It doesn’t take 11 secret herbs and spices or a viral TikTok ordering hack to create a top tier fast casual dining experience. For most customers, good food, quality service, an inviting indoor environment is enough to keep them coming back for more.
If you’re in the process of planning a new development, or looking for ways to upgrade an existing restaurant, consider how lighting control and energy protection solutions can enhance your customer experience while supporting your bottom line.
Bring Modern Comfort with Built-in Efficiency
A well-lit restaurant is one that’s inviting customers, optimizes daylight, ensures visibility, and conserves energy whenever possible. Before they’re ever seated, patrons get a first impression of an establishment based on how it looks from the outside.
To make sure you’re putting your best foot forward, consider pairing parking lot lights with LED-compatible photocontrols like the EK Series. This promotes safety and provides reliable dusk-to-dawn control. Similarly, installing an in-wall solution like the ST01 to control entranceway lights and exterior signage can help increase visibility and invites customers through your front doors.
For even greater control and flexibility, operators can pair parking lot, entranceway, and exterior lights with a versatile Lighting Contractor Box solution. These all-in-one controls provide immediate time savings for installers and can be adapted to fit a wide variety of brick-and-mortar footprints.
Inside the dining area, the ARISTA® Advanced Lighting Control System can help business owners tick all the boxes in terms of comfort, efficiency, and code compliance. ARISTA’s mix-and-match components (e.g., controllers, switches, sensors, etc.) help operators right-size their smart lighting investment to fit business needs. Once installed and commissioned, ARISTA controls make it easy to adjust light levels (dimming) and ON/OFF schedules to align with daily operations, and the system can be adjusted from anyway via the ARISTA app.
Keep the Business Running
Though not as glamorous as a new signature dish or seasonal promotion, surge protection is one investment restaurant operators can make that keeps on giving. By installing robust surge protection solutions like PANELGUARD®, operators protect the tens of thousands of dollars they’ve invested in kitchen equipment and electronics from unexpected power surge events.
More importantly, by taking a comprehensive approach to surge protection, restaurant owners help ensure their businesses stay running when power issues arise. For example, the cost of a closure due to a surge-related POS system failure or a major HVAC/R equipment repair pales in comparison to the investment in a reliable SPD.
PANELGUARD can be installed at the restaurant’s distribution panel and protects everything from freezers and walk-in coolers to ordering kiosks and LCD menu displays.
Knockout the Basics
Along with more advanced solutions like ARISTA and PANELGUARD, operators can improve their customer experience by installing simple controls like occupancy sensors in limited use spaces (e.g., bathrooms, supply closets). This promotes energy savings by ensuring lights stay OFF when spaces are not in use and helps change the perception of spaces that are often viewed as less-than-pleasant by guests.
Similarly, installing new outdoor weatherproof covers can be a simple way to match brand colors and building aesthetics while ensuring code compliance. Having worn out or missing covers on outdoor receptacles communicates the wrong message to customers, and it’s an easy, cost-effective issue to remedy. In certain locales, Die-cast Extra-duty covers may also be required to be installed in wet or splash-prone kitchen areas for code compliance.
Ready to get started on your next lighting control or power protection project? Check out the Intermatic Applications Guide for new ideas on how Intermatic solutions can enhance spaces inside and out.