Technology: Let the Music Play
Sophisticated audio systems manage the music that reinforces the brand.
By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 10/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
At Hooters of America, “music is integral to what we are,” says Chris Duncan, vice president of administration at the Atlanta-based chain. “You’ve never been to a party without music; music is one of the bases for the party we’re hosting.”
That’s one of the reasons Hooters uses a sophisticated audiovisual system from a company called Playnetwork to provide music and videos to several of its 345 restaurants. Via a device called E-Player, the restaurants download preselected music from Redmond, Wash.-based Playnetwork. In the manner of a giant I-Pod, the E-Player stores the songs, about 350 of them, and plays them randomly in each store.
Store managers’ participation in the system is minimal, and Duncan says Hooters likes it that way. “Store managers can skip a song, but most of the time they leave it be,” he explains.
Keep Your Hands to Yourself
As music takes a more active role in the branding of restaurants, chains are looking to automated music-delivery systems to make sure that the brand message is delivered consistently and with little or no work on the managers’ part.
“We know how difficult it is to run a restaurant,” says Christy Noel, vice president of marketing and product development at Los Angeles-based DMX Music, a supplier of music to restaurants and retail chains. “We have features that run the restaurant better.”
To be sure, restaurants can still play a radio or CDs to provide musical ambience. Playing the radio, though, runs the risk of customers hearing bad news, competitors’ jingles and other distracting information.
Playing CDs all day provides a little more control over content, but doing so takes time. And it violates the musicians’ copyrights, which are overseen by licensing organizations such as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. Fines, levied per song, could cost a restaurant around $60 a month, about the cost of a music service such as DMX or Playnetwork.
Takin’ Care of Business
Duncan says that Hooters spent about $20,000 per unit upgrading each of its new company stores to the Playnetwork system. (The chain had been unhappy with its previous vendor; three restaurants opened without music, resulting in “a management headache,” he says.)
Hooters developed its own playlist of ’60s and ’70s upbeat, beach-theme music, garnered from artists represented by ASCAP, Recording Industry Association of America, BMI and the other licensing agencies with which Playnetwork has agreements.
Playnetwork sends the tunes to Hooters’ restaurants via the chain’s data-connection line, which was already in place to handle credit-card transactions and sales data. In addition to playing the music, E-Player can be used to play music for telephone callers on hold and play different songs in different areas of the restaurant. Songs can be deleted from the system if they are deemed inappropriate.
One of the few drawbacks is the cost, and the fact that there’s not much return on a service that provides ambience but doesn’t directly affect sales. “The overall cost of upgrading the system is the only thing holding us back,” Duncan says.
Just the Way You Are
Two years ago, Au Bon Pain, the Boston-based chain of 230 restaurants, replaced the CD players in its stores with a disk-based system from DMX Music. Each month, each store manager receives a disk that contains tunes from well-known singers as well as an assortment of vocal and instrumental soft jazz. The singers get played in the morning; the soft jazz, in the afternoon, says Jim Fisher, vice president of marketing at Au Bon Pain.
The music was selected to reinforce Au Bon Pain’s image as a fast-casual bakery-cafe with a definite Continental feeling, and the DMX system was chosen so music would require as little of a manager’s time as possible. “We want to make sure that the GMs are taking care of customers and greeting them,” Fisher says.
In addition to being easy to operate, the system is also secure. The disk player will only accept disks from DMX, meaning that an employee who tries to play his own 50 Cent remix after everyone goes home is out of luck.
To make music even easier, Au Bon Pain is investigating a system that delivers music via a data line and stores it in a machine at the restaurant, though Fisher declines to give details.
Jukebox Hero
At some Denny’s restaurants, customers choose the music, but in a controlled way thanks to a broadband-connected jukebox. “We took out the guts and CDs and replaced them with a CPU with a hard drive,” explains Robbie Vann-Adibe, chief executive officer at Ecast, the San Francisco-based company that makes the jukebox.
The jukebox contains the music from about 300 “local” album-length CDs, which are chosen by chain management. Patrons can sort through the local selections just as they would on a traditional jukebox.
If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they can search an index of about 130,000 songs, which are downloaded via broadband on a play-by-play basis. The jukebox costs a dollar for three or four credits; a local song equals one credit, and a downloaded song, two credits.
In addition to giving customers some say in a restaurant’s musical ambience, the Ecast jukebox differs from other music systems in that it produces revenue. Vann-Adibe says the jukeboxes can earn anywhere from $400 to $1,000 a month, a percentage of which goes to Ecast. Third-party companies lease and maintain the machines, he says.
Marc Grubb, manager of a company-owned Denny’s in Auburn, Wash., likes the Ecast jukebox because it contains more music than the standard jukebox it replaced. As a manager, he also likes a hands-off approach to music. Customers choose the music; if nobody feels moved to play a tune, Grubb plays one every five minutes or so “to give people the idea there’s a jukebox here,” he says.
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