Insight
Leventhal: Consumers resist surge pricing because restaurants feel democratic
“There's something about hospitality that forces consumers into a different mental model than they are using for other Entertainment categories. And I think it's the intimacy of it. I think it's the legacy and the history of hospitality. Restaurants in people's…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ben Leventhal: Early online media prioritized publishing speed over accuracy
“The priority was pace and speed, and certainly that took precedence over, I would say, accuracy in some cases.”
Opinion
Leventhal: Restaurants are orders of magnitude harder than other small businesses
“If you think about the moving parts at the average independent restaurant and how complicated The production and assembly and delivery of food is to the table, and you compare that to any other small business, it's orders of magnitude more difficult.”
Opinion
Leventhal: Metering restaurant software fees based on booking volume is insane
“The idea that more successful restaurants pay more is insane. You pay us a flat fee. Use the software as much as you want it.”
Disclosure
Leventhal: Eater avoided reviews and photos at launch to prioritize publishing speed
“Now, we did say, we're not gonna write reviews. And we also said, we're not going to post photos of food. And we said, we're really not interested in, in adding to the noise with more photos of food. And we're really not interested in writing reviews because w…”
Opinion
Ben Leventhal: Eater's 'Death Watch' was harsh and cruel in hindsight
“Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't do things like death watch, which in hindsight were harsh and cruel to the restaurants that became its subjects.”
Insight
Leventhal: Independent restaurants with 10% profit margins are crushing it
“If you're running a 10% as an independent restaurant, you're crushing it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Leventhal: OpenTable consciously passed on replicating Resy's early table pricing features
“The fact of the matter is open table saw that we were doing a couple of things and entirely passed on doing them. They saw that we were pricing tables and we were also distinguishing tables. We said, you know, not all restaurant tables are created equal.”
Assertion Supported
Leventhal: Airbnb agreed to both invest in Resy and partner commercially
“At some point in that conversation, we said, you know, we'd like this to be both an investment and a commercial partnership, and they agreed.”
Assertion Supported
Leventhal: Pre-Resy reservation software lacked centralized multi-unit guest databases
“Before Resi came along, every individual restaurant unit had its own customer database. It was essentially a customer database on a local server, and from the start, we said, you're, you know, if you have four restaurants, it's all one database.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Leventhal: Resy was not profitable when acquired by American Express
“We were in sight of it when we sold it to Amex. We were not profitable.”
Assertion Supported
Leventhal: Blackbird point redemption fees are cheaper than card swipes
“And at, and it's priced essentially as a really cheap transaction. It's cheaper than the price that they pay for a credit card swipe.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Leventhal: Resy initially took a 20% cut on paid table reservations
“My recollection is that we took 20% as a vig, and the restaurant kept the rest.”
Assertion Supported
Leventhal: Resy cut fees to zero during COVID, setting industry precedent
“We did two things, and we did them very fast, and then the industry followed. One is, we cut fees to zero. We thought it was really important, symbolically, to say, we are not in a position to be collecting money from restaurants right now, and a lot of the in…”
Disclosure
Leventhal: Blackbird Labs backstops all loyalty points with US dollars
“We backstop all of the points with USD. So restaurants know at any time they can sell us their points for USD.”
Disclosure
Leventhal: Blackbird Labs has around 500 signed-up restaurants
“We have about 500 signed up across the platform.”
