The Slow Hunch Ben Leventhal (Founder & CEO, Blackbird)
In this episode of The Slow Hunch, I spoke with Ben Leventhal, the founder and CEO of Blackbird. Ben has spent the past two decades reimagining the restaurant industry, having previously co-founded Eater and Resy.
The throughline that connects his efforts is a strong belief that restaurants are universally loved but fundamentally broken businesses—and that there must be a better way to run what is a trillion dollar industry in the United States alone.
We talked about what’s gone wrong with the restaurant business model, why most restaurants struggle to turn a profit despite enormous consumer love, and how each of Ben’s ventures has tried to close that gap—first with content (Eater), then with mobile (Resy), and now with crypto (Blackbird).
Through Blackbird, Ben is using crypto rails to build a restaurant-native platform currency: one that rewards regulars, strengthens margins, and builds more intimate ties between diners and the places they love.
We recorded this conversation in my apartment in New York, just around the corner from a restaurant I paid for using Fly, Blackbird’s currency. Few founders have followed a hunch as consistently and creatively as Ben.
Hope you enjoy!
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 Cold open: why restaurants are broken
- 00:01:10 Introducing Ben Leventhal
- 00:02:00 Ben’s slow hunch: the status quo is always wrong
- 00:05:00 Falling in love with restaurants as a kid
- 00:08:00 She Loves New York: the proto-Eater newsletter
- 00:10:30 Early blogging and New York’s indie media scene
- 00:14:00 Starting Eater with Lockhart Steele
- 00:16:00 Eater as “sports coverage” for restaurants
- 00:18:00 Why restaurateurs initially hated Eater
- 00:20:30 Scooping the New York Times
- 00:22:00 The adjacent possible and building with new tools
- 00:24:30 Leaving Eater and exploring new projects
- 00:25:50 The Resy origin story
- 00:27:30 Resy’s mobile-first wedge: outdoor seating and Notify
- 00:31:00 Selling Resy to Amex
- 00:33:00 Why Resy was restaurant-first (and OpenTable wasn’t)
- 00:38:00 The COVID reset: restaurants become brands
- 00:45:00 The idea for Blackbird takes shape
- 00:52:00 Introducing Fly: a platform currency for restaurants
- 00:56:00 How Fly helps restaurants recapture value
- 01:00:00 Restaurant regulars as shareholders
- 01:03:00 Designing Blackbird to feel like a consumer app
- 01:04:00 What’s next: AI and the future of restaurant marketing