With 502 locations throughout the country and aggressive expansion plans on the horizon, KFC in Mexico wanted consistent audio content in all locations along with a simpler way to centrally manage it, turning to LEA Professional amplifiers with Cloud connectivity to help meet the challenge.
“Our business vision is about offering a nice environment for friends and families to enjoy a dine-in experience,” says Alfonso Ramirez, director of Premium Restaurant Brands, which is responsible for KFC and its franchisees throughout the country. “While drive-thru, delivery, and carry-out are very important channels for our business, the idea of families sharing, being together and eating together in our restaurants is part of the enjoyment we want our brand and stores to foster.”
“KFC is what chicken means in Mexico. A lot of families come to KFC during the week and weekends. It’s a popular destination and night out,” adds Daniel Agüero, president of Signo Corporation, the company KFC contracted to specify and install the audio platform.
KFC wanted the same audio content and ambience across all of its locations and wanted the ability to control it from one place. In a country covering 760,000 miles, the logistics behind the project were daunting. Agüero and his team first needed to assess the current state of the audio systems across the various locations and then develop a scalable approach to accommodate KFC’s plans for growth.
Signo started the process by partnering with Intéligos, an audio, video, and security sales company headquartered in Monterrey. With such a large country to cover and the looming requirement for single-source monitoring and control, Intelligos introduced Agüero and the Signo team to LEA Professional. “LEA’s products are high quality, and its technology is simple to understand and gives KFC the ability to control, monitor, and troubleshoot all locations from a single place through the Cloud. These were all key selling points for me. Intéligos handles the product, the logistics, shipping, and warehousing, and has helped ensure everything runs smoothly,” adds Agüero.
Agüero’s Signo team started with 70 stores in Phase One of the project. “We felt we had a great opportunity to make things better.” When Signo started the process 18 months ago, all of the stores played different music, at different sound levels, and in some cases, not at all. “We told the store managers to focus on their attention on serving customers. We are the experts in sound and music, and you are the experts in chicken. Together, we make a good alliance,” he says.
Intéligos recommended LEA Connect Series 354 four-channel amplifiers for each location. “We hesitated sending a lot of product into each store,” says Agüero. “We wanted to keep it simple by assigning a standard package of one LEA CS354 amplifier and a set of Sonos speakers for each location – easy to inventory, ship, and keep track of.”
The biggest advantage for Signo now is the ability to remotely troubleshoot and fix problems from any store from the Mexico City office. By leveraging a built-in Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT Core, Signo can send any LEA amps into the Cloud where they can be accessed and controlled securely without using a VPN to access a Local Area Network. “We can also easily modify music content across locations as well as schedule amplifier on/off times to coincide with store operating hours, which can help save energy and extend the life of the products,” Agüero adds.
With Phase One completed, the Signo team has developed the blueprint for the balance of the project. With baseline continuity and control achieved, KFC plans to regionalize content across their stores based on local music and content preferences to further appeal to their customers. “I think that what we’re doing right is trying to focus all our efforts on the customer experience and our employer experience as well,” Ramirez concludes. “And our belief is that if these two cycles work well, the brand can keep going and growing and we can continue expanding our footprint in Mexico. Our efforts are working and it’s what keeps our customers coming back.”
