Marvellous Mmmuffins, also known as mmmuffins, was a Canadian restaurant chain that sold coffee and muffins. It was established in 1979 and granted its first franchise in 1980.
Its popularity peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, when most shopping malls in Canada had a Marvellous Mmmuffin shop. By 2019, the chain had only two stores, one in the Scotia Plaza food court in Toronto and the other in the Montreal suburb of Côte-Saint-Luc. The Toronto location was reported to have closed in 2020. [2] The Montreal shopping mall location was confirmed to be re-branded as "Muffin Plus" as of October 2024, which means there are now zero locations existing in Canada.
Background
In 1957, Lou Bregman opened a Bagel King on Eglinton Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, after gaining experience working with his father making bagels. In the 1960s, he opened another Bagel King store at Yorkdale Mall; on weekends, his son Michael served customers at the counter. By the 1970s, Loblaws sold Bagel King bagels, and in 1977 the company's president Dave Nichol hired Michael, who had completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Harvard University, as his assistant.
Bregman was tasked with improving the company's bakery department, and eventually found a bakery in Hamilton that made unusually large muffins, typically triple the size of muffins of the time and including different grains and other ingredients.