He’s one of the top executives at the company behind Tim Hortons. But unlike Timmie’s, Duncan Fulton isn’t exactly a household name.At the Retail Council of Canada’s recent annual conference in Toronto, the chief corporate officer of Restaurant Brands International sat down with the Star to talk corporate culture, what it was like when RBI added Tim Hortons to its portfolio in 2014, the impact of 3G’s cost-cutting culture on the Canadian icon, and lessons learned during the heated battle with franchisees. Toronto Star: When we talk about corporate culture, does that matter more internally or externally?DF: It’s critical to how you operate internally. Your ability to successfully operate your company comes out of the culture that you have, and how efficient you are comes out of that culture that you have. So if you look at RBI, there was a team that went into Burger King in 2010, took this old, sleepy brand that didn’t have a ton of growth; it took part of the Burger King culture and also implemented some of its own culture and said ‘OK, let’s get very objective-driven, and let’s shine up the brand, start opening restaurants.’ And then Tim Hortons came in 2014. I’d argue Tim’s has influenced the RBI culture probably the most on the communications side and the importance of transparently and openly communicating your plans … to everybody.TS: How difficult is it to maintain a consistent corporate culture when you’ve got three different brands (Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes), not to mention thousands of franchisees all over the world?DF: Those three brands stand for very different things. Burger King is the chippy challenger brand in most countries and has licence to be more extreme and more funny, more edgy. Popeyes has this incredible following of people who are absolutely in love with the core product, and Tim’s is known for being this grassroots, community-emb ...
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