Published in July 2005

Spreading Their Wings
By Jim Stokes

Buffalo Wild Wings AV installs are customer pleasers.

Taking in a lot of videos is possible at Buffalo Wild Wings - especially if you have more than one pair of eyes!

    Nostalgia can be a powerful force. Going back in time, it can calm the restless world around us. And it can be the start of a business with more than 300 stores. Here, we’re concerned about the latter. So, we’ll go back in time to 1981, when two young men living away from home had a craving for some home cooking. Rather than shuffle off to Buffalo for the food’s namesake, they founded what was to become today’s Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) across the US. Food, pleasant surroundings and AV-based entertainment are all part of BWW’s successful mix. Although we can’t offer you a tasty treat right here, we can delve into how AV is an important component in the stores’ fame and fortune.

Spreading Their Wings
     Before we discuss the “stores’” (restaurant lingo) AV attributes, let’s look at how the restaurant chain evolved. According to the company’s website, Jim Disbrow and Scott Lowery had transplanted to Kent OH and longed for authentic Buffalo NY-style chicken wings. Rather than head home, they opened a “wing joint” in Kent. That was the beginning of Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck (BW3), now called Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar restaurants (BWW).
     Today the stores offer a full menu and an atmosphere aimed at wide demographics, ranging from families to avid sports fans. People can hang out with friends, play on-screen interactive trivia, watch sports events or other entertainment on many big-screen TVs, and enjoy karaoke.
     Minneapolis-based BWW’s concept is the result of research and careful evaluation, creative planning and years of experience. Stores have evolved since 1982 in response to customer preferences. However, three core objectives have remained unchanged: quality food, value pricing and entertaining atmosphere.

AV Install Evolution
     Cornerstone Communications, Un-ion KY, has done 215 of the AV installs in the 320-plus company-owned and franchised BWWs. Cornerstone installation crew foreman is Bob Carr, and company president Bob Toerner explains here the design and installation of the Mount Prospect IL store as an example of an advanced AV install. But first, some background about how the AV systems have developed.
     Although Cornerstone does the lion’s share of the installs, there are three approved vendors. Toerner explained that BWW did that “because the company had a bunch of ‘ma and pa’s’ coming in, in some of the cities, that were selling equipment that just didn’t meet certain standards. So, BWW has since set installation standards.” Toerner noted that some stores have a standardized video system and others are moving more toward component video and hi-def.
“When I first started [11 years ago], it was a mess,” Toerner said. “They were putting in home-style sound systems, like someone’s stereo. Pretty low tech. There was such a rag-tag bunch of vendors doing these stores and there was no standardization.”

Mounting such a variety of screen types and sizes is always a challenge.

     Toerner noted that he designed his whole business around serving BWW. “I was pretty much their own AV company for a long, long time.” Now, with three approved vendors, Corner-stone’s installs are done with the same high standards but at a more moderate pace. “The AV equipment has evolved,” he said, “and I’ve been the primary architect of that audiovisual design. It has evolved from the original days where we used C-band satellite equipment. Now we primarily use DirecTV and the stores have been very, very happy with it. The biggest change over the past seven years has been moving to industrial grade audio and video equipment.” He pointed out that satellite receiver feeds depend on the complexity of the particular store. Most of the stores have eight to 12 satellite receivers in the rack. Some of the older stores are just standard video, whereas the newer venues are moving toward extended definition and hi-def.

Mount Prospect Install
     BWW stores are not cookie-cutter because their layout depends on customer research. Similarly, the AV system is customized. A good example is the four-store, Barrington-IL headquartered Buffalo Wings franchise group, called Here’s Wings, LLC, of which John Weiler is one of the owners. “One of the things that appealed to us as we looked at the concept was the [customer] age range: from 2 to 80,” Weiler offered. He noted that equipment varied “a bit” among the Here’s Wings group. “We’ve gone to plasmas and projectors at our Round Lake Beach and Mount Prospect stores, but we have projectors-only in the Algonquin and Skokie stores.” The AV media helps to draw in customers. “We have a sports-oriented theme, although we’re a moderately priced family restaurant. So, if there’s a big sporting event, we’re packed.”
     The Mount Prospect install is a good example of a full-blown AV install by Cornerstone Communications. Toerner noted that interactive video games are provided by the NTN (Trivia Network) satellite feed, allowing people to compete with others around the country in a variety of sports and entertainment categories. The NTN and DirecTV satellite signals are fed to Samsung hi-def component video-out and Hughes standard component video-out receivers for the various video screens throughout the venue.
     Toerner explained that Cornerstone uses Liberty cable, which is a special cable with three RG6 cables in one jacket. “It delivers a much higher quality picture,” he offered. Thus, the integrity of the high-definition satellite signal is maintained, from the dish on the roof to the Spaun multi-switch in the rack to the hi-def receivers, then through the Liberty cable and on to the Dukane/Hitachi LCD projectors shooting onto custom 120-inch Da-Lite screens and the LG plasmas. Regarding the Dukanes, Toerner said, “I bought a bunch of them because these heavy-duty models are so reliable.”
     He noted that, in most of the stores, cable with satellite feeds is combined to expand program choices, especially local sports with satellite-accessed sports. “At the combiner, we combine cable channels 2 through 86 then put the satellite receivers on their own modulators that would come in on, say, channels 100 through 106. And we make channel separation to make the picture nice and clear. So the satellite has its own channels. That would include providing NTN trivia with its own channel.”
     Putting this into a BWW scenario, folks who like trivia brain teasers would be seated in a booth or table and chairs playing NTN trivia. People in the dining room would be watching their local team. And folks seated at the bar would be watching the game. Furthermore, an exciting game need not be missed during nature calls, because the game is sent to the restroom monitors as well. Specifically, the Mount Prospect venue offers a lot of viewing choices. AV consists of six Dukane LCD projectors with Da-Lite screens, more than 40 combinations of 27- and 32-inch LG TVs and three LG bar plasmas: a 60-inch flanked by a 42-inch on each side.

Simple to Operate
     Access is by the simple-to-operate, familiar TV remote control. “The system has to be operated intuitively,” stated Toerner. “With a remote control, bartenders and waitresses know that cable, satellite and NTN are on certain channels. And that’s all they need to know.” The added expense of a key-pad touch system behind the bar was a problem. “We have deliberately kept most of the system to a lower tech, RF distribution system in most installations.” Related, video switching and routing added to the install package would also be considered expensive. “Ninety percent of the time, the franchises want to keep it lower tech and simple to operate.
     "In John Weiler’s Mount Prospect store,” Toerner offered, “it’s kind of a hybrid in that all of the television sets are fed an RF signal. Let’s take the example of projector #1 behind the bar: There’s a dedicated hi-def satellite receiver that feeds that projector. Out of that same projector, there’s a lower tech, composite video output. We feed that to a modulator that feeds the same signal to the TVs in the house.”

	A typical Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, this one in Mt. Prospect IL.

     An example of such use would be several football games, all on at the same time on a Sunday. Rather than have the added expense of making the feeds all hi-def, just the basic composite outputs to the modulators go to the TVs. And as mentioned, there are also Hughes composite output satellite receivers feeding TV sets as well. So composite video can be fed both ways, increasing the capability of the feeds.
     Mounts for plasmas and TVs were a concern. “We chose Peerless because it’s an extremely strong bracket,” said Toerner. “They’re built like a tank.” Considering the hoopla generated by sports, a broken mount could result in the loss of an expensive video monitor. “We’ve seen instances where TVs were literally pulled off the wall from what we call ‘the beer factor.’ Peerless mounts are well-engineered and my guys are familiar with them. And [the company] is good about getting things delivered to the job site.”
     Looking at the variety of mounts, he noted the projectors use a universal ceiling mount because, “in time, we’re going to have to replace that projector. If the mount worked only with that projector and the model changed, that would be $200 to $300 thrown away. So we keep a constantly adjustable bracket in the mix.”
     Unistrut adjustable support channels are affixed to the ceiling. Then, custom-length heavy-duty pipes are inserted to align the height of the TVs. “You don’t realize it when you go into a building, but the roof isn’t flat. A roof can vary as much as two feet front to the back of the building for water runoff. So we measure every single pipe from the ceiling bracket to the floor so the TVs are all height-aligned. That’s one of the little touches we do to make sure every TV is the same height. It looks nice and neat that way.”
     Other specialized mounts include double TV hangers/cross support, tandem TV hangers and curved hanging mounts for each of the three plasmas. Regarding the curved hanging mounts, Toerner explained, “Each of those plasmas is on its own support pipe. Because of the weight, we didn’t want to take the chance of doing double hangers. We opted on the safe side. And it looks better cosmetically. The weight is counter-balanced, so it can hang dead straight plumb from the ceiling.”

Sound System
     Moving to the audio side of the install, Cornerstone came up with the solution to the problem of store employees fiddling with the EQ. Two customized Rolls Belari sound mixers that bear the “Cornerstone” name have no EQ controls and provide inputs for TV sound, jukebox, background music and the karaoke package. “They do a great job with this little bulletproof mixer. They make 30 or 40 of these special custom units at a time for us.
     "The way I look at it,” Toerner said, “TV sound is mixed the way it’s supposed to be mixed. The satellite is not filtered at that point, and we should feed it to the house flat. So this mixer stops our getting goofy service calls where somebody adjusted the sound system out of whack.”
     The mixer allows the karaoke DJ or a local radio station to patch into the wall plate in the dining room. They can feed music, an interview, company party or other special event sound over the house system.
     The mixer signal is fed to a 225 watt QSC power amplifier. “QSC is so reliable,” said Toerner. “We put it in the rack, then just vacuum out the dust and smoke that’s in the venue. I can count the number of service calls on one hand after more than 200 store installs.” The amplifier’s four channels are assigned to the bar, dining room, patio and kitchen/restrooms.
     House speakers are SoundTube RS800s. “I’ve been using SoundTubes for a long, long time. We’ve gone to using more and smaller speakers, and spreading them out for better coverage. So, in a typical bar situation, we found that six to eight speakers placed high in the ceiling get great coverage.”
     Electro-Voice EVid 4.2Ts are mounted in the patio corners. “They have a nice easy mount, and are really solid weather speakers. And they’re sexy-looking,” Toerner added.
     Along the lines of simplicity, an RDL jukebox relay is a simple audio sensing control that automatically turns off the TV sound in the room as soon as the relay senses there’s music playing and lets the jukebox music come through. That takes any switch-turning burden off the already-busy bartenders or other employees.
     In addition, there’s a DVD/VCR for training AVs or special-events showings such as a Little League game or a company award tape.