Take a look inside the North East’s first Tim Hortons restaurant in Washington as it prepares to open

The North East’s first Tim Hortons restaurant is due to open on Monday, August 9 at the former Frankie & Benny’s site at The Galleries in Washington.

The Canadian coffee chain plans to open a second site in Boldon later this year – with the current nearest being in Sheffield.

As part of the grand opening, the first person in the drive thru and also at the front door will be given free coffee for an entire year.

Kevin Hydes, the Chief Commercial Officer for Tim Hortons, has told the Echo what customers can expect from the restaurant once it opens on Monday.

He said: “We’re all about fresh food and fresh coffee so we bring all the fantastic products and ingredients together with the product being made to order.

"We are very well known for our doughnuts, our Timbits which are our little balls of doughnuts which are absolutely delicious and then we make some fantastic sandwiches.

"We also have an amazing breakfast menu, with a great breakfast promotion so we can invite customers in for a £1.99 breakfast which is any main course, with a hash brown and your choice of coffee so we think that’s fantastic value and are sure that a lot of people will come in and give us a try.”

Plans to open the Washington site were submitted to Sunderland City Council last year and construction work at the site finally begun in May.

Kevin added: "We’ve got published ambitions to be in every major town and city in the UK by the end of 2022 and we’re well on track to achieve that.

"I think it is critical that we have representation in the North East, this is the first one but we’ve got many more in our pipe line and we hope to bring a number of restaurants to the region over the course of the next 18 months.

"Whenever we decide to come to a new town or city, it is typically a relatively long process just to make sure that we’ve got the right location so what we’ve been pleased with is that whenever we make announcements about Washington, the consumer response has been phenomenal.”

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