Background music at restaurants is not a new concept. For many years, small or large, restaurants have been using background music to provide an enjoyable dining experience to their customers. And the practice has become a staple within popular restaurants. Some restaurants stream various music playlists, whereas some tend to have limited offerings. However, many of them fail to do it correctly. Playing a varied music playlist doesn’t mean that it is done right. This article will help you fine-tune the music for your restaurant and explain how you can increase sales with the right music that matches your restaurant’s theme. 

Why you should play music in your restaurant – benefits

The concept of your restaurant is what gives your restaurant its identity and uniqueness. For that reason, the restaurant background music should complement that concept. The music can be just as important as your staff, the decor, the atmosphere, or the food.

Researchers analyzed nearly two million transactions from 16 restaurants of known chain restaurants in 2016. The results indicate that restaurants with a carefully selected mix of music representing their culture can increase revenue by more than 9 percent. Another recent research shows that the right music can boost food and drink sales up to 40%. As you can see, the importance of music in restaurants is rising quickly and substantially.  

In a separate survey, more than 2000 restaurant guests rated the impact on their experience of brand-specific music versus random after visiting a restaurant. According to the results, guests’ satisfaction and well-being increased when they listened to brand-fit music compared to random popular music. Furthermore, getting your brand’s music wrong or inappropriate can reduce overall sales by 4%, according to the industry blog FastCasual.com. Isn’t it incredible how much impact the music has on consumption? When choosing the background music for a restaurant, owners and general managers should not ignore these numbers.

How to increase sales

When you walk into a restaurant, you’re not just there to eat. You’re there for the ambiance, the atmosphere, the music, and the food. The branding and marketing strategies that high-end restaurants use affect how we consume food and make us repeatedly go back to their restaurants and restaurant background music. Let’s discuss these techniques, which will help you retain customers and increase sales. 

Bonus Read: Does Music Increase Business Sales? 

Music and Sense of Taste

Did you know that music can affect our sense of taste? Research suggests that sound has a significant impact on how we perceive flavors. For example, high-pitch sounds are associated with sweetness, whereas low-pitch sounds bring out a bitter taste. 

Famous and high-end restaurants use this knowledge and create a playlist schedule that will impact food consumption – to their advantage. 

Soft and melodic tunes have a calming effect on people, and when this type of genre is playing, people seem to be more relaxed and enjoy the food for longer and better. On the other hand, when loud and energetic music plays, it rushes people to eat quickly and with less taste. 

To retain and bring more customers, you need to choose the music that complements both the atmosphere and the food.

Keep an eye on the volume

Always make sure to pay attention to the volume, no matter what kind of music your restaurant plays. In most restaurants, the noise level should not exceed 70 decibels (including ambient sound), while more vibrant bars can play the music that’s between 75 and 80 decibels comfortably. You want to choose a decibel level that is pleasant for your customers and employees. You can turn up the music in your restaurant if it serves late-night food or drinks (especially if it has a dance floor). Paying attention to how your guests interact with the music will help you to adjust the volume level when needed. 

You should keep the background music in the background if you’re primarily a sit-down dinner type of restaurant. As mentioned above, studies have shown that guests cannot perceive sweetness and saltiness when the music is too loud and can have a negative impact on their experience.

Speed and tempo 

The first question you should answer is, “Do I want to improve the table turnover rate, or do I want people to stay longer and spend more on high-priced items?” 

If you prefer more people in and out quickly, you need to play faced-paced music at a louder volume, which is a proven table turnover trick. Studies show that people eat faster, drink more, and leave sooner. On the other hand, when classical music or soft instrumental music is played, dinners tend to order more on high-priced food and beverages, like a vintage bottle of wine. However, they also stay longer. 

Determining what you want to achieve will help you reach your goal faster with the right speed and tempo music. Additionally, you may choose to use both techniques to achieve different purposes throughout the day.

The music should fit the time of the day

To summarise the previous two points, restaurants should use a slower tempo and lower volume background music to achieve higher sales through high-priced items. To maximize sales by improving the table turnover rate, slightly louder and faster tempo music is suggested. 

Another critical aspect of the restaurant background music is matching the music with the time of the day. Playing energetic and high-tempo music during early hours for breakfast time may displease your customers. 

For lunch rush and early afternoon, slightly energetic, fun, and light tunes in the restaurant background will most certainly please the crowd. Lunch hours, especially during the weekdays, are for business meetings or to catch up with friends. People need to have comfortable conversations during these times. 

Play vibrant, instrumental music or indie selections that complement a fun, hip atmosphere during weekday evenings between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. 

After work, your restaurant will be more popular since people can come for a drink and take a break. At dinnertime, you can try to change the music to match the ambiance you want to achieve. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think about what you want to convey. Classic rock and jazz playlists are often the right choices. Playing upbeat music at your late-night restaurant will keep your customers entertained and encourage them to stay and spend more.

Avoid leaving it to your team

Restaurants are known to be busy at most times. Taking care of your customers and preparing high-quality food does not leave you or your team much time to create playlists. 

Premade playlists are easy to use. You can even schedule the music ahead of time for the week and for different times of the day. It will allow your staff to focus on their jobs without worrying about what to play next and provide your customers with an excellent service. 

Choose the best business music streaming provider

When you subscribe to Spotify or Pandora, you may think that you can use these services to stream music over the loudspeakers in your restaurant, aren’t you? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. All businesses, including restaurants, are required to stream music that is licensed for business use. Spotify, Pandora, or any other personal use music service will not cover your music licenses for commercial use. 

Streaming copyrighted music in your restaurant without paying the necessary licensing fees could lead to severe fines and penalties.

SESAC, BMI, ASCAP, and GMR are the four Publishers Rights Organizations (PROs) in the United States. Each represents different artists and musical works, and you have to pay a fee to gain access to their music. Depending on the size of your venue and how frequently you play music, your licensing fee will differ and can be costly.

What is the simplest solution that is legal and doesn’t cost thousands of dollars in license fees? Jukeboxy.com!

• $24.99 / month
• 45+ million songs
• music licenses for business use included
• hundreds of curated playlists
• perfect for your restaurant
• try it today

The post Restaurant Music: How to Increase Sales Using the Right Background Music appeared first on Jukeboxy Blog.

Jukeboxy Manager App for Remote Business Music Management

Below is a quick video for Jukeboxy Manager App, which is the remote control app for the Jukeboxy Venue Player. The app connects to your player from anywhere in the world and let’s you manage and control the music at your business remotely. 

If you haven’t tried Jukeboxy Music for Business yet, you can try for free for 14-Days. No cc, no obligation. 

Start A Free Trial!

Thanks for visiting! 

Jukeboxy Music for Business 

The post Jukeboxy Manager App Introduction appeared first on Jukeboxy Blog.

Family-Friendly Music for Your Business. Have your customers ever complain about the music playing at your business because of not so family-friendly lyrics? 

Music is a crucial part of any business.

Good background music can and will help your business to achieve higher sales. But, it can also harm your business if it is not used correctly. 

If you are running a business where explicit music is a NO-NO, you do want to be extra cautious with the music service you choose. You may be unintentionally streaming explicit songs in your business. Especially, if you are using services like Spotify or Apple Music which are intended for personal use, not for businesses. Yes, these services provide “Explicit” content warnings, but up to a certain level. 

How Explicit Filtering Works at Jukeboxy?

We often hear the same question from the potential subscribers “Do you have explicit content filtering?” Our answer is simple “We do, and our explicit content filtering is the most reliable one in the industry”.  

How? You may ask. In 2015, we developed a state-of-the-art lyric checking and filtering system. Each track goes through multiple layers of content inspection to be tagged as clean or explicit before it makes its way into Jukeboxy playlists. 

For us, “Explicit” doesn’t mean just some curse words, it is also the context of the song. Lyrics that refer to situations or actions that aren’t suitable for all ages and businesses get the “X” from us and are being tagged as “explicit”, and in some cases, we decide not to include the track in our playlists at all. 

Did you know that there are Christmas songs that have explicit lyrics? We can imagine you wouldn’t be too happy when your customers hear an explicit Christmas song in your business. That’s why we take explicit content filtering very seriously at Jukeboxy Music for Business. 

How about businesses that do like to play explicit songs?

I can hear you asking “I have a business that my customers don’t mind hearing explicit songs. Does it mean we will never hear the original song?” Of course not!  

From Hotels to Retail Shops to Sports Bars and Restaurants,  different types of venues use Jukeboxy Music for Business. Some of our customers do want to include explicit content, therefore, we give full control to our customers to include or exclude explicit songs. 

Every account comes with explicit content “off” by default. Therefore, Jukeboxy customers hear family-friendly and business-appropriate tracks the moment they log-in to their Jukeboxy Venue Player. However, they have the option to turn the explicit lyrics on if they like to. 

Rest assured, music at your business is safe and customizable with Jukeboxy Music.

The post Family-Friendly Music for Your Business appeared first on Jukeboxy Blog.

Every day, Jukeboxy receives calls from worried business owners who have been contacted by one of the PRO’s (Performance Rights Organization) about their background music licenses. Unfortunately, there are so many businesses nationwide that are not aware of the consequences of using unlicensed background music services at their businesses. Most of these businesses use Spotify, Pandora or other personal use music services. They often think that it’s ok to use these services at their businesses because they are paying a monthly subscription fee. However, the reality is the complete opposite.

Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music are all great services, but they are not meant for businesses, they are for our personal use only. We understand that building your own music library or playlists is a great way to create the right ambience at your business, but it can cost you thousands of dollars.

Every year, businesses nationwide face legal actions because they are using unlicensed background music. On February 26th of this year, ASCAP took legal action against 13 venues across the country. Why? For unlawful public performance of its members’ musical works. You can read more about it here at ASCAP’s website.

How can you avoid a legal action from these organizations? Subscribing to Jukeboxy Music for Business will help your business to comply with the Copyright Law. It will also help you to achieve high-quality, non-repetitive, business and family friendly music at your business. Our 45+ million song library allow us to provide playlists to all types of businesses in a variety of genres, decades, mood and tempo. 

To make things easier for business owners, Jukeboxy created a program called “Transfer Your Own Playlist”. If you created a soundtrack or a playlist, you can transfer it to your Jukeboxy account for free and play it legally without worrying about any legal action towards your business. When you transfer your playlist, 100% of the tracks are matched and not filled with suggested songs. As we always say, “it’s your playlist after all”.

Let us help you to find the right sound for your venue and license your business’s background music.

To learn more about our services, call us at 844-666-5853.

The post ASCAP Sues 13 Venues Nationwide – How To Comply with the Copyright Law? appeared first on Jukeboxy Blog.

You have been dreaming to open your own restaurant for years and that dream is about to become the reality. Let’s walk through the steps of opening a restaurant and to be successful for years.

1-) Choose the Concept and Brand of your restaurant: What’s the concept of your restaurant? Is it a farm-to-table, in & out lunch spot or an upscale one? Deciding on your concept will help you determine the decoration and the atmosphere and most importantly the brand of your restaurant.

2-) Create Your Menu: Creating a menu at this early stage will help you to make the right choices from purchasing or leasing the correct equipment to hiring the right chef and sous-chefs. After the soft opening, you will have more time to tweak your menu according to what is selling and what is not. With seasonal updates on the menu, you will encourage return customers and bring new ones.

3-) Write a Business Plan: If you are planning to apply for a loan or reach out to investors, writing a successful business plan is crucial. If you are not an expert in writing a business plan, we recommend you consult with friends and family who may help you on this step. You can also hire a company that offers business plan services or use free online tools like this one that Small Business Administration offers on their website.

4-) Secure Funding: Calculate the costs of opening your restaurant, day-to-day operations for the next year and any other costs that may occur. This will help you to determine how much you will need to start and run your business and how much more you will need in the long run.

5-) Finding The Right Location: Depending on the food you are offering and your target market, finding the right spot is another crucial step that you should spend significant time on. Take your time to learn more about the neighborhoods that you have in mind and the trend in those neighborhoods. And, most importantly, know your competition.

6-) Permits and Licenses: To open any business in the United States, you must obtain several licenses and permits like federal, state and local. At this point, legal guidance would be helpful and can save you tons of time and money.

If you are planning to stream music at your restaurant, one of the licenses you’ll need to obtain is the background music licenses. A popular misconception within the business owners is that they can use their personal use services like Spotify or Pandora at their businesses. Because you are already paying a monthly fee to these services doesn’t mean you can use them in your restaurant. Streaming music from your iPod is not an option neither. These options can cost you thousands of dollars in penalties because your business is not complying with the Copyright Law.

Your options are to pay the Performance Rights Organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC to name a few) directly to obtain these licenses. However, this option may be costly and time-consuming as you will need to contact each of them directly and pay them separately.

To give you an idea, the minimum music licensing fee for restaurants is $750 per year and the fee doubles as the sq.ft of your restaurant get bigger. You may have a small restaurant for 50 people, but you will still have to pay the minimum fee of $750. 

Your other option is to find a licensed background music service like Jukeboxy Music for Business. Using Jukeboxy at your business is not only cost efficient, but it is also time-saving as you won’t have to spend time finding and/or creating the right music for your restaurant. Our curators already did the hard work to achieve the right music at any type of your restaurant, including yours.

Jukeboxy is a one-stop shop for businesses as we offer in-store audio messaging service and on-hold music service in addition to the background music. The cost is only $29.99 a month and $323.88  annually regardless of the size of your restaurant which will save you tons of money to spend on other supplies in your restaurant. 

To learn more about our services and how we can help your business with the right music and technology, reach out to us to speak with one of our representatives. We would be happy to give you advise, answer your questions and be part of your new venture.

7-) Finding Suppliers: From one-time purchases (equipment, tables, chairs, etc.) to recurring purchases, finding the right suppliers will help you to save time and money and will give you peace of mind for sure. The options are limitless, take your time, do your research, read reviews, speak with other business owners, read forums, attend food and beverage fairs, etc.

Finding The Right Staff: Depending on the size of your business, you may need staff for human resources, supervisors, buyers, cleaning staff and servers. In a restaurant, multi-tasking, working quickly and efficiently is a must. Find the candidates with prior experiences in the food&beverage industry and who can work with others under pressure in a fast-paced environment.

And…(drumrolls here)… Time to host a soft opening! Start with friends and family night and be open to all kinds of reviews, good and bad. Remember, they are there for you and to help you succeed. Then consider an invite-only event. You can invite the residents in the neighborhood, offer happy hour drink and food specials. Talk to your guests, ask them what they like, and they don’t. Improve the negatives and enhance the positives for many years of a successful business.

Leave us a comment below if you have any questions about business background music licenses or if you like to add any suggestions to future restauranteurs.

The post How to Open A Restaurant? appeared first on Jukeboxy Blog.