- Chick-fil-A is rebuilding a drive-thru in Santa Barbara, CA, after its lengthy traces disrupted visitors.
- Modifications embrace including an additional lane, new ordering stations, and widening the doorway driveway.
- The fast-food chain is understood for having lengthy traces at its drive-thrus.
Chick-fil-A is rebuilding a drive-thru in Santa Barbara, California, after residents complained about visitors congestion.
The restaurant, which is situated on higher State Avenue, stated on social media that it could briefly shut from Could 22 via late July to make adjustments.
These embrace changing the drive-thru from one lane to 2, including new ordering stations, widening the doorway driveway, and reconfiguring the present parking zone to take away 15 parking areas and add extra bike racks, filings with the town council present. The plans additionally embrace altering the exit in order that automobiles cannot flip left into oncoming visitors.
The bustling restaurant had triggered quite a few visitors issues for the town, resulting in complaints from residents, and a number of collisions had taken place in entrance of the positioning.
However this Santa Barbara restaurant is not the one one to have irritated native residents.
A choice of Chick-fil-A eating places throughout the US have aggravated residents, different companies, and metropolis representatives due to their large drive-thru traces that snake down the street and trigger visitors buildups.
In some circumstances, this has led to lawsuits. Earlier this 12 months, officers in Charlotte, North Carolina, informed a problematic Chick-fil-A restaurant to demolish its constructing and begin over with a drive-thru-only mannequin.
Research present that it takes eight-and-a-half minutes to undergo the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A, which is significantly slower than at McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and quite a few different fast-food chains. It is because the restaurant is so well-liked that there’s nearly all the time a line of automobiles.
The Santa Barbara restaurant’s franchise proprietor informed native information web site Noozhawk that it serves between 1,700 and a pair of,200 clients day by day.
In late 2021, Santa Barbara Metropolis Council stated that Chick-fil-A had been “actively pursuing” methods of combating its lengthy traces, together with taking orders exterior and automobile service.
However this did not remedy all the issues. “Lately, the queuing from Chick-fil-A’s drive-through onto State Avenue has created critical visitors congestion, in addition to hazardous situations for pedestrians, cyclists, and people with disabilities,” Santa Barbara Metropolis Council stated in March 2022.
That June, the Metropolis Council permitted the restaurant’s proposed visitors circulation settlement after beforehand threatening to declare it a public nuisance and even shut down its drive-thru.
The settlement included hiring a chosen visitors attendant, including extra employees throughout peak hours, in search of off-site parking for employees, stopping truck deliveries throughout peak hours, and never permitting armored automobiles servicing the positioning to park on State Avenue, native information publication The Santa Barbara Impartial reported.
