Blackbird

Metadata

• Author: Packy McCormick
• Full Title: Blackbird
• Category: #articles
• Summary: Blackbird is a loyalty and payments platform designed to help restaurants improve profitability and customer experience. It allows diners to earn rewards and encourages restaurants to create tailored loyalty programs. By leveraging data and crypto, Blackbird aims to connect restaurants and customers more effectively, making dining out more rewarding for everyone.
• URL: https://www.notboring.co/p/3e2f454c-e3d8-48e9-a8a5-e93112050daf?updated=2024-07-30T12%3A25%3A56.931Z&free_preview=false&utm_source=substack

Highlights

• Blackbird is attempting to scale the "regular" experience – that feeling of being recognized, valued, and treated like an old friend – across multiple establishments. (View Highlight)
  • Note: Fml everything is a platform
• when all is said and done, if you’re still alive, you’re left with an average 4% profit margin, down from 20% twenty-five years ago, and very little to reinvest back into the top-notch service and photogenic scenes people now expect from their dining establishments. (View Highlight)
• First, there’s the progression of products that mirrors the diner’s journey. Discover a place to eat (Eater), make a reservation (Resy), enjoy the experience, pay, and come back (Blackbird). Second, there’s the embrace of a new technology platform before anyone else in an industry. Eater replaced print with a blog on the internet. Resy replaced desktop (and the glued-together suite of reservation management “tools” like paper notes, spreadsheets, and emails) with a mobile app. Blackbird is replacing fragmented loyalty programs and expensive payment systems with crypto rails. (View Highlight)
• 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 build a healthier industry. (View Highlight)