Audiovisual consulting, design, and installation for San Francisco offices, hotels, restaurants, and retail. We design the system, specify it, build it, install it, and support it, working from your architect's first drawings forward.
On most San Francisco projects nobody owns the audiovisual scope. The architect puts screens on an elevation without knowing where the speakers go or how loud the room has to be. The IT group wants the simplest system that stays off their desk. Nobody asks the operator what the space is supposed to do until the walls are closed, the conduit is in the wrong place, and the change order is expensive. The system goes in anyway, and then the staff cannot run it.
An AV consultant exists to stop that. We come in as the audiovisual partner on the job. The consult starts with your locations and what each room has to accomplish, we design the system around that answer, and we hand your architect and general contractor requirements they can build to. Then we install what we designed, commission it, train your staff, and support it, so one company is accountable instead of a designer pointing at an installer. We have been doing that since 2008 across corporate, hospitality, restaurant, and retail work around the Bay.
Who We Serve
Spaces we've wired across San Francisco — each built and supported by the same local crew.
From Financial District office floors to Mission dining rooms and Union Square retail, we design, install, and support commercial audiovisual systems across San Francisco, and we plan the install around how buildings here actually let you work.
Persistent fog and salt-carrying damp reach much of the city, so anything mounted outdoors gets sealed, corrosion-resistant hardware on its own zone.
Steady bay wind loads outdoor mounts and pushes sound around, so mounting hardware and speaker aiming get worked out for the exposure at the address rather than a calm day.
This is a seismic region, so displays, video walls, and rack hardware get braced and backed accordingly, and we confirm the approval path for the site.
Sun, fog, and wind change block to block here, so outdoor display brightness and enclosure ratings get specified per address instead of once for the whole city.
What we consult on
Most of our San Francisco consulting work sits in four places. The design question is different in each one, and the equipment list comes last.
Corporate teams usually arrive with a platform already chosen and a room size assumption that is wrong. Manufacturer marketing sells a system built for five people into a room that seats twenty, and everyone at the far end of the table spends a year being unintelligible on calls. So we design from the space: the dimensions, the acoustics, the wall surfaces, what happens in the room, and which platforms your people and your clients use. Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms, and Google Meet each want something different from the hardware. That gives you the microphone and camera coverage the room needs, displays sized for the furthest seat, and control that works the same way in every room. Where an internal IT group owns the network, we work with them on it rather than around them.
A hotel is several venues in one building, and treating it as one system is the usual mistake. The lobby needs sound that sets a mood without competing with the front desk. The restaurant and the bar need their own zones and their own levels. The meeting floors need conferencing that works for whoever booked the room that morning. So the design goes zone by zone: distributed audio where each area sets its own program, displays specified for the light they actually sit in, event and directory screens, and meeting rooms built around the platforms your guests bring rather than one you picked for them. San Francisco properties carry business travel and tourism at the same time, so the same ballroom has to hold a Tuesday sales meeting and a Saturday reception without a technician standing at the rack.
Two things tell you a restaurant's audio was never designed: you cannot hold a conversation, or you cannot hear what the operator wants playing. Both come from speakers mounted without accounting for direction, height, and a room full of hard surfaces, often run around the perimeter so the middle has no coverage and the edges are too loud. So audio gets zoned, with the dining room, the bar, and the sidewalk each tuned to the concept instead of sharing one master volume. Displays get placed off sightlines so a screen is a content source rather than an intrusion. Control stays simple enough that a manager can change the room without calling anyone. Parklet and patio service means weather-rated equipment on its own zone, because fog and marine damp will finish an indoor speaker in a season.
Retail and large public spaces have the opposite problem from a restaurant. The room is big, hard-surfaced, and noisy, and the message still has to land. So distributed audio gets designed for intelligibility across zones rather than volume, and paging and public address gets specified so an announcement is understood in a crowded concourse instead of merely heard. Where the space is acoustically difficult we analyze the layout before selecting anything, because the room decides the speaker type and the placement. In flagship stores and gallery-style spaces the requirement is usually that the sound is present and the hardware is not, so equipment gets concealed and coverage gets solved with placement rather than more boxes. Older San Francisco buildings limit what can be penetrated or seen, which shapes the mounting approach before a model number is chosen.
When your architect produces a first floor plan, and earlier than most people expect. There is no reason your technology partner is not at the architectural phase. By the time the venue is being built, the mark has already been missed. A project a year out does not need a large upfront spend, it needs the technology requirements in the architectural plan, because you cannot submit a clean permit set or get an honest general contractor bid without them. What the GC needs early is specific: conduit sizing, pathway plans for open ceilings, blocking and backing behind every display, power for the rack, and cooling for the AV room. Projects where we are engaged at the architectural phase see roughly 95% fewer change orders than projects where we arrive after construction has started. In San Francisco that gap is wider, because most of the work happens inside an existing building where reopening a wall means another approval and another crew.
Both, and the accountability is the point. Most consultants hand over a specification and leave, and they are not accountable for whether the room works on opening night. We design, specify, procure, build the rack in our shop, install, commission, train your staff, document the system, and support it afterward. One company, one point of accountability. Crunchy Tech started in 2008 as an AV support company before it ever designed systems, which is why the work is made serviceable on purpose: fully enclosed racks, every cable labeled at both ends, and power separated from audio and data. We will quote a fixed bid once the scope is genuinely settled, and we will tell you when a fixed number is going to cost you more than the design work would have. Equipment rentals, video production, and livestreaming are not services we offer, so what we design is a permanent system you own and we maintain.
They set the mounting approach and the schedule before anyone picks a screen. A large share of the building stock here is old and some of it is protected, street access is tight, and freight and work windows are often restricted by building management, so we plan the install around what the building allows rather than discovering it the week we mobilize. This is also a seismic region, so anything heavy hung overhead gets braced for it and the structural backing is designed in rather than added later. Historic review applies at some addresses and not others, and we confirm the approval path per site as part of the design work. None of that is a problem when it is handled in the drawings. All of it is expensive when it surfaces during construction.
You get drawings and documentation your trades can build from rather than a recommendation memo: system elevations and equipment locations, signal flow and single-line drawings, an equipment schedule, conduit and pathway requirements, power and cooling requirements, mounting and structural backing details, and network requirements. On new construction our drawings go into the general contractor's permitting set, so the technology is reviewed alongside the building. For timing, engineering and design run two to three weeks after contract, equipment lead times land at thirty to forty-five days, and a new build is usually nine to twelve months from that point to opening. If you already hold a bid-spec document, we will read it first and give you an honest read on what is missing, since a bid spec is only as good as whoever wrote it and it usually originates with someone unqualified to write it.
Client successes drive Crunchy Tech to become better. Below is how our customers feel about us.
Just do it. Spend the money. It’s well worth it. It’s not worth your time, hassle, energy, and stress of trying to make it look right and do it right when there’s somebody who has been doing it for years and has perfected the craft.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy's AV Services are outstanding. Staff members are experts, who really extend themselves to find the right technology for helping us reach our marketing goals in creative ways. The best thing about working with Crunchy is collaborating with the staff – they are patient, responsive, knowledgeable, and available.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The work Crunchy has been doing is a game changer for this industry.
Being able to reuse the existing structure created a much lower cost for the client and they were ecstatic.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
Just do it. Spend the money. It’s well worth it. It’s not worth your time, hassle, energy, and stress of trying to make it look right and do it right when there’s somebody who has been doing it for years and has perfected the craft.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy's AV Services are outstanding. Staff members are experts, who really extend themselves to find the right technology for helping us reach our marketing goals in creative ways. The best thing about working with Crunchy is collaborating with the staff – they are patient, responsive, knowledgeable, and available.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The work Crunchy has been doing is a game changer for this industry.
Being able to reuse the existing structure created a much lower cost for the client and they were ecstatic.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
We don’t sell you what we have. We design what you need. That line is the operating principle I’ve built Crunchy Tech around for the last 20 years. And it’s the single sentence that separates us - and the small handful of firms like us - from the other 97% of the commercial AV industry.
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There’s a pattern I’ve watched play out for 20 years in hospitality AV, and it always ends the same way...
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"Where's my quote?"
Read article arrow_forwardTell us about the project: the address, the phase it is in, who the architect and general contractor are, what is decided and what is still open. If construction has not started we work from the drawings. If it has, the consult starts with your locations and what each room has to do, and it includes a site visit to confirm what the building and the jurisdiction will allow, then you get one engineered consulting scope back rather than a parts list.
