Tim Hortons donuts and coffee, from a pre-COVID era when rim-based give-aways could be controlled at the printing plant.
Credit: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Tim Hortons donuts and coffee, from a pre-COVID era when rim-based give-aways could be controlled at the printing plant. Credit: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg/Getty Images
With coffee sales likely down during the early pandemic and with 96 entries racked up, Wallace figured that at 5 am on the last day for prize redemption, nearly two weeks after the in-store promotion ended, he’d have his best shot. He played 96 times and won 67 coffees and 27 doughnuts, losing only twice. As he noted in Maclean’s, the maximum value of his prizes was about $500 (and he hoped to donate them), but turning a game with an 11 percent posted win rate into a 98 percent windfall was also free course content for a statistics professor.
Tim Hortons contacted Wallace to figure out how he won (“They were very kind,” he told Waterloo, “despite the fact that I probably caused some pretty stressful meetings”). His win rate fell off after the coffee chain changed the game mechanics, but he was still able to use timing, and Canada’s multiple time zones, to get his rate up to 40 percent in 2022, he told Waterloo’s The Record.
Then this year, Tim Hortons—seemingly unable to help itself or hold institutional knowledge—added real-time data on its website, showing how many prizes were being won at any given moment. Wallace signed some friends up to help him record the prize data across hours and days; the contest forbid computer scripting.
This is how Wallace determined that 3:16 am ET was the best time to play, yielding him an 80 percent win rate. The worst time was 11:46 am ET, when, as he told Waterloo, customers in Eastern Canada are in early lunch, and Western Canadians are still in their morning commute. If you still have Rolls to redeem, you can do so up until April 9, and that lag period between prize availability and final redemption has typically been slow, Wallace found. Sundays, too, are luckier.
Asked about Wallace’s continued success, Tim Hortons issued a typically Canadian statement of deference to The Record. “We know there are many Roll Up superfans like Professor Wallace who enjoy strategizing on how to best play the game, and we appreciate their passion for playing Canada’s favourite game!”
Wallace may be enthusiastic about the game, but the coffee is just a token. As he told The Record, he was born in England and primarily drinks tea.