Blackbird Labs launches Web3 platform for restaurant payments

Blackbird Labs, a hospitality-tech startup founded by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, launched a Web3 payments platform for restaurants called Blackbird Pay, according to a July 30 announcement. 

Built on Blackbird’s new blockchain network, Blackbird Flynet, the platform gives restaurants a “way to address the ever-growing problem of shrinking margins and eroding cash reserves by providing them with their very own end-to-end payments and check settlement network for the first time,” according to the statement.

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Blackbird Pay is designed to cut settlement times and reduce transaction costs for restaurants to an average of approximately 2% per transaction. It also allows diners to pay in FLY, Blackbird’s native token, which is issued as a reward on the platform, according to the statement. Currently, transaction fees for restaurants run as high as 4%. 

In the last decade, restaurant technology has “made virtually no progress with payments, which tend to be expensive, cumbersome, and technologically opaque for most restaurants,” Leventhal said.

Blackbird Pay enables diners at member restaurants to pay directly from the Blackbird app using credit or debit cards, FLY tokens or US Dollar Coin (USDC). The app also assigns a unique Guest Value Score to each user, which member restaurants can use as a basis for custom points, benefits and perks programs, Blackbird said.

Web3 startups are gaining ground in the dining industry, with potential use cases ranging from cutting costs to managing rewards programs to gamification. Existing players include DevourGO, a Web3 food delivery service. Sales for US restaurants are expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time in history, according to the National Restaurant Association. 

Roni Mazumdar, co-owner of Unapologetic Foods, said BlackBird and similar services could enable restaurants to “save thousands of dollars a month in processing fees.”

Blackbird is also developing messaging and discovery applications for restaurants, including programs like Blackbird Breakfast Club and Bar Blackbird, which are designed to drive traffic to restaurants during slow periods, the company said.

The company raised $24 million in a Series A venture funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Current restaurants on Blackbird include Barbuto, Crown Shy, Momofuku, Nom Wah, and Saga in New York; Leon’s in Charleston; and Birdsong in San Francisco.