A founder who has carved a name for himself by building products to help restaurants best connect with possible dinners has collected $ 50 million for his last start: a new receipt of the idea of client loyalty.
Blackbird Labs has built a payment-making-layyy-taket-blockchain platform for restaurants to increase recurring business while reducing some of the frictions about transactions. Now, with about 1,000 registered restaurants, CEO Ben Leventhal said Blackbird plans to use the money to start his newest product, an inter-restaurant “point” service he is calling Blackbird Club, as well as expanding to more markets outside of New York (his Homebase), San Francisco and Charleton.
(Charleston, you ask? “Charleston punches over her class,” Leventhal said in an interview.
Spark Capital, a new supporter, is leading this last round, also participating by Coinbase Ventures, Amex Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, three investors who supported Blackbird in his $ 24m series in 2023. The rating is not being discovered, but for a landmark, the beginning of the beginning was estimated at about $ 124 million. The beginning has raised $ 85 million to date.
Coinbase and Amex are strategic names on that list.
Amex won Resy, a reservation platform that Leventhal established earlier, in 2019. Both companies – Resy and Blackbird – are not integrating now, but “it is right to say we will do,” Leventhal said. Before Resy, the third start -up at the restaurant, Leventhal founded, The Food Blog Eater, was also won: now part of Vox. No plan on how and if partnership there.
Blackbird, meanwhile, describes its Flynet payment service as a layer -built transaction protocol at Coinbase’s base. Dinners can use it to pay for the tables through the Blackbird app, as well as to repurchase loyalty points when visiting restaurants.
It is worth asking if the blockchain was strictly a necessary part of the mix? There are many other loyalty and market pay programs – include a number that are direct competitors to Blackbird such as Punchh, Toast, LightSpeed, etc. – that are built into more conventional financial structures.
“I don’t think necessarily” should be built on blockchain, “said Leventhal.” Visa network, more or less, was created using the same principles we are using for the flynet, and they obviously did not have blocchain. ”
But he also stressed that “there are some things that we believe that over time will be important opportunities, and those opportunities will be based on being in the chain.” These include how Blackbird and restaurants keep customer profiles and activities, he said. “Customers will be able to continue to own that profile.” He also has to do with how Blackbird envisions his engagement with restaurants, he said: Customo restaurant client will ultimately be a Blackbird shareholder.
You may think that with two startups dedicated to the restaurant’s customer’s customer that Leventhal could have filled his business. As it turns out, he is still hungry for more.
Restaurants have long been a challenging enterprise, but the economy and change of customer habits have particularly knocked the world of restaurants around many in recent years.
Leventhal quotes figures from the National Restaurant Association that note that the average benefit of restaurants these days is below 5%, compared to an average of about 20% in early noughties.
While platforms like Instagram and Tiki have turned the world into armchair foods, producing legions of people who virally accumulate in the latest and most delightful cafes, they are doing so in the midst of a time of rapid downward limits and the sensitivity of rising prices. These are areas that will only become tougher if the US really is blocked in its latest tariff growth.
“There is a break in the restaurant industry between the popularity and intensity of consumer love for restaurants and ultimately the benefit of the industry,” he said.
This detachment, of course, in initial thinking means possibility.
“The restaurant industry is made up of millions of local, small business owners worldwide. Those restaurants are at the mercy of technology platforms that can charge a large, increasing, growing percentage of a restaurant,” Arianna Simpson’s general partner told A16z Crypto, Techcrunch told email.
She believes this is especially when blockchain can play a role: improving that margin structure. “Ben’s vision is for a network owned by restaurants and dinners itself, which is something that only enables blockchains.” Today, Blackbird is already saving its 3-4% restaurant customers in payment processing fees, she added.
