The GCBI Coffee & QSR Industry Report covers 14 brands across two subcategories: five coffee chains (Tim Hortons, Second Cup, Coffee Time, Country Style, Timothy's World Coffee) and nine quick-service restaurant and snack brands (Harvey's, Mary Brown's, New York Fries, Osmow's, Pizza Nova, Pizza Pizza, Yogen Früz, BeaverTails, Booster Juice). Data reflects national consumer perception surveys conducted in both 2025 and 2026.

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This report is based on proprietary data from the Great Canadian Brand Index (GCBI).

The 2026 GCBI is based on a national survey of 3,441 Canadian adults (18+) across Canada's ten provinces (territories excluded). The sample was designed to be nationally representative of the adult population, using 2021 Census benchmarks with quotas and weighting applied across age, gender, race, and political affiliation. Respondents rated Canadian brands they were familiar with across seven core value dimensions—Friendliness, Niceness, Respectfulness, Honesty, Tolerance, Adventurousness, and Sustainability—using standardized measures transformed to a common 0–100 scale.

Brand-level estimates were generated using Bayesian shrinkage estimation to improve stability, particularly for brands with smaller respondent samples, and each brand's overall GCBI score is a composite index averaging performance across the seven dimensions. The result is an independent, nationally benchmarked measure of how Canadians perceive leading Canadian brands on the values that shape trust, reputation, and institutional standing.

Data access is available on a subscription basis. If you are interested in custom brand-level reports, please contact us for all enterprise queries.

• Booster Juice rose to #1 in the combined category, scoring 67.49—the highest score of any coffee or QSR brand.

• The coffee subcategory fell sharply (−0.76 points), dropping from well above the national average to parity with it in a single year.

• Three coffee brands declined by more than one full point—Coffee Time (−1.69), Timothy's World Coffee (−1.51), and Country Style (−1.28).

• QSR brands improved with Gen Z (+0.22 points) while coffee brands lost ground with every generational cohort.

• Tim Hortons has the largest Conservative–NDP political gap of any brand in the category (6.45 points) — a striking finding for a brand that has long positioned itself as Canada's universal institution.

The coffee & QSR category tells a story of two subcategories moving in opposite directions. QSR brands held nearly flat (−0.12 points), while the coffee subcategory fell significantly (−0.76 points)—losing its above-average perception position in a single year. Three of the five coffee brands now score at or below the national average. The coffee segment is in structural trouble; the QSR segment is not.

BeaverTails and Booster Juice occupy a tier of their own—both scoring above 67.40, more than 0.70 points ahead of every other brand in the combined category. Their shared characteristic is unusual: both generate stronger perception among low-income Canadians than high-income ones, despite their premium-adjacent positioning. This aspirational accessibility is rare in the GCBI and suggests brands with cross-demographic resonance that most QSR competitors have not achieved.

Pizza Pizza's rise of 25 national positions—on a score change of just +0.05 points—is the clearest illustration of what happened across the coffee and QSR category in 2026: brands that simply held steady rose dramatically in relative standing, because so many others fell around them.

• Complete brand rankings table—all 14 brands, 2025 vs. 2026, with subcategory labels.

• Side-by-side dimension profiles: coffee subcategory vs. QSR subcategory vs. national average.

• Regional breakdown: Ontario's divergence from Alberta and Atlantic Canada, and the Québec pattern.

• Demographic breakdown: the Gen Z coffee crisis, the Boomer decline, income patterns, and the Tim Hortons political polarization story.

• Competitive landscape: the two-speed coffee market and which brands are most at risk.

• Five strategic implications including the Gen Z habit-formation problem for coffee brands.