Blackbird

That’s one of the things that’s newly possible because Blackbird uses crypto, but Blackbird works because it’s not a crypto app. It’s a restaurant platform and consumer app, built by restaurant people, that only uses crypto and whatever other tools it needs to use to make restaurants more profitable, help them understand their customers better, and... See more

Blackbird Pay is a no-brainer. Lowering payment processing fees from 3-4% to 2% improves profitability in both the short-term and long-term. Faster turnover improves profitability in both the short-term and long-term. Restaurants will adopt Blackbird for Blackbird Pay, in order to get back 1-2% of margin, which in some cases, might mean doubling ma... See more

We’ve talked about crypto very little thus far. Blackbird’s membership cards are NFTs, its loyalty token is $FLY, and network participants can earn ownership in the network with $F2, but we’ve focused on what those different products do for restaurants and their customers, not on the nitty gritty of the tokens themselves.

That is a great thing.

Blac... See more

Blackbird Pay offers restaurants a flat 2% fee on payments , versus an industry average of 3-4%.

Payments is how Blackbird will make the majority of its revenue. Ben explained that, in the short-term, they’ll lose money on some transactions (when users choose to pay with credit card and Blackbird eats those fees), and make money on others (when the... See more

While $FLY is meant to maintain a stable value or a set exchange rate, usage of $FLY earns both diners and restaurants ownership in the network, via Blackbird’s second token: $F2 . The more $FLY you hold and spend (as a diner) or hold and receive (as a restaurant), the more ownership you earn.

If Blackbird succeeds, it will succeed because it builds a product that helps restaurants in the ways that they care about. The technology under the hood is a means, not an end.

While memberships were restaurant-specific, $FLY would be a “pan-industry loyalty currency.” Every time you check in at Gertie, for example, you might receive 1,000 $FLY or 5,000 $FLY. Restaurants might incentivize certain behaviors – checking in at times that are typically slow – with greater $FLY rewards. So each time you check in at a specific r... See more

Late last year, I wrote that more great entrepreneurs would build products onchain as the trade-offs for doing so shrunk. Blackbird is the best example of that thesis that I’ve seen. It’s an app I’d use whether it was onchain or off, and a tool that restaurants use even if they’ve never heard of crypto, even if they don’t particularly like crypto, ... See more

There’s one big difference here, though. While Ben sold Eater and Resy to centralized companies, that’s not an option for Blackbird. Instead, ownership of the network of restaurants will primarily go to the restaurants themselves as the company progressively decentralizes. “Overall, the restaurant industry should own roughly half of the network,” B... See more