Blackbird gobbles up $50M for its blockchain-based payment-loyalty app for restaurants

Summary

A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million for his latest startup: a new take on the idea of customer loyalty. Blackbird Labs has built a payments-meets-loyalty-meets-blockchain platform for restaurants to grow repeat business while reducing some of the friction around transactions. Now, with with some 1,000 restaurants signed up, CEO Ben Leventhal said Blackbird plans to use the money to launch its newest product, a cross-restaurant “points” service it’s calling Blackbird Club, as well as to expand into more markets outside of New York (its Homebase), San Francisco and Charleston, South Carolina. (Charleston, you ask? “Charleston punches above its class,” Leventhal said in an interview. “It’s a great restaurant city for its size.” It also appears to the be Blackbird’s equivalent of New Zealand for Meta, with Leventhal calling it “a good test market for us.”) Spark Capital, a new backer, is leading this latest round, with participation also from Coinbase Ventures, Amex Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, three investors that backed Blackbird in its $24 million Series A in 2023. Valuation is not being disclosed but for a point of reference, PitchBook notes that the startup was valued at around $124 million in that last round. The startup has raised $85 million to-date. Coinbase and Amex are strategic names in that list. Amex acquired Resy, a reservations platform that Leventhal previously founded, in 2019. The two companies — Resy and Blackbird — are not integrating now but “It’s fair to say we will,” Leventhal said. Previous to Resy, the third restaurant-focused startup Leventhal founded, the food blog Eater, was also acquired: it’s now part of Vox. No plans on how and if to partner there. Meanwhile, Blackbird describes its Flynet payment service as an layer-three transaction protocol built on Coinbase’s BASE. Diners can use it to pay for meals at the table via Blackb...