CULVER’S BRANDED LED OUTDOOR LIGHTING

As most franchisees and business owners know, brand colors are critical. They often stick the most in a customer’s mind when they associate the company name with its products or services. Culver’s started their color branding journey with its Florida locations: Hillsborough, Tampa, Riverview, Panama City, Destin, and Navarre.

Background

The restaurant chain, known as Culver’s, has branded its business with specific white and blue colored lighting designs to evoke brand recognition and create an eye-catching appeal for patrons. Culver’s, which opened its restaurant in 1984, is headquartered in Wisconsin and, as of June 2019, operates over 710 restaurants across 25 states, with 18 currently under construction. As new locations for this successful and tasty business model continue being opened around the Midwest and throughout the United States, franchisees want to ensure they harness the full benefits of attracting patrons to their amazing company location further to build upon their business success as the founders George and Ruth Culver did when they transitioned A&W location colors from orange and brown, to the now infamous white and blue associated with Culver’s restaurants which are taking the country by storm with their delicious ButterBurgers and Frozen Custards.

With each new location being established, franchisee owners will notice many benefits to opening a Culver’s franchise, particularly a guide and SOP that provides what is required to establish, operate and maintain a new Culver’s location in their desired area in the USA. These benefits also include fundamental lighting that every commercial location should have for safety and appeal to satisfy brand requirements for their patrons, which often includes lighting fixtures, kitchen equipment, and inventory. Like many brand franchisee opportunities, Culvers allows and advises their owners to maintain and improve lighting fixtures for their establishment as they desire without corporate approval if they adhere to their current standards and specifications.

Challenge

As new locations are constructed for franchisee owners to start their business as a new Culver’s restaurant chain, they realize that great locations with high traffic areas are often set back off the main roads from passing patrons at high speeds to see and recognize their location as much as they had hoped. With that in mind, and other considerations on the table to ensure patrons would know about their restaurant and want to visit their locations more often than others on the same roads, they looked closer at improving their outdoor lighting design to enhance their presence and appeal.

As most franchisees and business owners know, brand colors are critical. They often stick into their customers’ minds when they associate attributes like the company name and its products or services.

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culvers-outside-restaurant-lighting

While considering the need for further improving upon their restaurant locations outside lights, several challenges and requirements came to mind, including the need for installing true white and blue color lights, along with the need for weatherproof low voltage LEDs to reduce operational costs, while also being able to satisfy their lighting applications of each location unique architectural elements, and finally being able to ensure the lights had enough power and vibrancy to be seen from far distances at night from passers by to create their perfect new landmark.

Solution

Garden Light LED professional-grade integrated low-profile lighting products for commercial outdoor use in all weather conditions. Rated IP68 and available in white and blue kelvin color temps to enhance and promote Culver’s brand appeal properly. The franchisee and lighting design company collected and reviewed many architectural lighting fixture options. They realized that the options for true specific color LED lights needed to be more powerful to see the light output from further distances off the restaurant location or would not provide adequate and reliable color lighting temperatures across every light being installed on their new well-planned design. Additionally, by utilizing Garden Light LED custom color led lighting fixtures, they could install a lighting fixture that would last a lifetime and provide a clean design to enhance their outdoor architecture during the day and at night.

Results

At last, the choice was made official when the franchise restaurant owner and lighting install company purchased the SSA stainless aluminum spotlights and well lights from Garden Light LED. These SSA silver-toned lighting product finishes offered their locations a modern, sleek look with anti-corrosive anodization, unlike anything the company has seen on the lighting market. While also giving the lighting designers the ability to add tighter narrow beam spreads to highlight the walls and columns of the buildings, alongside the power output of 75 watts equivalent, to ensure they shined bright and would be seen from far away to attract potential customers that may not have noticed them.