work that way, usually. And besides, for all its appeal as a Canadian brand, the truth of the matter is that Tim Hortons has been owned by a certain Ohio-based hamburger chain, Wendy’s, for nearly a decade now.