Denny’s Corporate Headquarters Gets A/V Upgrades

Integrator Texas Tunes Audio Video overhauls 200-seat auditorium and conference room for America’s diner giant.

Source: Commercial Integrator

After working on a project at the home of the owner of the Denny’s diner chain, Texas Tunes Audio Video was called on to further expand its commercial reach by upgrading the 17th-floor auditorium and 16th-floor executive conference room at the company’s headquarters in Spartanburg, S.C.

Because of the location of the installs, Texas Tunes Audio Video was somewhat limited in its choices for equipment, but they still were able to include 165-pound Klipsch cinema speakers in the auditorium.

The company faced challenges in terms of speaker placement and angles because the room is slanted, but installers were able to come up with a solution that made the customer happy, says Ray Estrada a managing partner at Audio Video Integration Specialists (AVIS).

Estrada and Paul Rodden co-own AVIS, which is the umbrella company for Texas Tunes and Tekmax Technologies.

“We try not to over-promise and under-deliver,” Estrada says. “I’d much rather have it go the other way.”

Inside the Installation

The project took about six weeks to complete, says Estrada, starting just after Christmas and wrapping up in mid-February.

It was the latest in a line of quick-serve restaurant headquarters projects for Texas Tunes , which also outfitted the Taco Bueno home base with better sound and light in its corporate office. About 30 percent of the company’s work is on the commercial side, including hospitals and corporate projects, most of which spring from residential successes.

“Because we’d worked on his house in the past, we knew what he expected and knew it had to be done right or we’d let him down,” Estrada says. “I’m typically not as involved in projects as I was with this one. I wasn’t there at the very beginning, but I was there for much more of it than I normally would be because of that added pressure.”

For the Denny’s project, centered by a Savant control system, Texas Tunes Audio Video used McIntosh MC205 and MC150, Klipsch cinema speakers, a Stewart 180-inch rear-projection screen and another 120-inch rear-projection Stewart Starglass screen.

Installers reverse-engineered a control system from the 1990s and replaced some of its parts, says Estrada.

Lessons Re-Learned

The Denny’s project reemphasized the importance of staging an install to Estrada, saying the time frame for the job made it a bit more difficult because of the holidays and vacations.

“We had to rush a little bit,” Estrada says. “It would have been nice to have two or three weeks of headway but we had about four or five days.”

The other big challenge, he says, was dealing with “a lot of high-end products” so they took longer to arrive than he would have liked.

Estrada is hopeful Texas Tunes can continue making its mark in the commercial space, saying the company is exploring the casino market, among other places.

“The more projects we do in commercial venues, the better,” he says. “It always helps in walk-throughs to be able to mention major players.”

Source: Commercial Integrator

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