Dutchman Hospitality Group has employed Barix to centralise its in-store radio programming on its core IT network, transitioning to the company’s Store&Play IP audio solution to simplify the scheduling and playout of content on three of its largest retail and hospitality campuses.
Dutchman Hospitality Group, based in rural Walnut Creek, Ohio, sought a unified solution to deliver audio programming across multiple buildings to maintain a consistent and pleasant customer experience — a feat that proved impossible with separate CD players and the ‘everyone’s a DJ’ approach. The company put its IT contractor, Mark Greenawalt of Makarios Networks, in charge of finding a cost-efficient solution that would offer better control of the overhead music in each building.
“When we made the business decision to have a single source of overhead music on each campus, the challenge of distributing the audio seemed to require pulling new wires between each building,” said Greenawalt. “I discovered Barix Store&Play while conducting research, and discovered that the solution converts audio to data packets for network distribution, before converting back to audio at the playout point. Once I realised we could use our existing infrastructure, it became clear that transitioning to Barix would save a lot of time, labour and money. The devices are inexpensive, and the ease of setup made the overall transition very affordable.”
Since discovering Barix, Greenawalt has transitioned Dutchman Hospitality Group’s Walnut Creek and Sugar Creek campuses, which include multiple buildings spread across large areas, featuring a mix of retail stores, restaurants and inns. In the Ohio town of Berlin, the company is streaming music from the Berlin Farmstead restaurant to the Carlisle country inn a quarter-mile down the road, taking advantage of Barix’s flexibility in networking audio across separate, distant properties.
“Being a musician, I have to say that I’m very impressed with the sound quality,” said Greenawalt. “But the ease of configuration and reliability is what really makes this special. The Barix receiving devices plug directly into our sound systems, instead of requiring investment in new amplifiers and loudspeakers. As one representative in a two-person IT department, having a low-maintenance solution is huge. It really is a set-and-forget system, with no wires to pull and no extra materials or components required.”
