You know that awkward moment when dinner's over but the cheque hasn't arrived? Everyone's ready to leave, wallets are out, and someone inevitably asks:
"Should we just split it evenly?"
Then begins the tedious dance of multiple cards, mental math, and trying to figure out who owes what for a tip.
A restaurant platform called Blackbird has a simple solution: tap your phone on a small black disc, and just like that, the check appears instantly. Split it however you want, add individual tips, and you're out the door in seconds. No flagging down servers, no calculator apps, no "I'll Venmo you later."
But that little tap isn't just about faster payments. It's part of a bigger idea: what if your loyalty to restaurants could actually travel with you?
Most loyalty programs are trapped within single chains. Your Starbucks stars don't work at the local coffee roaster. Your pizza place points can't buy you a cocktail at the wine bar next door.
Blackbird is trying to change that by creating restaurant rewards that work everywhere in their network.
What is Blackbird?
Blackbird lets you earn rewards at any restaurant in their network and spend them anywhere else in that same network.
Over 1,000 restaurants are already on board.
Tap your phone on their NFC disc, earn tokens, use those tokens at any participating restaurant.
The platform comes from Ben Leventhal, who previously founded and sold both Eater (the food blog) and Resy (the reservation platform that Amex acquired). His track record in restaurant tech gives Blackbird credibility in an industry that's notoriously difficult to penetrate.
ππΌDownload the Blackbird app.
How Blackbird Actually Works
The Check-In: When you arrive at a Blackbird restaurant, you tap your phone on one of their NFC discs β they call them "pucks" β usually sitting at the host stand or on tables.
First time? You'll enter your name and phone number. After that, just tap and go. The app opens a tab and starts tracking your visit for rewards.
Earning $FLY: Every meal earns you $FLY tokens, Blackbird's restaurant currency. Yes, like the airline miles. You also earn tokens for updating your profile, referring friends, or other small actions. The tokens work at any restaurant in the Blackbird network, not just where you earned them.
Paying the Bill: When you're ready to leave, everything happens in the app. Apply your $FLY tokens, split the cheque with your tablemates, add tips, and cover the rest with your regular credit card. The whole process takes about 30 seconds, and restaurants save money on processing fees compared to traditional card payments.
Building Status: The more you dine within the network, the more the restaurants know about you. They get something called a Guest Value Score that helps them identify locals and frequent diners.
You might get recognised faster, offered specials, or simply receive better service because the staff knows you're a regular.
The Technology Infrastructure
Blackbird operates on Flynet, a Layer 3 blockchain built on top of Coinbase's Base network. This infrastructure handles all transactions, check-ins, and reward distributions. The blockchain architecture enables micro-transactions that would be uneconomical on traditional payment networks.
Like earning small amounts of $FLY for simple actions.
The system uses account abstraction, meaning users sign up with just a phone number. The app creates a crypto wallet automatically in the background, handling all blockchain interactions without exposing users to seed phrases or private keys. From the user perspective, it functions like any standard mobile app.
Flynet operates with two tokens: $FLY and $F2.
$FLY serves as the rewards currency redeemable at restaurants, while $F2 functions as the network's native gas token for transaction fees. Blackbird has announced plans to airdrop 13% of the $F2 supply to early users and participating restaurants based on activity metrics.
Restaurant Programs and Features
Building Regulars: Instead of generic "buy 10 get 1 free" deals, restaurants create more personal progressions. At Gertie's in Brooklyn, first-time visitors get a free cookie. By your fifteenth visit, you have your own personalised mug waiting behind the bar. It's the kind of treatment that makes you feel like an actual regular, not just another loyalty card number.
House Accounts: Some restaurants offer prepaid packages for their biggest fans. Put down $10,000, get $10,000 in dining credit plus perks like priority reservations and exclusive events.
It's win-win: restaurants get working capital upfront, customers get treated like VIPs.
City-Wide Clubs: Blackbird organises programs across multiple venues, like "Breakfast Club" or "Bar Blackbird." Join one, and you get special access at a whole network of restaurants. Members get special menus, early event access, branded merchandise, and enhanced $FLY earning rates.
Competitive Positioning
The restaurant loyalty space includes established players like Toast, Paytronix, Square Loyalty, and Thanx. These platforms typically focus on individual restaurant optimisation with features like email marketing automation, targeted promotions, and detailed analytics.
Blackbird isn't the only one experimenting with crypto-powered loyalty, though they're definitely the most restaurant-focused. Burger King's Royal Perks let customers earn actual Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin for their orders. These are, more about cryptocurrency rewards than a full loyalty overhaul.
Some restaurant chains have tested private blockchain systems for group deals and instant rewards, though these are usually small experiments rather than complete platform makeovers.
Bigger loyalty programs like Singapore Airlines' KrisPay, American Express, and Rakuten have added blockchain features that work with restaurant partners too. Tokenised rewards are catching on across different industries, though these tend to be add-ons to existing programs rather than starting fresh with blockchain.
The closest thing to Blackbird's "work everywhere" approach was Seated, which let you rack up points across different restaurants when making reservations. But Amex bought them out and merged them into Resy, and it was mainly about booking tables rather than the full dining experience.
Resy does offer some cross-restaurant perks through Amex partnerships, but you need the right credit card and it's mostly reservation-focused, not full-service loyalty.
What makes Blackbird stand out is how it combines "works everywhere" rewards with features built specifically for restaurants. While other platforms might dabble in blockchain or work across multiple spots, Blackbird designed everything from scratch with restaurants in mind. Your regular status actually follows you to completely different restaurants, and the whole experience, from that first tap to paying the bill, revolves around making dining better.
The payment part is also different. Most platforms work alongside your regular credit card processing. Blackbird replaces it completely, which is how they can charge restaurants less while keeping everything seamlessly connected.
The Business Side of Things
Blackbird makes money from those payment processing fees, taking about 2% compared to the 3-4% that traditional credit card companies charge. For restaurants already operating on razor-thin margins (industry average profits have dropped from 20% in the early 2000s to under 5% today), saving 1-2% on every transaction actually matters.
The $FLY token system creates incentives for customers to return to any Blackbird restaurant, not just their original favorites. Restaurants get access to customers who were acquired through other venues in the network, expanding their potential customer base without additional marketing costs.
The platform also provides customer data that helps restaurants understand visit patterns, spending behaviour, and which perks actually drive repeat business. It's like having a CRM system specifically designed for hospitality.
The $50 million funding round is going toward expanding beyond their current three cities. Charleston, South Carolina serves as their testing ground for smaller markets. It has a surprisingly strong restaurant scene for its size, making it perfect for validating whether the concept works outside major metros.
They're also developing something called Blackbird Club, which sounds like Amazon Prime for restaurants. Pay a subscription fee, get dining perks across the entire network. If it works, it could create steady subscription revenue while driving customer loyalty across multiple venues.
Integration with OpenTable lets restaurants see your Blackbird history when you make reservations, so they can recognise valuable customers even before you arrive. Strategic partnerships with companies like Amex (which owns Resy, another Ben Leventhal creation) and Coinbase could enable even broader integration with existing restaurant and payment ecosystems.
Why This Works?
The restaurant industry has been getting squeezed from all directions. Delivery apps take 15-30% of orders. Payment processors take another 3-4%. Marketing costs keep climbing while customer loyalty fragments across dozens of different apps and programs.
Blackbird's approach tackles multiple problems at once: lower payment processing costs, better customer data, portable loyalty that drives network effects, and faster table turns through streamlined payments.
For an industry desperate for better unit economics, that combination could be compelling?
The physical-digital integration feels natural rather than forced. One tap starts the digital relationship, but the focus stays on the actual dining experience. The Guest Value Score helps restaurants provide more personalized service without requiring staff to memorize every customer's preferences.
Most importantly, it solves a real problem for diners. Instead of juggling multiple loyalty programs that don't talk to each other, you get one system that works across an entire network of restaurants. Your regular status becomes portable, and your rewards actually add up to something meaningful.
Whether Blackbird can reach the scale needed to make this valuable for both restaurants and diners remains to be seen. But in a world where every meal generates loyalty points that disappear into single-brand silos, the idea of universal restaurant rewards is appealing enough that it just might work.
Iβll see you next week with another cool product.
Until then β¦ DYOR and make wise decisions.
Thejaswini
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