This week, Blackbird, a Web3-powered restaurant startup, announced that it has raised $24 million in Series A funding led by crypto team a16z with participation from Amex Ventures and Bolt by QED, among others.
With this news, the company has raised the curtain on its location and the way it works. When customers arrive at the restaurant, they initiate membership by tapping their smartphone on Blackbird’s NFC reader. From there, Blackbird issues an NFT, which acts as an ID card that tracks the customer’s relationship with the restaurant. When a customer returns and touches the NFC reader, it acts as a digital handshake that sends information related to the customer’s restaurant membership, such as first and last name, address, and dining history.
In short, the platform is designed to work without burdening the customer or the restaurant with technical knowledge. Web3 technology works in the background, creating a wallet for customers to hold their NFTs and $FLY tokens earned over time.
It’s clear from the announcement that the company isn’t relying as much on branding itself as a Web3 company but instead is emphasizing what founder Ben Leventhal sees as a friction-free, next-generation platform that helps smaller operators who may not have significant technical staff or internal resources.
“Blackbird works best if you can focus on the blockchain,” Leventhal told Spoon. “That’s important because the adoption of blockchain and the love of blockchain is clear and limited right now. And we need to create magic for all guests, no matter how they think about tech, or if they think about technology at all.”
Nevertheless, while Leventhal and Blackbird do not emphasize the Web3 support of the platform, there is no doubt that much of the buzz around the company and the reason it is able to raise money from green chips like Andreessen Horowitz in a challenging environment. precisely because is a web company3; there is a feeling among investors and early partners that the company’s technology can, in some way, improve the market for restaurant integrity technology.
I asked Leventhal if he thinks his company’s Web3 technology sets itself apart from what’s out there today. He referred to a campaign his first trial partners ran this summer in collaboration with Coinbase called Summer Sweet Pass as part of Coinbase’s OnChain Summer.
“If you’re a dessert lover, have a sweet tooth, and are in New York in August, we’ve picked out eight restaurant desserts that you can, thanks to having this pass in your Blackbird bag, enjoy. I think there’s probably a few levels of community and connection that we can empower in restaurants.”
It became clear during our conversation that Leventhal thinks his company can attract an enthusiastic – but relatively small – community that wants to use blockchain and Web3 today to get experiences in the real world while also helping restaurants build loyalty platforms with great functionality that will grow in the future while not placing any significant technical burden on their small businesses or customers.
According to Leventhal, the low technical burden is especially important for small independent users, the type of customer Blackbird targets.
“We’re trying to focus on independent restaurants to help them level the playing field against some of these, you know, more serious competitors,” Leventhal said. “The average independent coffee shop is competing with Starbucks for their customers. The average independent restaurant is competing with Sweetgreen and PF Chang’s for their customers. So they’re going to need some tools to do that effectively.”
This is Leventhal’s third restaurant startup. He founded the food news company Eater nearly two decades ago before selling it to Vox and started the reservation technology company Resy in 2013 before selling it to American Express in 2019.
I asked Leventhal how things compare today to those past times.
“Twenty years ago, and the average restaurant made ten to twelve percent,” Leventhal said. “Today, it’s three to four. So, we need to keep thinking about what the future of restaurants looks like. And for me, a big part of the problem is not around the type of reservation technology – that is now a mature and strong technology area – I think it’s about the important communication between restaurants and guests and giving restaurants to do good with their most loyal customers.”