Why are over 35 cars allowed to wait in Fresno fast food drive-thrus? What we found out
One thing Fresnans love to rant about: drive-thru restaurant lines jam-packed with cars.
In June, The Bee published a story about the owner of Westwoods BBQ & Spice Co. complaining publicly about the line of dozens of cars from Chick-fil-A blocking parking spaces near his restaurant.
Readers responded with hundreds of comments on social media.
From angry to incredulous, they wondered why people spend 20 to 40 minutes in line, ranted about cars blocking traffic, and advocated banning drive-thrus because of the pollution that idling cars emit.
Still others wanted to know: How could a city approve such a mess?
Some wanted to know if the food is really worth the wait. Throw in some opinions about Chick-fil-A’s foundation donating to anti-LGBTQ charities and you’ve got one of the hottest topics of conversation in town.
We’ll leave the politics and the taste testing to you, but The Fresno Bee did take a deeper look at how this was allowed to happen and why it’s so bad now. There are some solutions available. Some are already in the works and there are some that consumers aren’t taking advantage of.
Worst offenders
While most drive-thrus like McDonald’s and Burger King don’t tend to attract huge lines, there’s no doubt some drive-thrus are problematic.
One reader in Clovis said the line from In-N-Out is so bad that he sometimes doesn’t bother trying to park in front of Four Seasons Chinese Restaurant to pick up his takeout food, opting instead to park on a side street and walk to the restaurant.
Some readers said they have sworn off shopping at JOANN Fabric & Crafts store at Blackstone and Nees avenues — or at least avoid it during certain hours —because the parking lot with Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out Burger gets so difficult to navigate.
Last Friday at lunchtime, that Chick-fil-A had 35 cars in a line that stretched around the back of JOANN’s to Westwoods.
At the In-N-Out on Shaw Avenue near Highway 99, the drive-thru line often spills out onto the busy street. Last Friday at lunchtime, five or six cars were stopped in Shaw Avenue’s right-hand lane, waiting to order food.
“This one is the worst,” said Chong Kim, who owns Liquor Junction just to the east of In-N-Out.
Despite signs that say “Please do not block driveway” in front of the liquor store and the nearby tire shop, it’s still a problem, he said.
“My business is damaged because my customers cannot come in,” he said. Two regular customers confirmed that they sometimes don’t bother stopping at the store when the restaurant line is in the way.
Cars also have problems leaving Kim’s parking lot when the right-hand lane is stopped, but the other lanes are whizzing by at 35 to 40 miles per hour.
There’s been at least one accident, he said, and he regularly hears brakes screeching with near misses.
He said he’s complained to the restaurant many times, and pulled out a copy of a letter one of his customers sent to the Fresno Police Department.
Some improvements coming?
At least for the Shaw Avenue location of In-N-Out, help is likely on the way — eventually.
In-N-Out told The Bee that it is in the beginning stages of meeting with the city about plans to redo its drive-thru line. It wants to use the empty lot behind the restaurant to reroute and lengthen the line, allow for side-by-side lines if needed and add parking spots.
The restaurant also has workers taking orders at drivers’ windows, along with other measures to speed things up, said chief operating officer Denny Warnick in an email to The Bee.
“Being nothing but a positive presence in the communities that we are part of is one of our most important values at In-N-Out,” he said.
How did we get here?
So how did Fresno end up with drive-thrus that can get so backed up? Why does the city allow this, many readers asked.
Drive-thrus require a conditional-use permit from the city, and must operate under the conditions laid out in that permit.
But there is no maximum number cars allowed in a line. Generally, drive-thrus must have room for at least 10 cars to stack up, city officials said.
When a developer brings plans to the city, workers in the planning department and the public works’ traffic operations department take a long look at them and make sure they meet development code standards. They’ll decide whether the area needs a new four-way stop, traffic light or other improvements.
“We just have to look at all the variables involved and try to reduce the amount of pedestrian and vehicular (problems ) within the center,” said Mike Sanchez, the city’s assistant planning director.
One challenge? City workers often don’t know which restaurant will move into a proposed drive-thru, said city traffic engineer Jill Gormley.
“A lot of times we don’t necessarily know that it’s a Chick-fil-A or an In-N-Out Burger,” she said.
A developer may want to lure a certain restaurant, but in the early stages of planning a new shopping center, they may not have landed one yet. The paperwork Gormley’s department sees may call for two drive-thrus and a handful of stores, without names.
For many drive-thrus, — say, Burger King — requiring space for 10 cars may be more than enough, she said.
Some places, like the Chick-fil-A on north Blackstone Avenue, were built a for a different tenant. The site was originally a Krispy Kreme with much shorter lines. Plus, her department focuses on how the business affects traffic on streets, not in private parking lots.
Lines getting longer
Some drive-thru lines have gotten worse in recent years as restaurants get more niche menus, meaning it takes longer to order and prepare the meal, Sanchez said. Think about that secret menu at In-N-Out, or the Dutch Bros Coffee order of a chai tea latte made with coconut milk and a shot of espresso.
Now factor in the pandemic. Dining rooms were closed temporarily and even when they weren’t, people felt safer using the drive-thru.
Americans are spending more money on prepared food outside the home, noted Darin Detwiler, a Northeastern University professor and author based in Southern California who specializes in food technology, food safety and consumer behavior.
Throw in curbside pickup spots and drivers picking up for services like DoorDash and there’s a lot happening in that parking lot.
Plus, people like their cars. They have their music and air conditioning, they can smoke and don’t have to put on a mask, Detwiler noted.
“There are so many different factors that are going into how consumer behavior is impacting this,” he said. “Fast food restaurants with a drive-thru are not going away.”
Solutions
So what’s the answer to solving these drive-thru headaches?
There doesn’t appear to be any major push within the city to fix the issue, nor to ban drive-thrus, sources interviewed for this story say.
Residents can complain via the FresGO app.
Some of the solutions may come from the restaurants themselves, motivated to serve as many customers as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Drive-thrus with two lanes are becoming standard, said Gormley, the traffic engineer.
“That does help,” she said. “A lot of the newer sites for fast food restaurants that know that they have longer drive-thru wait times or lines, they are putting in the dual drive thru.”
When an executive from Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers pitched its plans for the fast food restaurant being built on Shaw Avenue to the Clovis City Council, he touted how technology is speeding up the process.
There, workers walk out to cars during busy times, using tablets for customers to order and pay for food. Workers then run the food to the cars, meaning some cars skip the pick-up window completely.
Dutch Bros, Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out all have workers who take orders on iPads before cars get to the drive-thru window.
Some restaurants do even more. The north Fresno Chick-fil-A, for example, owned by franchisee Sonja Middleton, has 34 curbside pickup spots at its north location. Nearby In-N-Out doesn’t do curbside pickup, however.
With curbside pickup, customers order online via the website or app and punch in the number of their space when they park. A worker brings the food to the car.
But customers don’t always use the service. When there was 35 cars in line last Friday at lunch, only about half the curbside parking spots were occupied.
River Park also hired a security guard to direct traffic behind Westwoods.
Both Chick-fil-A in River Park and the In-N-Out on West Shaw are planning remodels and rerouting of their drive-thru lines. The Fashion Fair Chick-fil-A has received a development permit for work on its drive-thru, but it didn’t respond to a request for specifics and franchisee Peter Marthedal wasn’t immediately available to comment.
Three restaurants contacted for this story — Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out and Dutch Bros — all say they want to be good neighbors and have plans in place for handling traffic.
But until technology catches up or those remodels happen — or customers decide to stay away — they might just be stuck waiting in line.
Like Scott and Sandy Olson from Visalia, who set a timer when they pulled into the River Park Chick-fil-A line last Friday with their three kids. At 27 minutes, they still hadn’t ordered yet.
They say they really like Chick-fil-A’s food, especially those fries. But would they do it again?
“I don’t think I would sit in the line again,” Scott Olson said.
“It’s a little much,” his wife agreed.
This story was originally published June 17, 2021 at 8:55 AM.
