Clear parking lot striping has a huge impact on your life, the success of your restaurant, and the overall happiness of your customers. This has always been true, but it is more important than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged customers to fully embrace the benefits of restaurant curbside pickup.
That makes this the perfect time to take a step back and study your parking lot. Rather than looking at it with an eye for how clearly parking lot spaces are marked, it may be time to explore how changing the markings can improve curbside pickup traffic flow.
Parking Lot Striping Reduces Accidents
Parking lot fender benders cause major problems, confusion, and disruptions for restaurant owners, often during the busiest times of the day. Dealing with at least two drivers who aren’t happy that their vehicles have sustained dings means you also run the risk of having to field calls from insurance companies that want to blame you (and your low-quality parking lot striping) for the incident — no matter how smoothly you handle the situation.
High-quality parking lot striping that clearly marks the flow of traffic reduces the number of fender benders that take place in your restaurant’s parking lot. This is because it minimizes the chances of drivers misunderstanding where others are headed, and also prevents two drivers from trying to use the same space at the same time.
It Helps Streamline Traffic Flow
Adapting to the idea that the bulk of your business now requires your staff to run food outdoors has been challenging. You’ve likely worked out a system that lets your waitstaff and cooking staff handle the new style of ordering food, which means it’s time to make things even easier by streamlining the flow of traffic as it comes in and out of your parking lot.
Streamlining traffic flow won’t be as difficult as you think, either. All it takes is painting new stripes on the asphalt and adding new signage, each of which let drivers know where they should enter your lot, park to wait for their orders, and how to exit the parking lot once their restaurant curbside pickup is complete.
It Clearly Marks Spaces for Restaurant Curbside Pickup
One of the biggest complaints consumers have when it comes to restaurant curbside pickup in a parking lot is that they’re not sure exactly where they’re supposed to park. This confusion can result in delayed food delivery and irritated customers who may decide to take their business elsewhere.
Changing your parking lot’s stripes and adding new signs solves this problem. Customers are getting the hang of looking for curbside pickup parking, often zipping right into designated parking lots, letting you know that they’ve arrived, and disappearing a few minutes later with their hot order. Everyone involved is happy with the transaction, and all because of a clearly marked parking lot.
You Keep Your Staff Safe with Proper Parking Lot Striping
You shouldn’t get a sinking feeling your staff is putting its lives in jeopardy each time you send a member of your team into the parking lot with an order. The best way to be confident that your waitstaff will remain unharmed when running orders outside is using parking lot stripes that designate where customers should park and wait for their order to be ready. Ideally, the parking area will be somewhere that the waitstaff can be easily viewed both by you in the restaurant and your customers who are picking up orders.
It Maximizes Space in Your Parking Lot
Chances are that you’re not really using the bulk of your parking lot with so many of your customers utilizing restaurant curbside pickup during the COVID-19 pandemic. You’ll quickly discover that high-quality parking lot striping helps customers park responsibly both now and in the future when they are more comfortable returning to dine in, though. That, in turn, will allow you to fit more cars in your lot because each customer will not simply park wherever they want.
You Maintain ADA Compliance and Observe Social Distancing Recommendations
Parking lot striping has always been useful for helping restaurant owners stay compliant with ADA rules. Clearly marked spaces for the disabled make it easy for people who are protected by ADA rules to gain easy access to entrances, ramps, and the larger parking spaces they need for specially adapted vehicles and other equipment.
The same is true for reminding your customers that they need to continue to observe social distancing recommendations. You can use parking lot striping to make bigger parking lot spaces and to block off parts of the parking lot that don’t allow for social distancing during their restaurant curbside pickup. You can even paint messages on the parking lot that remind your customers to observe social distancing recommendations.
It’s Time to Make Improvements
The past few months have completely changed the way you do business: Instead of only dealing with a few take-out orders a week, it’s likely that the bulk of your current business consists of curbside deliveries. Many of the hassles you’ve encountered are easily resolved by making just a few changes to your parking lot.
The fact that most of your customers pull in, grab their food, and promptly pull out makes this a great time to have potholes repaired and lines repainted. This change in consumer behavior means you should be able to easily block off half of the parking lot for repairs and parking lot striping, and you can easily move to the other side once that side is done.
Once the new stripes are in place, you can sit back and enjoy how much more efficient your restaurant curbside pickup and delivery service has become.
Ready to make sure your parking lot striping is as efficient and helpful as possible? Contact Limitless Concrete & Paving for all of your parking lot striping needs. We can’t wait to help!