Happy Group Turns On Harris-Powered Restaurant Network

February 19, 2013 by Dave Haynes

There hasn’t been a lot of news out of Denver-based Harris Broadcast since word months ago that the business unit was being sold off, but here’s word of an installation in Bulgaria.

The Happy Group, described by Harris as that country’s top restaurant and hospitality group, has switched on a screen network in the 29 sites of  the Happy Bar & Grill, and its sister brands Happy Sushi and Captain Cook.

The group, says a release, has 29 restaurants across eight cities in Bulgaria. Each brand and location has a different character, with requirements for a core service of music videos, entertainment clips and promotional material tailored for each location.

The network is running on the core Harris platform InfoCaster, and centrally managed by service provider Digital Generation. “We create and schedule the content at our offices in Varna using InfoCaster Creator and InfoCaster Manager, which means all that is needed at each restaurant is an InfoCaster Player,” says Georgi Dobrev, executive manager of Digital Generation.

The InfoCaster Player at each location stores tailored content, inserts live content such as TV feeds and accepts downloaded schedules from Digital Generation. This means it runs completely automatically, and the restaurant staff need not be diverted from their normal roles. The integration of InfoCaster Manager means that, from its central office, Digital Generation can deliver content tailored to each restaurant, and even to multiple zones within a restaurant, ensuring that the programming precisely matches the customer profile of each venue. 

To allow for special events, the InfoCaster Players installed at each location include DVB-T television tuners. Individual restaurant managers can choose to show live TV if desired, for example if a local sports team was playing. In live television mode the InfoCaster Player provides branding and messaging for the restaurant. The manager also has the ability to trigger special events stored in the players, such as a “happy birthday” routine, with the name of the guest in the graphics and automatic dimming of lights. 

Harris has also been in touch saying there is some product news coming up, likely framed around DSE.