Just Explain It: Is Tim Hortons a good franchise to own?

That unchanging Tim Hortons cup is to Canadians what the fierce, talon-outstretched bald eagle is to Americans. And it is through that civic pride that Tim Hortons has bedded a nation of coffee guzzlers, filling two billion cups of Timmie’s each year in Canada and building a sprawling empire of 4,500 franchises from Toronto to the Persian Gulf.

It's the same fierce loyalty that helped earn the company a net income of $424.4 million last year, not bad considering most items on the Tim Hortons menu fall under the $5 mark.

But while the chain has jockeyed from Canadian ownership to American ownership and back again, flexed its tech-savvy muscles (Double Double Card anyone?) and added some off-brand menu items like paninis and lasagna, it has held that nostalgic feeling Canadian’s remember from early morning hockey practices and Timbit-flush, all-Canadian roadtrips.

The next four years are looking particularly aggressive with the brand opening 800 more stores by 2018. The expansion is enough to make entrepreneurs wonder if opening their own franchise to get a slice of the, er… donut is a wise idea.

Provided you’re not in Moncton, New Brunswick – the country’s unofficial Timmie’s capital where there are 22 full-sized Tim Hortons, which translates to roughly one for every 3,000 residents – it’s worth considering.

Yahoo Canada Finance’s Ashleigh Patterson takes a look at the metrics.