463: Restaurant Hype Man with Eater, Resy, Blackbird Founder Ben Leventhal

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. You have to say yes. If you look at the good operators, they're saying yes nine out of ten times. It's not that customers are always right. It's that when you say yes, you're inviting business in. You're inviting people to spend money. You're opening up for the possibility of more revenue. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Today on the show, I welcome back Ben Leventhal. He's the founder of Blackbird, which is a digital platform that is enabling restaurants to tap into hospitality in the coolest way. I always love having Ben in the studio. He's the founder of Rezzy. You may have heard of that. He's the founder of Eater. You may have heard of that. Ben is such a leading light in our world today and has so many thoughts on current restaurant culture. Of course, he has restaurant picks. But we also talk about how Blackbird is innovating in a very, very crowded space. It's really fun having Ben back, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:44Ben Leventhal, welcome back. This is Tastes. Great to see you. Good to be here. You're a three-timer club. It's incredible. Well, I appreciate you coming back and talking about the evolution of Blackbird. I think we have some nice – our last interview was one place Blackbird was in, but then you're at a brand new place almost a year later, over a year later. Before we get into it, though, I ask a lot of guests, and I'd love to get your take. Where are you dining out right now in New York? What's exciting you in this busy fall season? Well, I mean, the new ones are Parcell. It's been great. Yeah.

2:14The new Parcell is awesome. Super awesome. Laveau Dore is a grand slam. I think those guys knocked it totally out of the park. They like threaded the needle perfectly in terms of making that place feel like it's been there for 100 years. But at the same time, it feels very fresh. And so I've really enjoyed my meals there. And then I go back to my staples, you know, Thai Diner, Esoti, Creature Happen. There's always a Minetta McNally restaurant in your rotation, I'm sure. Less so these days, but yes. Have you checked out the memoir? Have you gotten your hands on it? I haven't. I haven't. It's a lot of interest.

2:50I had Sam Siftin in here. He's like trying to get a copy as well. I think we all are trying to get it if it's even done. You never know with Keith, but I'm sure when it comes out, it will be explosive. It will be. His gram is still a must follow for reasons. You don't have to go sign to that one. Remind us for our listeners who maybe are unfamiliar with Blackbird, and we've linked to it in our newsletter on Fridays many times, and you have a great content arm, but you're Also, you're a technology company, and we talked a lot about hospitality in the last conversation. But remind us what you're up to right now at Blackbird.

3:26Blackbird is a loyalty and payments company. We're specifically focusing on the restaurant industry. Of course, it's where I am in my element and, of course, an industry that I think needs a lot of help. Loyalty and payments because restaurants don't have good ways of connecting with their guests. And I think that the platform that we're building is the key to unlocking that. We want to give restaurants tools that allow them to connect with their guests, to get them coming back, and to have an understanding of what that costs. And so that's what we're building. We talked last time about, you know, there's like a version of this that could be like the – it's like the card that has the stamps every time you go.

4:05And on the 11th stamp, you get something free. Now, in our current age, these things don't typically work. How are you emboldening your clients, your restaurants to connect in this very busy, busy world? I mean, there's obviously some some freebies thrown in, but there's probably a little more than just that. Yeah. So I think restaurants don't have in their muscle memory just yet the ability to naturally settle into loyalty, meaning they don't do a lot of the things that we're thinking about reflexively, instinctively. And so as we've built Blackbird, what we've really been focusing on is making the process of building loyalty and deploying loyalty feel easy and turnkey.

4:49And so for some restaurants, that just means points. It just means when you show up, you earn fly rewards and you can then spend those rewards. Other restaurants are thinking about loyalty in a more nuanced or bespoke way. And they are thinking about tiered membership programs and specific gifts on specific visits. But I think at the end of the day, that's for a select few. And when we talk about loyalty at scale, what we're talking about is giving restaurants a rewards currency to spend to get customers and to get them coming back. And you talk about Fly, and that actually serves almost as like a version of USD, right?

5:29I mean, you can actually use that to pay some of your bill. Tell me a little bit about how you evolve from just giving you 20 % off or$20 off because you've been there four times, which is great, and we haven't had that, so that's awesome. But what else can you do? Well, we're talking right now, Blackbird having met a key milestone, which is that we shipped our payments product, which includes pay with Fly. So you can now use Fly, which is our rewards currency, as cash in any of our restaurants. You can spend it instead of USD. You can spend it alongside USD. And so I think we've given customers this very liquid, very useful thing to do with points.

6:13And what we'll see next is how restaurants start to deploy that and start to think about that as acquisition currency, as retention currency. But it's an important milestone for us because it makes loyalty very simple. It doesn't have to be particularly specialized. It doesn't have to be particularly nuanced. We all understand what cash back means. Absolutely. We also know about airline miles with our credit cards. And we know that if you sign up, you get 60K and you've got people covering that industry. and obviously you founded Resi, which everyone knows about. And so you're obviously a leading light in technology and restaurants.

6:48I mean, do you see a reality where you visit a restaurant for the first time and then you get like a bonus fly for just checking in and buying a meal there? A hundred percent. Yeah, that's really cool. I think once the technology becomes less, there's less friction there, right? And more people have the app. I mean, how are you getting people who don't have the app who walk into one of your restaurants? How do you introduce them to Blackbird in the restaurant? Yeah, this is obviously something we have to get good at. And I think we're doing OK with that so far. We have really good and really exciting growth that we're seeing.

7:22But a lot of it is using restaurants as a marketing tool, quite frankly. I mean, a lot of people obviously are coming through restaurants day in and day out. And they'd be very happy to earn points if they knew it was an option. So a lot of it happens at the point of arrival at the restaurant. And we're partnering with our restaurants to encourage people to download and discover Blackbird. So you've got, I know Upside is the one that comes to mind, is you've got like literally a wooden brick that you kind of check in. You kind of slide your phone over this. It could be, they use wood. It could be other materials, I'm sure.

7:55Is that how you kind of check in or can you do it as just through your reservation? Can you link your reservation with Blackbird? Well, we have an integration with OpenTable Live, and so we are doing some of that on the back end. But the check-in puck is the primary connective tissue tool that we have when customers show up. We've experimented with some other things. When you're paying the check, if you've checked in, your friends can join the check without using the puck. We want that check-in to be as seamless and frictionless as possible. I think you'll find that over time we evolve from the NFC puck to a variety of things that all create that digital handshake.

8:38I love how you've potentially avoided the QR code with the puck. I think we are pretty QR code shy. Yeah, man. I think there's a couple of spots where they're still pretty useful and they're probably the right form factor, but I would say it's not what we're leading with. I like it. No, I like what you're saying. I think we have too many QR codes in our restaurant world. I'm not saying in the world in general because it's very helpful for voting, to sign up to vote, use a QR code. I love that. But, yeah, no one wants a QR code menu either. Like, fuck that. How many restaurants do you have right now?

9:11And I know you just announced that you're exiting or not exiting. You're expanding outside of New York, other markets. We aren't getting into specific numbers. But what I can tell you, and listeners can go back and do the math. But since we last spoke, we're about 20x in terms of restaurant population. So we're growing really fast, adding restaurants at a pretty good clip now. And our next two markets are going to be San Francisco and Charleston. That's very cool. Obviously, San Francisco makes a lot of sense. It's a major five. It has a rabid restaurant scene. But Charleston, when I saw that, I was like, huh, in a good way.

9:48We were just down in Charleston earlier this year and did a great, I mean, I love Vern's. Place is dope. Let me ask you why Charleston. It's a great restaurant town. And I think we want to be every place that there's great restaurants, where people love restaurants, which ultimately means everywhere in the world. But as we think about priorities, Charleston punches above its weight class in terms of restaurants. It is a city of awesome restaurants. It is a city where the restaurant culture, the restaurant energy is fantastic. the operators, the guests, the physical spaces are amazing. And so we're excited to possibly be there precociously, but it's a great place to dine out.

10:33And so here we are. I mean, yeah, there's haters everywhere. I mean, some would call anyone precocious for entering a market as old schoolers. But I think you obviously are helping restaurants acquire customers, and that's a big part of it. Can you announce your partners in Charleston right now? We have, you know, Brooks's restaurants. We have places like Melfi's and Leon's, and we have The Daily and lots and lots of others. Awesome. So Brooks writes, that is, and he writes a great substech, by the way, on the side, but he's going to be on the show hopefully this year, maybe next. We have a lot of folks in the industry listening to the show, and thanks for listening to those guys.

11:07What do you have to say to the operators, the chefs, the folks who are looking to open? And it doesn't have to be restaurants, I'm sure, bakeries, cafes, coffee professionals. What do you say to them to kind of join the Blackbird team? What we say primarily and what I would say to any operator directly, and I say to lots of operators directly, is I think the restaurant technology industry is at an interesting crossroads. I think that we have some very, very large players where we're seeing a bloated functionality and where we're starting to see them overlap onto each other. And I think it is very dangerous for restaurants right now to lean in too aggressively to any of those platforms because there's a shift in leverage that's happening and it's slipping away for restaurants.

12:04And when you look at products like Toast and like DoorDash, which I think, to be fair, are for the most part well-meaning. I think that's changed over time. But I think when you look at those companies today, I think everyone has become aware that you can't really build predatory software and expect to win. And so I think that they are, for the most part, well-meaning. But they're colliding. And so you're going to start to pay for the same thing twice or three times. You're going to start to have less negotiating power when it comes to pricing. And you're going to find yourself with continuously eroding margins.

12:45And so I think we have to be very careful. I think this is a moment for restaurants to take a pause, to take a breath, and to figure out how to change some things up. So I'm not even exactly talking about Blackbird right now. I'm talking generally about what a good operator should be thinking about. The good news is that over the last 10 years, I think operators have gotten savvy with respect to how much their brands can matter and how much monetization of a brand, which is something we've talked about before, can be a part of the plan. And for the big guys, this has sort of come naturally. When you look at how Simon Kim does this or the major food group guys do this, it's part of the plan now.

13:32But the average restaurant must start thinking this way and must start thinking about their relationships to tech companies in a way that is much more directly beneficial to them. We can't have restaurants passively signing contracts with these humongous companies and think it's going to go well. It's not. It's not. It's not. And you mentioned a POS software, Toast. You mentioned a food delivery software, DoorDash. It could be Uber Eats. It could be any of those guys. And really, that's not what Blackboard does. But you have a general comment about technology companies that are using predatory fee escalation and clearly eroding on the bottom line, which is the name of the game.

14:16I'm really curious, too, about brand building and love to get a little sense. I know David Chang, in the depths of the pandemic, did a great podcast about this, about how he was thinking about moving outside of just in the four walls of his restaurant. CPG is huge for him now, and it's like the leading force of that brand. What are you seeing right now in the Simon Kims of the world? How are they leveraging brand? Yeah. Well, so just to set one thing clear, to be clear, I don't think those companies are purposefully being predatory. You said that you were very clear. I want to make I want to I want to not be on the record.

14:52Nodding to my statement. But look, when you think about how the savvy operators are positioning themselves, you have Simon Kim making deals in places in Las Vegas where he's not building restaurants himself. He's got partners that are providing most of the capital for these projects. He gets to be, in a much more straightforward way, kind of a storyteller, a creative person. He gets to craft these restaurants as he wishes. He's also doing things like, you know, I was just noticing the product placement he had at the U.S. Open was 10 out of 10. I mean, that is the most savvy restaurant product placement maybe I've ever seen.

15:36Explain it. I wasn't familiar. Well, you know, he's got his new fried chicken restaurant, Coco Duck. I had a concession at the Open. He did a beautiful box for it. He put three or five pieces in there. I didn't get to the open this year, so I didn't get to try it, but I saw it all over Instagram and everywhere else. He's got his concession. He's got a beautiful box for it. And he got the he got his boxes in every box to every celebrity. And they're in every photo. Look for the Coco Duck box now. You'll see it. It's a wonderful example of how savvy he is and how restaurants should be thinking about themselves in terms of brand positioning and monetization and leverage.

16:21Love that example. And big fan of Simon here. And we had a great interview a few months back. Speaking of storytelling and kind of leveraging that when growing a business, you guys do a pretty good job of that. And I want to transition to talking about the Burger League of New York, which is cool. And you are the commissioner. I know you're a big Yankees fan and you're a big sports fan. So you obviously are tipping to that a bit. But that's clearly, I would say, related to what you're saying. Tell us a little bit about this because I think it's quite cool. So the Burger League of New York is a Blackbird membership club.

16:54We invite members to taste a different burger around New York City every week. We pick the restaurant. We pick the date. and then we convene to taste the burger. You can bring a friend and over the course of the year, you can attend one or potentially all of the meetings that we have of the Burger League of New York. But these are our favorite burgers and we're excited to break bread with our members and taste them. So these are physical meetings. These are physical IRL meetings. And you're there every week? I'm not. The commissioner is not there every single week, but I'm there a lot. True. Adam Silver at the NBA is not at every game, but you're like the overall godfather, the guiding force of this thing.

17:41Listen, as you noted, I'm a sports fan, and I understand the gravity of being the commissioner, so I am taking it very seriously. Ben, let me ask you about burgers, and I love the choice. I mean, we could see this in the world where we're doing it with pizza and with tacos and with sushi, but you're kicking this off with burgers. Why is this food so special to you, and especially in New York? I think burgers is a food that people feel passionately about and that resonates so deeply because burgers are one of the few foods where you don't really have to have any background culinary knowledge or information to know whether the burger is good or not.

18:20to know whether you're tasting a great burger, an okay burger, or a bad burger. And a lot of foods, you sort of need some culinary context or some culinary sophistication to understand, is this the way this is supposed to be? Are these flavors the right flavors? Is this texture the right texture? Is this pasta cooked the right way? But burgers are universal. And so everyone gets to have a take. And I think that makes people excited and engaged. And it is what drives that passion for burgers. Yeah, well said. I think we also just grew up on fast food burgers, most of us. And I think we obviously have a real entry level.

19:04We had a Happy Meal when we grew up, but we had a Shake Shack growing up. And well said, I agree. I think pizza would probably be the next one for me. But there's so many different styles of like what is Neo versus Chicago Detroit. Back to burgers as a commish, big choices. Your first few restaurants this year, what did you end up going with? Which burgers? Well, I mean, very big choices and very big responsibility. This past Monday, we kicked it off at Diner in Williamsburg. Yes. Which is a classic, a stone cold classic. They sell like 70 % of their orders are burgers there, I'm sure. Great burger right down the middle.

19:39It's an execution burger. It is not a concept burger. We are going to Gothenburger Social Club, which is a newbie on the circuit. And we'll have a meeting of the Burger League there. will be at Ocheval and Lorac and lots of other places. These are great choices. And I think you're kind of like spanning geography and styles. What's like a concept burger to you? And do you like them? Because I feel like you're maybe don't. I think concept burgers are a good part of the, are important in the canon. Okay. There's two kinds of burgers. There's execution burgers, which are burgers that are great because of perfect execution.

20:25You put the bun and the accoutrement and the condiments and the meat and the cheese together, and it's got structural integrity. And from a flavor standpoint, it's a symphony. That's an execution burger. A concept burger is, for example, the Raoul's burger, which is an au poivre burger with brie cheese. It doesn't have to be executed perfectly to resonate as a burger, as a great burger. And in fact, lots of people call the Raul's Burger one of their favorites. It's just for me, it's a sort of one of one. And that makes it a concept burger. Do you go plant-based at all with this burger League of New York?

21:08I don't think we have any plant-based burgers. We asked Brooks to participate and I think he gave us the cold shoulder. But it's not that they don't belong in the category. I love that you are open-minded about that. I think it's really cool because plant-based has its own category. And of course, there are execution plant-based and there are more concept plant-based. So I was just on the Throwing Fits podcast, had a great time with those boys. We talked about Blackbird, which I said I really liked. And we also talked about Frog Club, which I said I really didn't like. I wonder in terms of Frog Club, what are your thoughts on this curious restaurant in New York?

21:50I think Frog Club, and if you ask Liz, I think she'll cop to this. I think it came in a little hot. First of all, it's almost impossible to open a restaurant with that much hype and that long a period of anticipation and meet expectations. I mean, it was coming soon and it was hyped as the opening of the season, I think for four seasons. It was a long time. It was. I mean, they're paying rent. Pre-pandemic. So I think she sort of positioned herself in a way where she was almost inevitably going to under deliver based on what people were expecting. I also think as a restaurant now, it's a little, you don't come in as hot as you once could.

22:36I was trying to think about what is an example of a restaurant that's come in as hot as Frog Club and done well. And I think, and you know, it has to be in, it's got to be a little neighborhood spot. I think you'd have to kind of go back to Waverly when John DeLucci and Sean McPherson took it over, which is I think 20 years ago. It's got to be almost 20 years. I think it was 06, 07, something like that. And you'd have to go that far back to find a restaurant that came in quite that hot and is still around. So I think she set herself up to fail out of the gate. But I also think now she's licking her wounds.

23:19She's she's taking a much more humble, straightforward approach. And I do believe that that will become a neighborhood staple. Well, I love your optimism. And Liz is once again invited on the show. I've invited her. She's declined. I'll say what I said on Throwing Fits. And I know that episode's behind the paywall, so it might not be repeated if you listen to both shows. I love Liz Johnson as a chef. She's so talented. I was a huge fan of Mimi doing that modern bistro food downtown well before its time. Had her food at Freeman's in L.A. I really enjoyed that as well. Respected her going over to Catbird Seat.

23:53I know she was at Noma as well. and of course I've not been to horses personally but I've heard amazing things about horses over the years I know they have two new chefs there and so it's not at all a knock on Liz Johnson Liz Johnson is a talented chef and I love what you said about coming in hot I think it just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and kind of blending this idea of the private club versus the open restaurant and having a real you know having real guardrails around it and the thousand dollar kiss of chef thing is ridiculous but anyways ways i didn't mean to go in there i wanted just to say i didn't want to be all negative about liz johnson because i know um she's uh she's super talented but ben what's the food like there like you you like it i think the food is fantastic great by the way there they are a burger league of new york participating restaurant i think the burger there is a real sleeper great to know liz come on the show let's talk about it um ben let me ask you about new york i think new york is a city that has everything, really.

24:52We talk about it all the time. But also, there's white space here. There's a lot of people who love going to restaurants and you are very tapped in. What could New York use? I think it's actually been a while since New York had a new blockbuster restaurant. You know, I think we're probably due for a big boy. And I hope that one comes soon. I mean, I've been, I was thinking back, Like, you know, Teresi's 2022. That's what I was thinking right away. Coat is 2018. Yeah. You know, Polo Bar is turning 10 this year. Yeah. Wow. Crazy. What a run there. And I don't think we've had that kind of blockbuster in a long time.

25:34I mean, 425, JG's new place is certainly a big swing. You could say La Rock is a little bit of a swing. I think La Roque is a little bit of a swing, but it doesn't have and doesn't aspire to have the kind of wattage of a Cote or of a Teresi. But I think that's what we're due for. I'm ready. Yeah, I am as well. I love these. I thought Teresi when I had Rich on the show, I was like, this reminded me of like Spice Market, the early days, like these big, bold, brash restaurants. I'd love to see more. They're really fun to cover in the job that we do here. It's interesting just to interject on Spice Market.

26:09It's an interesting way to think about how things have changed because Spice Market actually is reopening this year as Margot. In the space in the space with JG as the chef, but it's a private club. Interesting. So that space is reverted back to a restaurant. In a matter of speaking, it has. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Love that news. I didn't know that. I want to ask you a little bit about broad strokes about just dining out in New York and in any city, really. And I'd love to get your take on, you know, what's a great rule for diners to be the best guest possible? Be nice. Yeah. It's not that hard.

26:50Just be nice. Is that nice with like paying 25, 30 percent gratuity or is it just like what's a good? Sure. But it doesn't have to be. I think just some baseline civility and generosity of thought goes a long way. And I don't think there's anything that matters more. Yeah. Thank your server. Just thank them. Just say something human. Just be cool. Be human. Agree fully. On the flip side, as I said, we have a lot of industry listening to the show. As an operator, what's a great rule to be the best operator? Say yes. You have to say yes. If you look at the good operators, they're saying yes nine out of ten times, maybe ten out of ten times at some restaurants.