After the owners of the New Jersey-based restaurant group Delicious Heights learned how easy it was to manage their restaurant’s audio and video with the ELAN g! Entertainment and Control System in one restaurant, they decided to upgrade their Berkeley Heights, NJ flagship location to ELAN g! as well.
- Because every day counts in the restaurant business, it was of the utmost importance that the g! system be online right away without disrupting a single hour of business operations.
- The custom installation pros at Maplewood, NJ-based 360 Media Innovations, who worked through the night from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m. one recent Monday morning, had the new g! system up and running on the first day.
- “It was nerve-wrecking, but also exciting, to see if we could get the system changed over in a single night,” said Abiose Gale, co-owner of 360 Media Innovations. “The restaurant owners needed it to be a smooth transition so the guests wouldn’t even know anything changed. It took some hard work and quick fingers, but we got the old system out and the new ELAN g! system installed, programmed and running in less than 10 hours. We couldn’t have done that with any other control system.”
- Owners of older control systems in both commercial and residential locations can benefit from the long list of third-party components that integrate with the g! system, the company says, which allows them to keep using much of their existing equipment and lowers the overall cost of installation. The complete installation by 360 Media Innovations, which was performed throughout construction of the renovation, included installation of new amplifiers, indoor TVs, two 55-inch Sunbrite outdoor LCD TVs, 27 surveillance cameras, an ELAN TS10 touch screen, and the programming for every interface device.
- Alex Rubinstein, co-owner of Delicious Heights, was impressed at how simply it is to operate the new ELAN g! system. “We have 18 TVs showing 7 live sources and eight audio zones that can play five sources, so there’s the potential for it to get complicated. But with ELAN g! it is always clear and easy to see what is playing on each TV and audio zone, and just as easy to change the channel or the source. When a guest asks to raise the volume or change the channel, they’re always blown away that our managers can simply pull out an iPhone and hit a couple buttons. And now we can easily log in to both locations from our iPhones to check on the restaurants when we’re home or on the road. Add that to the fact it was more affordable than almost every other control system, and ELAN g! is the clear winner.”
The switch to ELAN g! was coincident with an expansion of the restaurant that added a 24-seat private dining room with two wall-mounted 37-inch Panasonic LCD TVs as well as room for 3 additional tables, eight feet of bar space, one POS terminal and one new Samsung thin-bezel 37-inch LCD TV all in the main bar area. The private dining room even has its own iPod dock and VGA input so private parties can show videos on the TVs and listen to music from their own iPods or iPhones.
According to Carl Sciarrone, the project manager for renovations at both restaurant locations, 360 Media Innovations and ELAN g! were his only choice for the second location. “After working with 360 and seeing what they could do with the ELAN g! system, I knew we’d be working together again soon. Having the same system at both locations is ideal, because the owners can easily monitor everything from their iPhones. I can definitely see them integrating the lighting, security and HVAC in the future.”
The restaurant’s ELAN g! Entertainment and Control System includes an ELAN TS10 touch screen at the main bar, iPhone and iPad control, and one point-of-sale terminal (POS) with the g! control interface. Each interface device provides a live video preview function that lets the user see what is currently playing on each video source, in real time, before sending the signal to a TV. This makes it easy for the manager to change to the right video source.
The system uses the ELAN HC6 Controller, two ELAN S86P Multi-Zone Audio Controllers, an ELAN DT11 Tuner and four Crown amplifiers. The media sources include six DirecTV feeds, a Comcast Cable feed, a DVD/VCR combo, am/fm radio, SIRIUS|XM satellite radio, and two iPort iPod docks.
Currently, the g! system manages the audio and video for Delicious Heights, and can be expanded in the future to integrate control of the restaurant’s security, surveillance, HVAC and lighting systems.
"With ELAN g! we definitely write far more orders and far less code and that has made all the difference to the growth of our business," said Gale. "It’s staggering.”
