- 4 weeks ago
Ben Leventhal, founder and CEO of Blackbird, believes restaurants are entering a new golden age. After helping reshape hospitality with Eater and Resy, he's now focused on helping restaurants build stronger guest relationships and long-term loyalty.
Watch now to learn why Ben Leventhal believes restaurants are entering a new golden age, how loyalty is evolving and why guest relationships matter.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
Watch now to learn why Ben Leventhal believes restaurants are entering a new golden age, how loyalty is evolving and why guest relationships matter.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The future of food media, the past of food media, the present of food media is always about
00:05storytelling. There's no question that storytellers win. Exactly! Preach. Preach. Preach. Preach.
00:12Preach. Preach to a mirror. Preach. Preach girl. Preach!
00:15Preach. Preach. Preach to the home.
00:26Welcome to Restaurant Influencers presented by Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Sean Walchup.
00:30This is a Cali BBQ Media production in life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator
00:37economy. We learn through lessons and stories. We launched this podcast in 2022. This was our
00:43second show. We partnered with Entrepreneur. We partnered with Toast so that we could tell
00:48the greatest stories in hospitality. Technology stories, hospitality stories, creator stories,
00:53and I couldn't tell you how excited I am because today's guest is Ben Leventhal. He is the co-founder
01:00of Eater. He's the co-founder of Resi, and now he is the founder of Blackbird and CEO. Ben,
01:08welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
01:10I have a deep belief that this is right now, 2026, where we're recording this podcast.
01:18We are entering the greatest era for restauranteurs in terms of profitability. I believe that we
01:26are so close to unlocking the potential that restaurants have, as you know, as someone that's
01:34covered them since the beginning times at Eater and doing the work that you've done at Resi
01:38and now with Blackbird. Restaurants trade well above their multiple when it comes to brand.
01:44Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
01:47Strongly agree.
01:49Why?
01:51Well, we're seeing it happen. I mean, I couldn't agree with you more that we are in the very early
01:58innings of a new age. I think that this is going to be seen as a golden age for restaurants
02:03where
02:03they take control of profitability in a way we haven't seen in a long time. And I strongly believe
02:09that brands going to lead the way. And if you look at how really savvy operators are operating today
02:16in any city around the country and some around the world, they're leading with brand. They're selling
02:22things other than food on a plate. They're telling stories in new ways. And consumers are responding.
02:28The great news and the tailwind on all this is we see the consumer appetite for restaurants is at
02:34all-time highs. The enthusiasm online, in-person is through the roof. And restaurateurs are starting
02:44to figure out how to harness that into real profitability.
02:47So as someone as the self-proclaimed hype man for restaurants, you've built your career celebrating
02:55the success and failures of restaurants. Why are you betting that restaurants and operators like
03:02myself understand the blockchain?
03:05I don't think that restaurateurs necessarily understand the blockchain, but the goodness is
03:10they don't have to. I mean, blockchain is just a technology. We think of it as infrastructure,
03:16the same as cloud computing, the same as AI. Restaurateurs chefs don't have to understand it.
03:22They just have to have at their disposal tools that make their business better. And if companies
03:28like Blackbird are using blockchain and other leading edge technologies to get them there,
03:35all the better. But in the same way that I don't have to understand the best way to serve a
03:42medium or steak Pittsburgh style, restaurateurs don't have to understand blockchain. They just
03:47need to know where to find it.
03:49So I own and operate restaurants here in San Diego. We built a B2B media company on top of our
03:55restaurant for the last 10 years. I like to think of us as bleeding edge. We innovate many tech. We
04:00work with some of the greatest tech providers on earth. In 2021, we partnered with a company called
04:06Juicer. They're no longer in business, but we did dynamic pricing. We rolled out dynamic pricing. We
04:13were actually featured in a Wall Street Journal article on surge pricing. It was around the same
04:18time as the Wendy's scandal came out. And by Wendy's scandal, it was really just a shareholder earnings
04:25report. I thought I was bleeding edge, but it turns out the more research I did, you were doing dynamic
04:31pricing back at Resi. What made you pivot back then? And tell me what will need to be true for
04:40you to pivot as far as positioning goes with blockchain, with BlackBerry.
04:46You know, it's funny. I remember Juicer. I met with the founders when they were rolling that out. And
04:52the feedback I gave them at the time was, I wasn't really sure if it was going to be palatable
04:57to the
04:58consumer. I think that definitely not. The idea of dynamic pricing and yield management through
05:06pricing in that way, it's an idea that has appealed to entrepreneurs of every generation,
05:14probably since the dawn of time. But restaurants are packaged in a more democratic way, a little bit
05:23more egalitarian. And I think when you start to make it clear that you're willing to price the same
05:30thing in different ways for different consumers, it becomes a little bit hard for consumers to wrap
05:40their heads around. And we definitely saw that in the early days of Resi. Obviously, as you said,
05:46we priced 730 reservations differently than we did 531s. And in some cases, it worked really well.
05:55There are some consumers who are all in on dynamic pricing because they want to pay for what they
06:00want. But others have a different take, which is that I shouldn't have to pay more to get the thing
06:07that should be the same price. I don't know what the right answer is. I think, you know, it depends
06:14on
06:15how you how you think about the world and how you see things. But we'll see. We'll see if there's
06:21ever
06:22a time. I mean, I do think we're sort of seeing now in the age of AI and in the
06:27age of, you know,
06:28everything being tokenized. People are not in restaurants yet, but people are starting to get
06:35their heads around just paying as you go for the things that you want. You know, you go and you
06:39you start typing into Claude or into ChatGPT. And as you spend more time on those platforms and things
06:49get more complicated, you have to pay more money. And that may be a paradigm shift in the consumer's
06:56mind and the appetite for those kinds that that kind of pricing may extend out to other surfaces and
07:02other settings, perhaps restaurants. But we're certainly not there yet.
07:10Whether you're a global restaurant powerhouse or local independent like us here at Cali BBQ,
07:15we all want the same thing, sustainable growth. And let me tell you, PepsiCo is a partner built to do
07:20exactly that, help you build a sustainable business. As operators, we get it. We know that digital
07:26matters. Online ordering, third-party apps, digital menus, online visibility. It's a lot. And
07:32it's incredibly hard to prioritize when you're just trying to take care of your kitchen and manage a
07:37busy team. But a few small digital tweaks can have a massive impact, especially when you have the right
07:43team backing you up. That's where PepsiCo's digital lab stands apart. This is an in-house team built
07:49specifically for restaurant operators. They use proven media services and AI-backed menu optimization to drive
07:56what actually matters. More guests, smarter digital experiences, and more profitable online orders.
08:03Just look at the numbers from last year alone. And the absolute best part, these digital lab services
08:08are available completely free to Pepsi restaurant partners of any size. If you're a Pepsi customer,
08:14stop waiting. Talk to your Pepsi rep today or click the link in the show notes below to learn how
08:19to
08:19unlock your growth advantage. Let's keep that momentum going.
08:26Can you explain tokenization for our restaurant audience? Myself included?
08:33Well, when you're at it, you know, the sort of the unit of activity in AI interactions and AI
08:41processing is a token. And my understanding, admittedly, is a layman's as compared to somebody
08:49who's deeper into the space. But, you know, every sort of unit of AI is a token, a piece of
08:56information,
08:56a data point. And you need tokens to process things through the LLMs and to get to the answer that
09:09you're looking for. And so, you know, simple things like, what color shirt should I wear to the Knicks
09:17game are super easy to process. And other things like, I'm traveling to San Antonio and we'll be
09:27there for 36 hours and need two places to eat. And I only want to go to places that, you
09:35know,
09:35I can eat quickly, but also have been reviewed by the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.
09:42That'll take more tokens to figure out. But that's sort of in a very basic way. The idea is,
09:49you know, what you're paying for is more and more tokens through these services.
09:53I love it. So there's something you've mentioned on a couple of podcasts I was listening to.
09:59And it's this idea that we have every restaurateur has an untapped resource sitting literally in their
10:08hands. And I have an iPhone. I have 4,018 contacts in my iPhone. Yet, as a restaurateur,
10:19I have done nothing with that information. I have phone numbers. I have emails of people that
10:27love me, people that care about me, people that respect me, people that maybe have done business,
10:31maybe are fringe contacts. But in some way, they made their way into my phone. Yet, when I look at
10:38my database at Cali Barbecue and I go through, they don't exist there. The whole CRM system for
10:45restaurants is broken. Can you explain a little bit about this idea and how does Blackbird help
10:51solve one of the biggest problems? I mean, the fact that Apple hasn't solved it, it's remarkable
10:57to me as a business owner. But nonetheless, here we are in 2026, and we're talking about
11:01my Apple contacts in my phone.
11:04Yeah, well, look, I do think we've come a long way. You know, when we launched Resi,
11:08one of the first things we did to differentiate was say, your contacts, your CRM across all of your
11:15all of your stores is going to be the same on your reservations platform. You know, when we did
11:21that, OpenTable system was not unified in that way. And you'd have different customer records
11:27at different restaurants. So the good news is, is we're making progress. Now, the problem today is
11:33not that, you know, your reservation service is disjointed. The problem now is that you have
11:38different technology platforms that you interact with, and they're not really talking that well to
11:42each other. You have your reservation CRM, you have your POS CRM, you have your iPhone CRM.
11:50I think the fundamental problem here, and the way Blackbird sees this is that the data ownership
11:57is in the wrong place. Meaning, those contacts in your iPhone, in some way you own those contacts,
12:05but in theory, those contacts could be each owned by the individual whose name is in the contact.
12:11And if you think about it that way, and you think about customers being able to take their
12:16information with them as they go to places, and to share it as they go to places, then I think
12:22you
12:22could start to see a much more unified system for restaurants. The idea right now where I could walk
12:29into a restaurant, and if I want to share my dining history with that restaurant, I literally have to
12:33give them a sheet of paper and say, here's the restaurants I've been to this week. I think that's
12:39obviously silly, and it's not necessarily something that anyone in the ecosystem wants, but we don't
12:46have a better way yet of unifying the system. Blackbird's take, as I said, is if we put the
12:52ownership of that data in the hands of the consumer, and we make it the consumer's responsibility to show
12:57up and tell the restaurant who they are, I think it'll go a lot more smoothly.
13:01Did you know that Toast powers over 140,000 restaurants across the United States, Canada,
13:08and UK? It's an incredible company. I'm on the Toast Customer Advisory Board. They are proud sponsors
13:14of this show, Restaurant Influencers. We couldn't do it without their support. They power our barbecue
13:19restaurants in San Diego. If you have questions about Toast, if you're thinking about bringing Toast on
13:25to be your primary technology partner at your restaurants, please reach out to me. I'm happy
13:30to get a local Toast representative to take care of you. You can reach me at Sean P. Welchef on
13:35Instagram. Once again, thank you to Toast for believing in the power of technology, the power
13:41of storytelling, the power of hospitality. Back to the show. Can you give me an example on any platform
13:48of where consumers actively update profiles? I mean, I guess social media would probably be the best,
13:53right? Facebook, Instagram. I would say probably social media. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Social media. I mean,
14:00um, that's the easiest example, but you know, there's platforms now where you are sort of curating
14:06your preferences, you know, something like Pinterest obviously is a, is a, is a place where one curates
14:12their, um, their presence. Um, I think we'll see that that starts to happen in dining too.
14:19Uh, why no co-founder this time?
14:23You know, it turns out it just happened that way. Uh, there are some people around the table
14:27of Blackbird who have been with us from the start, um, including more than one of our investors
14:33and board members. And, um, you know, I see them in some ways as founders, but each one of these,
14:40each one of these things is slightly different and, and, you know, um, comes to be in a slightly
14:46different way. And it turns out this time that, you know, I'm the quote unquote founder. Um, but
14:53this one isn't just me for sure. What is the go to market function? What have you learned going to
15:01market? Obviously with eater is much different than resi, the first resi iteration versus the
15:07second resi iteration versus what you're doing now at Blackbird. What lessons have you learned in the,
15:12the go to market function selling to, uh, restaurant tours? Well, go to market to restaurants.
15:18Um, you have to be very, very careful about what you're asking them to do. Meaning if it's a heavy
15:26lift, it's a heavy lift. And when restaurants are thinking about installing your piece of software
15:32or saying yes to your, um, experimental marketing, you know, plan, they're evaluating both what it is
15:41and also what it's going to take to implement. And I think a lot of, a lot of technology companies
15:47underestimate the friction that, you know, implementation causes. Restaurateurs are, um,
15:56quite busy understat, restaurants are understaffed, um, you know, rolling out something like a new
16:03reservation system or certainly a POS. There's a lot of brain damage there. And so you just have
16:09to be very cognizant of what the lift is on the restaurant side. And I think the other thing is
16:14that you have to be cognizant of how many things are coming at them. I mean, you know, researchers are
16:20getting pitched all kinds of things all day long. The idea that they have the bandwidth to even parse
16:27these things out and to figure out which ones make sense and which ones don't. Um, it's, uh, it's,
16:34it's, it's asking a lot is asking a lot for them to understand all this stuff. Uh, not because
16:40they're not sophisticated individuals are super sophisticated, but, you know, again, we talk about
16:46kind of areas of expertise and what, what a restaurateur is supposed to know versus what
16:50a technology person is supposed to know and, and, and how we can kind of, you know, work together
16:57on things. I don't think it's, it's a good idea to expect operators to get deep into the blockchain,
17:04um, ecosystem and say, okay, Blackbird is gonna, you know, do these three things for me. And, and I,
17:10and I, and I think that's good cause it's on chain. So, you know, it's really about simplicity,
17:17I think, in terms of going to market in restaurants. I also think in something that, um, we've been
17:23pretty focused on at Blackbird is, you know, you kind of, when you roll a piece of software into a
17:28restaurant, by and large, there's two sort of big, um, hurdles. One is getting to yes. And the other is
17:37getting it launched successfully. And those things are quite different and the getting to yes. You
17:43know, if it's a, if it's a yield tool, if it's a marketing tool, you're pitching to a GM or
17:48an
17:49owner and you're getting buy-in from the CFO. If it's a marketing platform, you're getting buy-in from
17:55your marketing team, then somebody has to implement it. And anything that's in the restaurant, in the
18:01actual dining room or in the kitchen, there's an entirely different group of people that have to
18:06implement that. And, um, something that we've focused on a lot with Blackbird and we're very
18:12proud of is that the folks that are on the front lines of implementation, the maitre d's, the servers,
18:17the, um, the bus staff, those individuals get the best rewards that Blackbird offers. Every time as a
18:25restaurant employee, you check in on Blackbird, you get a reward for checking in. That's us saying,
18:32we understand you're on the front lines out there, uh, helping us implement this and we appreciate
18:36you. And, um, we're going to continue to offer rewards to restaurant pros that are, um, best in
18:42class, um, get them using the software, get them bought into what we're doing. Hopefully, um, you know,
18:49get them a lot of value in terms of the rewards, in terms of the access that they get. It's
18:54really
18:54important. You know, I think go-to-market, go-to-market, um, motions often lose sight of
19:01that. You know, once you get the, once you get it to the yes, there's still the whole question of,
19:06well, can this thing get rolled out in any reasonably successful way?
19:10So let's do a hypothetical. We'll pretend that I'm David Cohen of the Cohen restaurant group down
19:15here in Southern California, San Diego, 23 world-class dining concepts. What would your pitch be to me?
19:23What would implementation look like for Blackbird? How does it work? What does implementation look
19:28like and what are the results going to yield? So, so the good news is implementation is incredibly
19:34light. It's not a rip and replace. Keep your POS, keep your reservation system. Blackbird is a device
19:41that sits next to the POS and pretty seamlessly processes Blackbird transactions. So that's number
19:48one. So you don't have to worry about, about a bunch of retraining. Um, as far as what we're going
19:54to do, we're going to do a couple of things. First of all, we're going to give you loyalty tech.
19:58You are competing with every restaurant on your, in your neighborhood, on your block, in your area
20:05for consumers. And everyone is leveling up loyalty. Everyone is doing more with loyalty than they did
20:12six months ago and six years ago. And that's for one simple reason. The big guys are thinking about
20:18loyalty a lot. Go into the app store, go to food and drink and see which apps are ranking high.
20:25They're all branded restaurant apps. Those are the individuals that you are competing with for your
20:31customers. And so if you are not thinking a lot about loyalty, you're going to be losing customers.
20:37You're going to be slowly seeing your customers bleed out elsewhere, right? So you really have to be
20:44thinking about loyalty in the long run. If you think about loyalty, if you start investing in Blackbird
20:51and in the Blackbird ecosystem, you're going to find that you have a loyalty offering. And over time,
20:56because more and more transactions are going to process through our pipes, you're going to see your
21:00transaction fees go down as well. Is Blackbird for high-end dining, mid dining?
21:08Independence? For all?
21:10It's for all. It's absolutely for all. Consumers don't say, I only go to high-end places or I only
21:16go to coffee shops or I only go to barbecue restaurants. Consumers go to all kinds of
21:21restaurants, depending on their mood, depending on the meal period, depending on the day of the week.
21:25We strongly believe Blackbird has to serve all those use cases.
21:32What markets are you guys currently in and where are you expanding to?
21:35So we're right now in New York, LA, San Francisco. We're in Colorado and we're in Charleston. And we do
21:43other places like seasonally, like the Hamptons and like Aspen and Vail. We are going to be in all
21:51markets pretty soon. The places we're focused on the most, I would say, are places that look like the
21:57markets we're in now. You know, Charleston is a market we've been in for a couple of years now.
22:01It's been very successful for us. We love the restaurants in Charleston. We love the consumers
22:06that we have in Charleston. It's a safe bet to say that we're going to start rolling out in other
22:11markets that look like Charleston, which is to say great dining cities and people of all ages that
22:18really engage with those restaurants. You know, Charleston has a really healthy base of college age
22:24restaurant customers that have responded very well to the Blackbird value prop. So, you know,
22:30we're going to be other looking at other places that behave similarly.
22:34Can you tell me what do you see as the future of food media?
22:38The future of food media? It's look, the future of food media, the past of food media,
22:44the present of food media is always about storytelling. There's no question that storytellers
22:50win. In addition, I think we're starting to see some publications that are kind of new and have
22:57a sophisticated indie slant to them, which is exciting. But I think the future is going to be
23:04publications that tell stories and that are adaptive from a kind of format and surface perspective. You
23:10know, we obviously are living in an age where people are connecting with restaurants in new ways.
23:15We've talked about AI a little bit. You know, I think figuring out ways to do storytelling in
23:21settings like an LLM are going to be really important. But I'm a sort of purist in this way.
23:27I've always believed if you tell good stories, you're going to be successful when it comes to content.
23:33One of the things that we've found with all content as entrepreneurs, especially a show for
23:38entrepreneurs, the stories of when we fell down. It's easy to tell stories of when we got back up and
23:43we
23:44climbed the hill and we sold the company and things went well. But we tend to learn best about those
23:50stories of when we fell down. Do you have a story about Blackbird, about the darkest time at Blackbird
23:56that you can share with us? Well, listen, it's early days at Blackbird still.
24:01You haven't fallen down yet? No, we fall down all the time. I mean, that's the nature of this thing.
24:06It's a good, you know, two steps forward, one step back. That's success. That's what a startup is.
24:12That's what a startup feels like. We fall down all the time. We're in a space that's incredibly hard.
24:19We, you know, execution relies not just on us doing our thing, but also partners helping us
24:25with deployment, with integrations. You know, payments at restaurants is not something that
24:33we've uniquely discovered. Lots of companies are thinking about payments. So every day is hard
24:39and you have to approach it that way to be successful in a startup environment.
24:44You know, I tell my team all the time, first of all, it's going to feel grindy sometimes. Two steps
24:50forward, one step back is okay. The other thing isn't, but, and this is the other side of it,
24:55and this is what makes it exciting. In a startup, anybody on any given day can change the business.
25:01And that's the good part. That's why we do this. That's why, that's why we fight these fights,
25:06because on any day you can change the trajectory of the business. And if we do that, we're going to
25:11change the trajectory of restaurants. That's the exciting part. But, you know, you have to fall
25:15down all the time. You know, I mean, the first, the first year of resi, we got it wrong. You
25:19know,
25:20the first year of resi, we kept saying to restaurants, we kept pitching restaurants over and over again.
25:24Well, you're going to make more money if you just sell your tables. And he kept saying to us,
25:31we don't want to sell our tables. And it took us a little while to start listening, but fortunately,
25:37we finally did. You know, it, it, there, you make mistakes all the time. If you're not making
25:42mistakes, you're not, you're probably not in the end going to get it right.
25:45Definitely not. How do you, how do you position Blackbird as a B2B company with your story? How do you
25:52guys approach social, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Substack, all the different platforms,
25:58omnichannel storytelling? Yeah. You know, what we try to do in terms of our own storytelling is just
26:05hopefully express how enthusiastic we are about restaurants. Hopefully our passion for restaurants
26:11comes through, you know, the, the, the rally cry that we have in terms of our consumer brand and in
26:18terms of our storytelling is restaurant lovers unite. You know, all of the world's restaurant
26:23lovers are on the Blackbird platform. That is what brings us together. And hopefully that comes
26:29through in our storytelling. You know, hopefully you feel how excited we get when our restaurants win.
26:34You feel how excited I get when I talk about burgers. That's the essence of this thing. You know,
26:39restaurant lovers unite. We all share that passion for restaurants, for sitting at a table
26:44and having a bite of something that's just transformational to, to, to your mind. Um,
26:51a new burger from a new place, a new, you know, a new crudo from a new place, whatever it
26:57is, a new
26:58coffee from a new place, um, or the same coffee from the same place that delivers every single time
27:04for you because they play great music. Uh, like my, like, like my local does in the West village.
27:09That's what it's all about. So hopefully that comes through in our storytelling. You know, we have
27:13to, we have to keep working at it and we have to keep iterating and, um, we have to figure
27:18out the
27:19same things that everyone else does from a, from a new surfaces and platforms perspective. But I think
27:24if we focus on our passion for restaurants, I hope that'll come through. Well, I can't wait to
27:30have you on the show again to talk more about Eater, more about Resi, hopefully a lot more about
27:35Blackbird, about the expansion before I let you go. One of my favorite parts of the show is the
27:40personal tech stack. So are you an iPhone or Android user? I'm an iPhone guy, which, which, uh,
27:46which version? Uh, you know, until very recently I was on an iPhone 13. Nice. I really, I really
27:55like the size of it. I'm a, I like a small phone, not a big phone. You got good eyes,
28:00I guess. And, uh,
28:01and I was, uh, I was, I was for a very long time, a holdout, but finally I had just
28:07had,
28:07I had to upgrade. So now I'm an iPhone 17 guy. iPhone 17. Uh, which carrier do you use and
28:13why?
28:14Um, AT&T. Cause I've just, it's been a long time and people are very loyal to carriers on this
28:21show.
28:22It's hard to switch carriers. It's like switching banks. I've had the same number now for a long time.
28:28I don't think I'm changing it anytime. Uh, do you prefer phone calls or text messages?
28:32Um, you know, the answer is I prefer phone calls, but often I'm lazy and reverse text messages. So,
28:41um, sadly you'd probably see a lot more comms through text than phone, but phone's a better
28:48way to connect. Do you leave voicemails? No. Do you listen to voicemails? No. Do you FaceTime
28:56anyone? My kids. Kids. There you go. That's good. Um, how many emails do you get a day?
29:03I, I, yeah, my, I should declare email bankruptcy. I have no idea. I mean, it's,
29:08it's thousands, but I was recently in a bankruptcy. Fantastic. I mean, I was recently offline for a
29:16couple of days on a trip and I came back to obviously an inbox of thousands of, of emails,
29:24emails, but the truth of the matter is email now is such a, it's such a noisy, it's such a
29:28noisy
29:29interface. I mean, 98% of it was useless. Yes. Stuff I didn't need to read. So I sometimes think
29:36about just kind of turning on an auto responder on my email that says, this is not a good way
29:42to
29:42reach me, reach me instead. Uh, it's fantastic. Um, what's your notification management? If we
29:51looked at your phone, would there be a bunch of apps? Oh, notifications. Uh, yes, there would be
29:57lots and lots and lots of, uh, on reds, lots of what's the first app you open when you wake
30:04up in
30:05the morning. It's usually, um, it's usually Slack because it's where our, um, data is. So I get it.
30:14I get a ping every morning, um, about the previous day's, uh, performance. And that's, that's usually
30:21for better or for worse. The first thing I look at and last app before you go to bed. Um,
30:26last app
30:27before I go to bed is probably iMessage most days. I message, uh, Google maps or Apple maps, Google,
30:35Google. Um, how do you listen to music? Spotify, Spotify, uh, any app actually Claude chat GPT
30:44Gemini or something I don't know about Claude Claude. Yeah. I've a Claude, but I, I use task lit a
30:52lot.
30:52I've been building my own recommendations engine. Um, and, uh, and it's partly a, a preview of a
31:01product we're built. We're going to be introducing with Blackbird, but I've been, I've been using
31:05task lit cause it's a really easy platform to be hands-on with in terms of, of sort of how
31:10to
31:10develop a functional tool using AI. Do you watch where Blackbird is ranked on the app store list?
31:17Yes, but not daily. And I'll tell you this, and I think probably others, other entrepreneurs would,
31:25would, would agree. Um, I know based on the number of downloads the day before, I know where the
31:32ranking is going to be more or less. I can get it. I can get, I can get it within,
31:37within 25,
31:39um, based on our numbers.
31:42What is the most frequent used app that you have that you would, most people wouldn't know that you
31:47use? Um, I'll tell you this. I am a, I'm looking at my phone now to make sure I give
31:55you a good
31:55answer. So, um, I, I've been really, um, excited about an app called corner corner, which is, it's
32:05called corner and it's a, it's a discovery tool that's kind of using you as it's, it's a, I think
32:11a really clever way of connecting social to, to mapping. Interesting. I've been spending some
32:17time, um, on corner and I think they have, it's a great team too. Um, I also am kind of
32:24a, um, both
32:26a weather, I wouldn't say I'm a weather junkie, but I like to understand the weather.
32:31Have you found a weather app that works? Please share. I haven't found one yet.
32:36All right. Well, my answer is there's a, there's a pilot's app called or flight for flight. Yes.
32:44It's a pilot's app and it's paid for the number F O R E F O R E. Okay. Or
32:50flight and it's you pilots use
32:55it. Um, and so the weather is very accurate. Wow. And, um, so I use that one. I also use,
33:03um, I also,
33:05you know, um, the, when the last time a big storm came through New York here, here's where we're
33:13getting a little off topic, but that's why we do the show. That's okay. So, um, all of the weather
33:18apps are using one or more of the models to predict the weather. You know, there's, there's, there's,
33:23I think there's, there's four or five globally recognized or recognized in North America
33:30prediction models that all of the weather apps are based on. Okay. And some of them use a composite
33:35and they're sort of looking at a couple, but, um, the last time we had a big storm come through
33:41New
33:41York and it was a very snowy winter in New York. If you spend time here, if you were following
33:46along
33:47and we had this humongous storm that was coming through, I built a, um, I basically had Claude
33:54look at the models off and off. I've had them look at the raw models and essentially build me my
34:03own
34:06and, um, it was very, very accurate. It was very accurate. Actually what happened was I could sort of
34:12see the apps updating before they update it. Cause you know, the models update on a regular cadence
34:19every, I think it's, I think it's every four hours. And so I could see the app, the app updates
34:26kind of brewing before they happen. But, um, that was a fun thing to play around with, but four flights
34:33really cool because I love the pilots are using and you can see wind and there's another app. Um,
34:39it's a, it's the same app, but for boating and it's called, um, it's called windy. Uh, no. Yeah.
34:49Windy. It's called windy and it's sort of the same idea. Okay. But you know, you kind of, you want
34:54to use
34:55the pro tools. That is amazing. That is, that is exactly why we do this show, uh, to learn the
35:02idiosyncrasies, the things that we do not know. Um, before I let you go, we're recording this two days
35:08before game one, Nick Spurs, you made mention that you were using LLMs to find out where you're
35:15going to eat and sit in and talk. Do you have tickets to the games? I do. And I am,
35:21you're
35:21going to all the games, not all the games, but I will, I will be at game one game one
35:25and I will
35:26be at the games in New York. And are you season ticket holder? I'm a season ticket holder in New
35:32York. How many years? When did you not, not a ton, not a ton. Um, I I'm not, I w
35:37I have
35:38been, I've been a Yankee season ticket holder initially through my family and, and, and
35:43then, um, and then I took control of it, um, for basically my whole life. So Yankees, I
35:48will, I will take the credit of being a long time diehard, but, um, uh, the Knicks is a
35:53much more of a, a, a, a newfound passion. Amazing. And what's the prediction? Um, I think
36:00have you run it through the LLMs? Uh, the LLMs I think are predicting the Spurs. Okay. If I,
36:06if I'm not mistaken, but I think it's going to be an Epic seven game series. I say Knicks and
36:11seven. Amazing. Uh, Ben Leventhal, Blackbird. Uh, we will put links in the show notes so you
36:18can connect with Ben and, uh, Blackbird. Ben, thank you so much for taking the time. I really
36:22appreciate it. If you guys want to reach out to me, I'm weirdly available at Sean P.
36:26E. Walchef Instagram, LinkedIn. Those are the fastest, but, uh, we appreciate you guys
36:30watching, listening as always stay curious, get involved, and don't be afraid to ask for
36:35help. Appreciate you. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Sean.
36:40Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. If you've made it this long, you are part of
36:44the community. You're part of the tribe. We can't do this alone. We started, no one was
36:48listening. Now we have a community of digital hospitality leaders all over the globe. Please
36:53check out our new series called restaurant technology, sub stack. It's a sub stack
36:58newsletter. It's free. It's some of our deep work on the best technology for
37:02restaurants. Also go to YouTube and subscribe to Cali barbecue media, Cali
37:07BBQ media on YouTube. We've been putting out a lot of new original content. Hopefully
37:11you guys like that content. If you want to work with us, go to eat the show dot
37:15media. We show up all over the United States, some international countries. We would
37:20love to work with you and your growing brand on digital storytelling. You can reach out
37:24to me anytime at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram. I'm weirdly available. Stay curious, get involved.
37:30Don't be afraid to ask for help. We'll catch you next episode.
Comments