Restaurant Branding Matters: Make an Impact with Your Quick Restaurant Service Signage

The Importance of Restaurant Branding and Quick Restaurant Service Signage

Restaurant branding matters, and your signage plays an important role in building brand recognition and delivering a cohesive experience for your customers. Signage also adds key visual cues that help restaurant-goers navigate your restaurant with ease, build familiarity, and look forward to returning. Quick service restaurant signage is even more vital. Well-designed signage expertly leads your customers through your parking lot and drive-through, creating a safer and more seamless experience.

How do you ensure that your quick service restaurant has proper signage at the right touchpoints to serve the customer journey? Read on to learn the three key touchpoints you should consider as you develop your signage plan. We’ve also broken down how you can thoughtfully design signage to showcase your restaurant branding and boost the branded experience for restaurant-goers on the inside of your restaurant and the out.

Tailored Solutions for Your Unique Restaurant: Connect with a quick restaurant service signage expert to determine what tailored solutions would best suit your unique business.

Parking Lot Layout and Lighting Solutions

Parking Lot Signage

Customer experience doesn’t start when your customers enter the door of your building. For quick service restaurants, customer experience begins the moment they enter your parking lot. With the right signage, your customers can quickly locate what parking is available to them and what spots are reserved for employees or customers with disabilities. Treat your parking lot signage as a restaurant branding opportunity by using brand-centric color schemes and fonts to infuse your customers’ experience with intentional design elements that reflect your company from start to finish.

Parking Lot Lighting

In addition to the layout of your parking lot, it’s important to consider the parking lot lighting. A well-designed, well-lit parking lot allows your customers to easily navigate around your building and plays an important role in whether they return. Outdoor lighting ensures your customers feel safe, at any time of day, and can easily see your building and signage. Lighting also serves as an opportunity to visually excite your customers with engaging lighting solutions that add a branded touch to your exterior. Whether you’re seeking LED retrofit lighting in your company’s colors or signage lighting solutions that make your signs pop, a lighting and signage expert can help.

Curbside Pickup Signage

Your signage can also help customers locate specific areas you reserve in the parking lot for designated tasks, like mobile orders and curbside pickups. During the pandemic, the use of curbside pickup has expanded, and many customers appreciate this easy, accessible avenue when they visit quick service restaurants. At Stratus, we helped Starbucks develop a curbside pickup solution that allowed their customers to easily identify where they should park for curbside services and streamlined the process to avoid any traffic congestion and difficulty. Learn more about our innovative solution that we integrated with more than 1,700 signs for their locations across the US.

Drive-Through Layout and Lighting Solutions

Drive-Through Signage

As a quick service restaurant, the layout and lighting of your drive-through are major components of its usability. A poorly designed drive-through can lead to traffic congestion, slow turnarounds, and even safety hazards. Streamline your drive-through operations with better signage. Drive-through signage doesn’t have to be boring. Showcase your brand’s unique aesthetic through the colors, fonts, and graphics that you use on your signs for a more cohesive customer experience.

Drive-Through Lighting

Drive-through lighting is a key factor in maintaining a safe drive-through experience. When customers struggle to navigate a drive-through line due to poor lighting, it can lead to an accident. Lighting also allows you the opportunity to infuse your drive-through with your brand’s colors, or to highlight certain signage and features. With the right quick service restaurant signage and attention to lighting, you can streamline your customer’s experience and help them easily navigate your drive-through no matter the time of day.

Drive-Through Menu Boards

A drive-through lacking in signage will also make it more difficult for customers to determine where to order and what they’d like from your menu. You may even consider leveling up your signage from a traditional menu board to an advanced digital menu, allowing you to quickly tailor the screen to the time of day and reflect up-to-date best sellers, menu offerings, and deals. The signage experts at Stratus implemented an innovative outdoor menu board solution for McDonald’s for more than 800 locations. Learn more about how we tailored this solution to McDonald’s unique needs and how we quickly implemented it on a large scale.

Large Exterior Signage Solutions

Building Signage and Lighting

The signage you attach directly to your restaurant serves two central purposes: helping customers recognize your restaurant and helping build your restaurant branding in an eye-catching manner. Signage design that lacks insight into common customer pain points may be too small, illegible, or not noticeable enough against the exterior material of your building. With well-designed signage, your customers will never be confused when they arrive at your restaurant, second-guessing whether they’re at the correct location. They will also be able to clearly identify your restaurant from a distance, and with well-lit signage, they can do so no matter the weather or time of day.

Monument Signage and Lighting

Monument signage serves a similar purpose. These freestanding signs are designed to call attention to your restaurant, and their shape, style, color, and lighting play a role in how easily recognizable they are. Certain quick service restaurants are prime examples of the power a well-designed free-standing monument sign can hold — McDonald’s golden arches are easily recognizable from a far distance, day and night. Attract customers with purposeful large exterior signage that uses restaurant branding and innovative lighting solutions to build your brand recognition no matter the time of day.

Stratus Delivers Expert Aid for Your Quick Service Restaurant Signage Needs

At Stratus, we specialize in bringing brands to life with thoughtful branding experiences that encompass the entire customer journey, from the moment they pull into your parking lot to the moment they drive away. We offer comprehensive, custom solutions so you can make an impact with your quick service restaurant signage, including lighting aid, refreshing and remodeling, and even thorough maintenance to ensure your signs continue serving your needs for years to come.

Restaurant branding is at the heart of all we do. We work with our clients to ensure their unique company’s voice shines within their signage, and we have a nationwide network of resources to complete your project quickly and easily, no matter your location or the scale of your needs. From Starbucks to Mcdonald’s and much more, we’ve successfully aided some of the biggest quick service restaurants in the business with brand implementation and signage solutions, and we’re eager to help you too.

Your quick service restaurant signage and restaurant branding help transform a first-time guest into an eager repeat visitor. Contact our team today to learn more about how we can serve your unique restaurant branding needs.