Ben Leventhal, a founder known for creating products that enhance restaurant connections with diners, has raised $50 million for his latest venture focused on innovating customer loyalty. His new startup, Blackbird Labs, offers a platform combining payments, loyalty, and blockchain technology designed to help restaurants increase repeat business and streamline transactions. With around 1, 000 restaurants already using the service, CEO Leventhal plans to deploy the new funds to launch Blackbird Club, a cross-restaurant points program, and to expand beyond its current markets in New York, San Francisco, and Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston, chosen for its exceptional restaurant scene relative to its size, serves as a strategic test market, much like New Zealand is for Meta, Leventhal explained in a TechCrunch interview. This funding round is led by Spark Capital, with returning investors Coinbase Ventures, Amex Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz, all of whom contributed to the startup’s $24 million Series A in 2023. While valuation details remain private, PitchBook estimated the company's worth at approximately $124 million in the last round; Blackbird has raised $85 million to date. Among these investors, Coinbase and American Express stand out strategically. Amex previously acquired Resy, a reservation platform founded by Leventhal in 2019. Although Resy and Blackbird are not yet integrated, Leventhal anticipates future collaboration. Additionally, Leventhal’s earlier venture, the restaurant-focused food blog Eater, was acquired by Vox, though no partnership plans exist there. Blackbird’s Flynet payment service operates as a layer-three transaction protocol built on Coinbase’s Base blockchain. Diners can pay for meals through Blackbird’s app and redeem loyalty points at participating restaurants.

Although the necessity of blockchain in the platform is debatable—since many competitors like Punchh, Toast, and Lightspeed use traditional financial systems—Leventhal emphasizes certain long-term advantages of on-chain technology. These include allowing consumers to own their profiles and transactional history, and enabling each customer to potentially become a shareholder in Blackbird, which is unique to its blockchain-based model. Despite having already founded multiple restaurant-related startups, Leventhal remains deeply invested in the sector. The restaurant industry faces intense challenges: profitability has fallen below 5%, down from roughly 20% in the early 2000s (per National Restaurant Association data), even as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok fuel consumer enthusiasm. This enthusiasm exists alongside declining margins and increasing price sensitivity, trends likely to be exacerbated by the U. S. imposing further tariff hikes. Leventhal highlights a fundamental disconnect between robust consumer love for restaurants and the industry's profitability. For startups, this gap represents a significant opportunity. Arianna Simpson, general partner at a16z, notes that millions of local restaurant owners increasingly depend on technology platforms that often charge a substantial, growing share of their thin margins. Simpson suggests blockchain could help improve these economics by enabling a network owned by both restaurants and diners—a model unique to blockchain technology. She adds that Blackbird already helps its restaurant partners save 3-4% on payment processing fees, underscoring its value proposition.