Ben Leventhal: Your Guests Didn't Leave, They Forgot

**Josh Kopel** (0:00)
What are you doing this month to make sure your business grows? Do you mind if I make a suggestion? This month's free Restaurant Marketing Master Class is about one thing, using AI to create an unfair advantage. And not by replacing what makes your restaurant special, but by helping you move faster on the work that actually drives growth. I'm taking my proven tactics, tools, and strategies and showing you how to use AI to sharpen your marketing, speed up execution, and turn good ideas into action without getting buried in the details. You'll be working with me personally to build these strategies into your business in real time. And because of that, space is limited. But you can sign up for free today by going to restaurantbusinessschool.com.
Again, you can sign up for free today just by going to restaurantbusinessschool.com. I'll see you there. Now, here we go.

**Ben Leventhal** (0:54)
The guest notes are not about the guest notes. The guest notes are about hospitality hygiene.
And the guest notes are about servers and matriarchies and bartenders, knowing that they're on the hook to learn something about the guest.

**Josh Kopel** (1:13)
Welcome to FULL COMP, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restauranteurs, thought leaders and innovators. Served up on the house.
What if your guests aren't choosing the competition? They just forgot you exist. Ben Leventhal spent 20 years building the infrastructure that connects diners to restaurants. He co-founded Eater in 2005, co-founded Resy in 2014, and sold it to American Express in 2019 Today, he's the CEO and founder of Blackbird Labs, a loyalty and payment platform built to give independent restaurants the tools that large brands have had for years. In today's conversation, we get into why 42% of restaurants aren't profitable and what royal loyalty plays in fixing that, how frequency and access are more valuable than acquisition, and why the independent restaurant's biggest competitive disadvantage is being invisible to guests who already love them. If your regulars aren't showing up as often as they should, this episode is the place to start.

**Ben Leventhal** (2:22)
Well, I think, first of all, I am somebody who believes that the future will not look like the past. We need to understand the past, of course, to build the future correctly. But I am a strong believer in the future, in evolution, in progress, in the future being a solution to the problems of the day. So I fundamentally believe that the restaurant industry of the future is going to be better, brighter, more robust, stronger, more resilient, and that we will get to a place where restaurants are in control of their own destiny. Now, as to how we get there, I think that's an interesting question. I think a lot of what we're thinking about now with Blackbird is, how to empower restaurants to make sure things in the future don't look like things in the past. Because I think that a big problem that exists now, I think, hopefully, I'm answering your question, but I think the real challenge of the work is that restaurants get sort of rooted in the systems they have.
It's really hard to run restaurants. They're understaffed, even the really good ones, and so change is hard. It's fundamentally hard. So we sort of get set in our ways and we build muscle memory around things that aren't necessarily great. But I think the industry is on a good path and I hope that Blackbird is helping to get it there. Because we strongly believe that if we give restaurants back some control of the tech stack, of their businesses, of their connectivity with consumers, then things will turn in their favor.

**Josh Kopel** (3:53)
Do you think that the past reflects that? I mean, I'm sure your Instagram feed looks very similar to my Instagram feed, which is like you just sign up for this service and you're going to get busier.
Right? If you let us build your website for you, you're guaranteed to get busier, and they throw out all of these keywords. Is this an industry where independents want to be independent? Or do you think at this point, they've been conditioned to be relying on solutions that they don't understand? Because inherently, if you gave them independence, they would then be responsible for what they do with that tool.

**Ben Leventhal** (4:31)
Well, I think independents want to be independents, but I think independents don't want to have their own CTOs and their own data scientists and their own CMOs. I think some can, in one way or another, can have these people in house. But I think part of the nature of independent restaurants is that we can't staff them with all these people. The staff that, to me, is so cleanly and completely indicative of where we are is 42% of restaurants weren't profitable last year.