Houston might soon get a lot of full-time positions filled up with Tim Hortons franchise owner looking to hire locally.
“As much as we possibly can, we will be hiring from Houston but what I can gather is that our labour market in Houston is quite tight as it is in Smithers; it is a challenge to get people,” said Dan Close, the owner of the franchise.
Close said that in order to have a fully staffed store, he would need to hire between 32 to 38-40 people of which 65 per cent would work as full-time staff. The store in Houston is set to be a stand-alone store with dining that would be smaller than the Smithers store.
“But it is going to have a really good drive-through that is going to be built for high volumes so we will definitely need to hire that many people. And there are so many changes going on the area right now so we are just going to have to wait and see what kind of response we get from the community. But certainly as much as we possibly can, we want to hire locally,” he said.
Close owned the Chevron dealership and convenience store in Houston and Smithers before getting out of the businesses and starting a Tim Hortons franchise in Smithers.
“I have been talking about opening one in Houston for years. Because I know what that little convenience store did in Houston in comparison to the one in Smithers and I know that there is a need for that in Houston,” he said. Close, his family and his kids have been operating the Tim Houston franchise in Smithers for 22 years. Two of his four kids are part of the business, with his son currently working as the General Manager for the Smithers franchise. Close’s daughter would be taking over the Smithers store and his son would be moving to man the Houston franchise.
“I was trying to convince the head office to open another store in Houston and we got close a few times but it didn’t pan out and this time everything has fallen in place. I just want to emphasize on how excited we are on finally doing this,” he said.
Close is hoping to open the Houston Tim Hortons in December with a tentative opening date of Dec.4.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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