Chick-fil-A is causing some rumors in Southern California, one of many places in the United States where the fast food chain is the victim of its own success.
In Santa Barbara, the city is close to christening its only Chick-fil-A as a “public nuisance” because of the long car lines that often have cars full of hungry customers on the street for hours at a time.
The restaurant, known for its French fries and chicken sandwiches, has had a restaurant in Santa Bàrbara since 2013, which attracts a steady stream of customers whose vehicles block nearby roads and sidewalks and cause city buses and public transport vehicles. ‘find other routes, according to city officials.
The Chick-fil-A traffic lane increases the likelihood of traffic collisions and pedestrian injuries. At maximum volume, the drive-through blocks a lane of traffic for up to 90 minutes on weekdays and up to 155 minutes on Saturdays, according to a city traffic report.
“The city’s traffic engineer, police chief and community development director have assessed the situation and believe that persistent traffic on State Street is a public nuisance and that the nuisance is caused by the operation of a coach at the Chick-fil-A restaurant, “the document states.
Kristen Sneddon, a Santa Barbara City Council member, believes the restaurant may have outgrown the location and the problem cannot be solved, according to Santa Barbara News-Press. “Chick-fil-A has a good problem here. They’re so successful that they’ve outperformed their site. They may have been oversized for this site, to begin with,” Sneddon said at a board meeting earlier this month. , the newspaper reported.
This success is reflected in long bus lines to Chick-fil-A’s in other parts of the country. In a 2019 study, QSR fast-service restaurant commercial pub listed Chick-fil-A as the busiest windows on any national chain.
At the town hall session, Sneddon and other members unanimously agreed to move on to a possible public nuisance designation. Representatives of Chick-fil-A asked the council to delay the appointment of nuisance and give him extra time to work on solving the problem. The council agreed to continue a public hearing until June 7.
Travis Collins, the restaurant’s franchisee, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch that Chick-fil-A wants to “be a good neighbor” and continues to work to alleviate traffic problems. This includes hiring additional staff and controlling third-party traffic, he said.
Local feathers were ruined
For some people living nearby, the problem of traffic has been brewing for years, and it is only recently that the problem is seriously attracting the attention of the city and the business.
“In the past, it looked like the complaints had been taken half seriously,” resident Rick Closson told the Los Angeles Times. “Over the years, you’ve had Chick-fil-A come up with solutions that didn’t really do much to fix the traffic problem. But then you have the city presenting a possible nuisance, and the corporation now says, ‘Oh “My God, please give us more time to resolve this.”
Car business is unusual in Santa Barbara, as the city has banned its construction for more than four decades. But Chick-fil-A is getting to its location, as it used to be a Burger King drive-thru with nothing like current traffic.
Chick-fil-A’s long car lines have ruined feathers elsewhere. business owners in Toledo, Ohio; Beaumont, Texas; and Union, New Jersey, all sued Chick-fil-A in 2020 after alleging that long bus lines were rejecting customers, according to Insider. The publication also reported that dozens of such complaints, police interventions and significant traffic problems related to Chick-fil-A bus lines had been found in more than 20 states in recent years.
In Norwalk, Connecticut, Chick-fil-A proposes to dispose of an existing drive-thru and rebuild it on the other side of the building to facilitate traffic backups that have occurred since it opened two years, a local newspaper, The Hour. , has recently reported.
One of the problems behind the congestion is that “this is the only Chick-fil-A around,” Elizabeth Sucky, Chick-fil-A’s attorney, told a city zoning commission last year. “The closest ones are in Danbury and Brookfield. People really like this product and the accompanying customer service is very popular.”
Also in Connecticut, Brookfield City officials last year opted to build an additional lane for cars crossing to a Chick-fil-A entrance, and the federal government took 80% of the listing. , CT Insider reported this month. And another city in the state, Fairfield, in November denied the chain’s proposal to take over an old restaurant, and officials said they made the decision after considering Norwalk’s experience with the chain.
Traffic also regularly causes congestion near a Chick-fil-A near one of Brooklyn, New York’s busiest intersections, slowing down vehicles to a crawl and causing backups. According to a local resident, efforts to mitigate the problem, including the placement of metal barriers on the street to deter people from double parking, have only been partially successful.
In Redding, California, a newly opened Chick-fil-A drew a long line of cars in March last year, according to a local CBS affiliate, and caused police to issue a traffic alert to alert congestion outside the restaurant.
“Alain Sherter contributed to that story.”
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