.... or are they *trying* to go out of business?

Recently I've mystery shopped a couple of Arby's locations and I really like the new cheesesteak sandwich. So tonight for dinner, I went on my own dime to the nearest Arby's. When I reached the drive-through speaker, there was a handwritten sign that said "closed due to power out". I pulled through past the window, which had a similar handwritten sign. The power was clearly on in the kitchen, but the dining room was dark.

So I decided I'd find another Arby's and located one 8 miles away in a close-by town. I almost passed it on the road because the front sign and the building sign were out. But I pulled around to the drive-through. There was no handwritten sign, but the menu board was not lit up. As I pulled up, though, I heard a voice asking if they could help me. I said "Are you open?" and the person said "Oh yes, our light's just broken." I got my meal, but just like at the first location, the lights were all dark in the dining room while the kitchen was all lit up.

Isn't it oddly coincidental that two locations 8 miles apart are having power/light issues that leave the kitchen lights on but everything else out? (although it was still light outside at the first location so I didn't notice if the restaurant sign was on or if the menu board was lit) None of the surrounding businesses at either location seemed to be having issues with their power. I can't help but think there's something strange going on, like a couple of managers being upset with the company or their franchise owner and making sure to drive down sales.

Can anyone else surmise what might be going on?

Lights off in the dining room because the dining room is closed. Lots of restaurants are doing drive-thru only due to staffing.

Agreed, but that doesn't explain the one drive-through being closed with a "power out" sign, and the other drive-through being open but not having ANY signage lights or even the menu board turned on.

I mean, maybe the power did go out, staff left, it came back on. Since the dining room lights were off since it is closed, only the kitchen lights came on when power was restored. Or maybe the power recently came back on and they're rebooting systems, not ready for customers.
Maybe the sign burnt out and the maintenance guy is overworked and hasn't gotten to the location yet.
Let me tell you, life has been hell as a restaurant employee lately. HELL. We are just trying to stay afloat.

They may have some sort of backup generator to keep the kitchen power on. Would make sense to protect the refrigerated/frozen foods that way.

The surge that followed the outage, as power came back, may have fried some circuits or equipment. So the automatic windows or card readers at drive thru or even the grill in the kitchen may not work properly. Could also be the automated order system (forgot the real name--the electronic system that lets the kitchen know what you ordered and where it is in the queue) may not be working.

To me the weird part was that it was two Arby locations on the same day, separated by several miles.

Also the first location was still out yesterday. That's a long time to have your power out when you're a business. And no other businesses around them were affected.

I was assign to get Arby a couple weeks ago. The shop was dine -in. in that case I can not do drive thought. The dining room was closed and sign was posted to the front door. So I had GeoVerify the time and took few pictures. I was paid just a fee. Today I took another shop. It was drive though. When I reached the speaker, guy told me, "We are not open yet". They shall be open since 10:00 AM and I was there 30 minutes after 10:00 AM. I took pictures from the front door and wrote down explanations what has happened. The lights inside were on but they were not open. Maybe not enough associates.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2021 02:28AM by gene.

This is not related to Arby's, but a friend told me his brother in Indiana tried to go to a Burger King recently which was closed because they couldn't find cooks.

Have had the missing cooks a lot lately, Sonic, Church'sCchicken, Freddies, Ihop, Village Inn.