Chief Corporate Officer, Restaurant Brands Intl
Search every verified Duncan Fulton interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a December 2018 interview, Duncan Fulton, then recently appointed Chief Corporate Officer of Restaurant Brands International, discussed the company's priorities and challenges. He stated that the number one priority established by the executive team was rebuilding the relationship with Tim Hortons' restaurant owners, acknowledging that the brand had experienced "a little bit of a slip" in recent years. Fulton described Tim Hortons as having "an incredible iconic place in Canadiana and culture" and argued that every restaurant in the world would want the brand's status. He also addressed international expansion, particularly in China, saying there is "nothing but opportunity internationally" and that the company would tailor the brand market by market, such as offering a churro instead of a donut if a local market wanted it. Fulton also spoke about growth strategies, noting that the company was testing a dedicated kids menu for Tim Hortons, which he called "Canada's Family Restaurant." He characterized Restaurant Brands International as "fundamentally a growth company," citing its stock price increase since its IPO as evidence. In a separate 2012 appearance at the Banff Media Festival, while serving as Senior Vice President of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Canadian Tire Corporation, Fulton described branded and digital content as "the game changer" and "the heart of all marketing." He said that companies can influence but no longer control content creation, as people will create and share content regardless.
“Tim Hortons as a restaurant brand has an incredible iconic place in Canadiana and culture — in fact I'd argue in a very, very competitive industry every restaurant in the world would kill to have the kind of brand status that Tim Hortons has.”
“The number one priority that's been established by the executive team has been the relationship with the restaurant owners — if you look at how the business operates every day you have more than 1,500 Canadians and new Canadians who own and operate restaurants like this.”
“It took me two weeks on the job to figure out it's anything but that — I was invited to their Global Leadership offsite, there were 800 slides presented... not one slide about cutting costs; every single slide was data analytics backing up purposeful, deliberate investments that are going to drive product innovation, p...”
“What people don't know is we are fundamentally a growth company at RBI... I think when they IPO back in it was $3 and now it's 60 plus in the US — they are a growth company in every sense.”
“Tim Hortons is, despite its size, about half the business — it's fundamentally a Canadian brand... RBI bought Tim Hortons because of both the Canadian and global expansion opportunities.”
“Tims is the epitome of a Canadian brand — being able to take a bit more of Canada into another country, taking the maple leaf abroad, taking the quality of our coffee abroad — that's a great opportunity for the brand.”
“The customer experience has to change in the local market — we work with master franchisees and different markets that are experts in the market that say this has to stay, this has to change; you want to be flexible — if a market wants a churro instead of a donut then do a churro.”
“If you want to have in retail or in restaurant quarter after quarter of sustainable growth you need platforms to grow on... one of those for us is a new kids menu — we're Canada's Family Restaurant, we don't have a dedicated kids menu, and we're about to go live with testing in market.”
“There is a ton of growth still in almost every urban market in Canada, certainly in suburban and rural — the question is purposefully deciding where you pick and invest for the biggest return; internationally there's nothing but opportunity.”
“I think branded content and digital content in every aspect is the game changer. Two years ago you didn't have companies panicking about their content strategy; today certainly our content strategy, our content management system, our media management system tied to content management, it's everything. It's the heart of...”
“It is incredibly beneficial to put companies, marketers, advertisers, content producers, publishers, vendors all in the same place because so often you go to these conferences and you just talk to yourself; you don't learn anything when you talk to yourself. So when you put everyone in the same room and everyone that h...”
“It's about people creating content and sharing it with each other and you're going to be lucky enough as a company to be able to influence that but you're not going to be able to control that anymore. Whether or not companies create and share content, people are going to do it for them.”
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