The Crack Shack, a San Diego-based casual restaurant chain that offers organic, locally-sourced chicken and egg dishes, recently opened its first location beyond California, taking its place amongst the fierce competition on the Las Vegas strip. With the intention to dazzle Las Vegas-style, The Crack Shack invested in Audio/Video solutions controlled by Xantech’s Video over IP Platform and ELAN.
“Being located at the Park MGM, Las Vegas’s newest hotel and casino, The Crack Shack’s owners knew they needed to go big to attract attention and fit the city’s over-the-top aesthetic,” IT and automation professional Zack Paradise of Paradise InfoTech said. “We designed and installed a 25-foot wide, eight-panel video wall, easily controlled by Xantech, that can show multiple broadcasts simultaneously. Managers can easily show multiple sporting events and toggle through them instantaneously by using the ELAN platform’s easy control of the Xantech VideoWall features.”
The main dining area features the largescale video wall, while a smaller four-panel video wall is mounted in the restaurant’s outdoor patio area. Both video walls use the Xantech Video over IP platform to deliver content streams from multiple DirecTV and Cable boxes located in an equipment room.
Additional video displays present menus and other digital signage content delivered by a Raspberry Pi running proprietary Digital Signage software, which is also routed through the Xantech solution and controlled through ELAN automation.
Every Crack Shack location – six in total – operates its audio and video networks through the same ELAN control system, allowing owners to quickly and easily monitor any of their restaurants from anywhere in the world through the ELAN mobile app. This gives them instant access to live surveillance camera feeds in addition to showing the content being displayed on each TV and the music being played through the speakers. Every function can be controlled remotely, so if the occasion calls for it, a restaurant’s audio and video can even be adjusted by management offsite.
“Over the last four years I’ve worked with the owners to integrate audio, video and surveillance systems by ELAN at all six of The Crack Shack locations,” Paradise said. “The industry has steadily become more and more AV-centric. Especially in high-competition markets like Las Vegas, restaurants are providing enhanced environments and control for their management staff with technologies such as video walls, digital signage, 24-hour surveillance and multi-zone audio that can be controlled from a smartphone.”
Even though new employees in Las Vegas hadn’t used the ELAN system before, they were up and running within 20 minutes because it’s so simple to operate. “There is huge value in having an easy, fast solution to manage audio and video that is identical across multiple locations, and I expect the brand to continue integrating ELAN systems and Xantech Video over IP as it expands to future locations,” Paradise concluded.
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