Article

Dairy Queen marches to the Trusonic beat

QSR chain taps new in-store music provider.

November 16, 2010 by Alicia Kelso — Editor, QSRWeb.com

Care for a little blues to go with your Blizzard? How about some pop to help wash down that Grillburger?

To jazz up its customer experience, Dairy Queen has tapped Trusonic Inc. to provide in-store music with location-specific playlists.

Trusonic is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mood Media Corp., which provides Internet-delivered music and messaging services for retailers. An extensive catalog of music will now be featured via Trusonic’s Media Player at all U.S. Dairy Queen units.

The alliance is part of DQ’s national accounts program, established in 2006 to develop strategic partnerships with vendors whose products and services fit franchisees’ needs to run their businesses, according to Chris Schwanz, national accounts program manager for American Dairy Queen Corp.

In the four years since the program’s inception, the program has helped drive down costs, increase service levels and provide centralized management of DQ’s national accounts.

Other partnerships facilitated by the initiative includeDTT Surveillance and, most recently, Vendor Safe Technologies, providing surveillance and payment card processing, respectively.

Trusonic’s introduction is a bit different – not offering security or peace of mind, but rather complementing Dairy Queen’s customer experience and reimaging efforts. Trusonic’s program will be featured alongside DQ’s other approved in-store music provider, Muzak.

“Approved background music has been a requirement for all new store development for several years. Our modernization efforts have made this program very attractive for an even greater number of franchisees,” said Schwanz. “The goal is to provide a relaxing and fun environment to enjoy our products.”

As Trusonic players are installed throughout the DQ system, regional inclination will be considered with each playlist.

“Our challenge was to factor regional music preferences as well as what kind of music makes sense for a particular store concept – and we have so many,” Schwanz said. “We designed playlists which meet this need and because so many of our stores are different, one size definitely does not fit all.”

The concept of customizing playlists per region and demographics is certainly not new for DQ. But the Trusonic availability provides franchisees with more options.

“It is an important concept for our system. Our franchisees want choices but they are asking us for guidance,” Schwanz said. “By programming playlists, we give them the option to choose from a broad catalog of music and they know their selection will be appropriate for their business.”

Additionally, Trusonic’s system offers the ability to “turn off” certain tracks that may not fit the store or clientele.

“It’s customizable down to the store level,” Schwanz said.

Although Trusonic delivers a messaging platform as well, it will not be implemented at Dairy Queen at this time. However, that may soon change.

“We believe (messaging) could be a very powerful tool that we could use to communicate with our guests,” Schwanz said.

Both Trusonic and Muzak vendors offer a platform that allows the company to load a catalog of messaging content for franchisees to choose from.

“The franchisees can decide which messages they would like to run and when,” Schwanz said. “We hope to implement this in the future. We expect to have a long-term relationship with Trusonic.”

Dairy Queen’s national accounts program entails an RFP process for the selection of vendors who fit the system’s size and scope. Schwanz said Trusonic was attractive because it offered several important capabilities, including a large catalogue of private label music choices, a robust music player and the ability to service all U.S. locations.

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