Cold Stone Creamery is a chain of ice cream stores with more than 1,000 locations across the United States and in Canada. The company is owned by Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain.
The two chains have separate management, with Cold Stone Creamery reporting to its parent company’s global coffee division and Tim Hortons reporting to its parent company’s doughnut division. .
The two chains have operated separately for most of their histories, but the relationship began to change in the early 2010s. As Cold Stone Creamery began to grow more rapidly than Tim Hortons, the parent companies began to see the potential for combining the two chains. In November of that year, Tim Hortons announced that it was purchasing Cold Stone Creamery for $2.
4 billion. The deal was completed in January of 2011.
The purchase raised some eyebrows, as Cold Stone Creamery was seen as a smaller chain that did not fit well within the larger Tim Hortons empire. However, many analysts believe that the purchase will help to bolster Tim Hortons’ presence in the ice cream market and help to improve the company’s overall profitability.
The purchase has also raised some questions about the future of Cold Stone Creamery. Will the chain be folded into Tim Hortons or will it maintain its own identity? Or will it be split into two separate chains? The answers to these questions remain unclear, but whatever happens, it is clear that Cold Stone Creamery has become a major part of the Tim Hortons empire.
