Hortons to pair units with Tops grocery stores

OAKVILLE Ontario Tim Hortons said it has inked a deal with the Tops Friendly Markets supermarket chain to pair 82 bakery-cafes and kiosks with full-sized and scaled-down Tops stores in upstate New York and northwest Pennsylvania by year-end.

Twenty of the co-branded Hortons units will be full-scale restaurants, and 62 will be self-service kiosks, according to Hortons, a 2,851-unit Canadian chain that currently has 406 branches in the United States. It is expected that a number of the kiosks eventually will be expanded into conventional units.

Hortons is based here, and Tops has its headquarters in Williamsville, N.Y.