Bosch Delivers Music for McDonald’s in China

Bosch Delivers Music for McDonald’s in China
(Image credit: Bosch Building Technologies.)

McDonald’s flagship restaurants are the newest generation of burger restaurants. Featuring menu ordering, delivery to the table, a newly-integrated McDonald's App, WeChat applet member points, mobile payment ,and electronic menus, these quick-service restaurants boast a stand-alone order-counter on the first floor, an interactive electronic game that uses vertical projection and somatosensory technology to allow kicking of a ‘virtual’ ball on the second floor, and a spiral staircase that connects the two floors.

To provide the appropriate auditory ambiance, each restaurant features a commercial sound system courtesy of Bosch.

Each of the flagships’ music and public address systems has a Bosch Plena Mixer Amplifier at its heart. This feeds to a LC6-100S-L ceiling mount Compact Sound Speaker System: a complete loudspeaker package, designed for background and foreground music in restaurants, bars, patios, and retail. It consists of a high-performance, ceiling-mount, 8-inch subwoofer module with a crossover network to support the four ceiling mount, 2-inch, satellite speakers. Easy connections at the subwoofer support either 4 ohm or 70/100 volt signals. These restaurants also will have a Plena Mixer Amplifier at the heart of their sound systems, which will feed to LC4 loudspeakers.

For each of the floorplans used by McDonald’s flagship restaurants, Bosch has designed a special configuration of the commercial speakers to deliver sound. This was developed using EASE Address, an acoustic-modelling software. “With the acoustic analysis, we are customizing the sound system for each individual restaurant, to provide nothing but the best sound in each location,” commented one of the Bosch designers.

So how did McDonald’s know that Bosch was the right choice? First, Bosch presented its extensive portfolio of sound systems throughout chain restaurants worldwide. Next, McDonald’s decision-makers were invited to Bosch’s Experience Center where they tested a variety of speakers, configurations, and accessories. The combination of Bosch's sound portfolio and the visit to the Experience Center was enough to convince the team at McDonald's that Bosch could deliver more than competing systems.

“McDonald's has invested a lot in background music, because we know that it gives customers good feelings, and good feelings bring more and better business," said Ma Lijie, Director of the Development Department for McDonald's China. "McDonald’s needs a good music system, and Bosch's wide product range meets our needs very well.”

Bosch will supply sound systems to all McDonald's flagship restaurants and some of the chain's smaller restaurants over the next several years—a period when McDonald’s plans to add many new locations in China.

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