dining
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The Nine-Step Lunch That Became Two
A Belgian software company found its opening in senior living by watching the small frictions of an ordinary day. The lesson was less about teaching older people to tap a screen than giving a meal request somewhere reliable to go.
Blackbird Labs
Blackbird Labs is a New York-based restaurant technology company that pairs a consumer dining app with a blockchain-based payments and loyalty network. Founded in 2022 by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, Blackbird lets diners check in at participating restaurants, earn a rewards currency called $FLY, and pay their bill through the app, while giving restaurants lower payment-processing fees and direct ownership of their guest data. The company runs its own layer-2 network, Flynet, and operates in New York, San Francisco, and Charleston with roughly 1,000 restaurants on the platform.
OpenTable
OpenTable is the online restaurant-reservation marketplace that connects diners with tables and gives restaurants the software to manage them. Founded in San Francisco in 1998, it pairs a consumer booking app and website with a back-of-house table-management and CRM platform, helping more than 60,000 restaurants worldwide seat roughly 1.9 billion diners a year. It is owned by Booking Holdings, which acquired it in 2014 for $2.6 billion.