Chick-fil-A is causing controversy in southern California, one of several places in the US where the fast food chain has been the victim of its own success.
In Santa Barbara, the city is close to christening its one and only Chick-fil-A a “public nuisance” due to long lines in which cars filled with hungry customers often stand outside for hours.
The diner, known for its waffle fries and chicken sandwiches, has operated a restaurant in Santa Barbara since 2013, attracting a steady stream of patrons whose vehicles block nearby driveways and sidewalks and force city buses and ambulances to find other routes, according to city officials. .
The Chick-fil-A roadway increases the likelihood of traffic accidents and pedestrian injuries. At peak traffic, the city’s traffic report blocks one lane for 90 minutes on weekdays and 155 minutes on Saturdays, according to the city’s traffic report.
“The City Highways Engineer, the Chief of Police and the Director of Community Development have assessed the situation and believe that the constant duplication of traffic on State Street is a public inconvenience and that this inconvenience is caused by the operation of the Cheek Street driveway. fil-A restaurant,” the document says.
According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, Kristen Sneddon, a member of the Santa Barbara City Council, believes the restaurant may have outgrown its location and the problem cannot be fixed. “Chick-fil-A has serious problems here. They are so successful that they have outgrown their website. They may be too big for this site to start with,” Sneddon said at a board meeting earlier this month, the newspaper reported.
This success is reflected in the long lines at Chick-fil-A’s across the country. Fast food pub QSR named Chick-fil-A as the busiest window of any national chain in a 2019 study.
At a City Council meeting, Sneddon and other members unanimously approved the transition to potential public concern status. Representatives of Chick-fil-A have asked the council to delay identifying the problem and give it more time to work on fixing the problem. The council agreed to continue public hearings until 7 June.
Travis Collins, the restaurant’s franchise operator, said in a statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch Chick-fil-A that he wants to “be a good neighbor” and continues efforts to address traffic issues. This includes hiring additional staff and third-party traffic management, he said.
Local feathers are ruffled
For some people living nearby, the traffic problem has been brewing for years, and it’s only recently that the city and the company have been paying serious attention to it.
“In the past, complaints seemed to be taken lightly,” said local resident Rick Closson in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “Over the years you had Chick-fil-A putting together their fixes that didn’t really help much with the traffic issue. But then you have the city pushing a possibly nasty name and now the corporation is, “Oh my God, please just give us more time to work this out.”
Motor vehicle businesses are unusual in Santa Barbara, as the city has banned their construction for over four decades. But Chick-fil-A is inherited from its location, as it used to be a Burger King restaurant that didn’t have anything like the current movement.
The long car lines of Chick-fil-A are annoying elsewhere. Business owners in Toledo, Ohio; Beaumont, Texas; and Union, New Jersey, sued Chick-fil-A in 2020, alleging long lines to drive away customers, Insider reports. The publication also reported that dozens of such complaints, police interventions and serious traffic problems related to Chick-fil-A roads have been found in more than 20 states in recent years.
In Norwalk, Connecticut, Chick-fil-A is proposing to get rid of an existing through road and rebuild it on the other side of the building to make it easier to back up the traffic that’s been building up since it opened two years ago, local newspaper The Hour. , was recently reported.
One of the problems with congestion is that “it’s the only Chick-fil-A around,” Elizabeth Saki, an attorney for Chick-fil-A, the city’s zoning commission, said last year. “The nearest areas are in Danbury and Brookfield. People really like this product and the corresponding customer service, it is very popular.”
Also in Connecticut, the city of Brookfield decided last year to build an additional lane for cars entering the Chick-fil-A entrance, with the federal government taking on 80% of the bill, CT Insider reported this month. And another city in the state, Fairfield, turned down the chain’s offer to acquire the former restaurant in November, with officials saying they made the decision after reviewing Norwalk’s experience with the chain.
Traffic also regularly causes congestion near Chick-fil-A next to one of the busiest intersections in Brooklyn, New York, slowing down vehicles and causing back up. Efforts to mitigate the problem, including installing metal barriers on streets to keep people from double parking, have been only partially successful, one local resident said.
In Redding, Calif., newly opened Chick-fil-A lined up a long line of cars last March, according to the local CBS affiliate, and forced police to issue a traffic warning to account for congestion outside the diner.
—Alain Scherter contributed to this story.