Blackbird Labs

Restaurants are supposed to spark joy. For most of us, they’re our happy place. One thing that could use some work? How we pay. The flagging, the waiting, the splitting – it's a cat-and-mouse game that can make a good meal suddenly feel exhausting. That’s why we’re excited to announce Blackbird Pay, a new frictionless feature that not only makes waiting for the check a thing of the past, but makes paying for a meal feel magical. Check in at the Blackbird puck to immediately open a check, split the bill among friends and set your tip, all from the app, and when you’re done, you simply get up and go. Vault a card to start testing Blackbird Pay at select restaurants (filter the in-app map by “Blackbird Pay” to see where), or choose to pay with $FLY, our universal reward currency. Read all about Blackbird Pay in this Fast Company piece by Kristen Hawley. https://lnkd.in/e4RHzJXQ

Being part of Blackbird means exclusive and unique experiences. All through the magic of $FLY. This fall, we’re bringing both coasts together to celebrate Cantonese cuisine for a one-of-a-kind experience. We’ve partnered with Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s and Calving Eng of Brooklyn’s Bonnie’s to come together with a seven course menu. 🐉 Dragon Feast SF:  Date: October 23  Location: Mister Jiu’s Book Here: https://lnkd.in/evhzS_p4 🐉 Dragon Feast NY:  Date: Nov 12 Location: Bonnie’s Book Here: https://lnkd.in/eaG8gXFp Score reservations for night one in SF or night two in Brooklyn (or both!) and check in and pay with Blackbird (make sure to add a payment card in advance). Tables available for parties of 2 - 6 from 6 p.m. Link in bio to book your reservation. See you there 🤜🤛

Affinity lanes are a natural community-building hack. Create clubs around what people care about, and you’ll get some pretty passionate people to join – the whole, ‘if you build it, they will come’ thing. All of which drives more guests into more restaurants. Which is why this month, Blackbird has expanded our Breakfast Club in two cities – NYC and Charleston. 📍 NYC - This is the fourth drop in our beloved city where we’re fueled by our beverages. This time, we’ve expanded to new neighborhoods (Hello UES, UWS + Brooklyn 👋), unlocked new benefits like exclusive runs with Dirty Bird Run Club, and added local favorite spots like Maman. 📍 Charleston - We set our eyes on Charleston a year ago because of its incredible local F&B community and both locals and tourists prioritizing dining out regularly. We’re excited to be part of the local’s daily schedule as they check-in to get their coffee (or tea) every morning at some of their favorite spots. By joining the Breakfast Club, members unlock coffee (or tea) everyday, get access to members only events, exclusive merch and other surprises. All for $25 a month! If you haven’t already joined the club, get yours here: ▶ NYC: https://lnkd.in/eFn-vdWW ▶CHS: https://lnkd.in/e5SYed5F

An update on $FLY and what it means for both restaurants and guests.

Restaurants are a notoriously hard business. 60% fail in the first year. 38% are not profitable. The average margin has dropped from 20% to 4% over the past 25 years. The restaurant industry operates on a fundamental paradox: it's a business of hospitality, predicated on making each customer feel special, yet it's also a volume business that requires serving as many customers as possible to remain profitable. If you’ve watched season three of The Bear, you’ve watched this paradox play in excruciatingly high fidelity. It’s Richie versus Computer. Five-star hospitality versus cold-hard numbers. Blackbird Labs is what you’d get if Richie and Computer had a baby: scaling personalized hospitality with data. It's a crypto app that doesn't feel like a crypto app. It feels like a restaurant app. Loyalty & Payments. Onchain AmEx. Read all about it in this week's Deep Dive. https://lnkd.in/eSUiYjap

The best new burger you’ve probably never heard of? Cowy Burger, a smashburger pop-up outfit from Miami that won this year’s Burger Bash at South Beach Wine & Food Festival. It’s a winner, and you’re a winner, so Blackbird is bringing them to The Standard Biergarten in Meatpacking for a three-day pop-up, July 19-21. You need a Blackbird x Cowy Burger access pass and a card on file in the Blackbird app. Simply check in when you arrive and see if you don’t agree that this burger is worth the hunt. blackbird.xyz/cowy

On the analogue magic of Zagat, how humans have discovered restaurants through the years, and our new "For You" Discovery feed. #restaurants #taste #discovery #tech #longread https://lnkd.in/erB-eEJH

For our Sunday read, we sat down with cook, recipe developer, social media star, and entrepreneur Nadia Caterina Munno, aka “The Pasta Queen” to talk growing up on a farm in Italy, eating pizza for breakfast in Rome, and falling in love with Yorkshire pudding. #restaurants #food #content #longform https://lnkd.in/euH5ezjk

Have you ever spotted a clock in a restaurant? We're guessing the chances are no. In our experience, rarely do we spy a clock in the dining room. Turns out, that's by design, albeit an unwritten rule of sorts. To get to the bottom of this mystery, we turned to a few trusted operators in the space like Upside's Noam Grossman, Shy Bird's Eli Feldman, The Odeon's Lynn Wagenknecht, Kurt Huffman of Chef's Table Group, folks at Roaul's, Sant Ambroeus, and others. See what secrets they revealed via the link below. "KDS screens. POS screens. Reservations. The front and back of house are riddled with clocks. They’re constantly in the back of our mind or staring us in the face. In a lot of ways, a restaurant is just a race against time – perishability of food, perishability of a seat. The tension of working in restaurants is predicated on clocks. Time is critical, but you’re trying to make it disappear at the same time for your guests. That’s the magic trick. That’s one of the things that makes this business so hard." #hospitality #restaurants #tech https://lnkd.in/eyHvsukf

Where did all the buy backs go? A deep dive on the best bar perk around, what happened to it, and why with a little graciousness you might still be able to unlock one, as told by our industry friends from PDT, Romeo's, and King Tai. https://lnkd.in/eM2a5Hvm