Introducing $FLY, Blackbird's Native Token

We sat down with Momofuku CEO Marguerite Mariscal to talk about what our pan-industry loyalty token means for the future of dining

Today’s special is the Flypaper, a proposal for the future of the restaurant economy, where $FLY, a pan-industry loyalty currency, fuels connectivity and engagement directly between restaurants and their customers, both current and potential. Think of $FLY like miles on your favorite airline, but instead of one airline to redeem from, the points are good at all the restaurants in the world. We invite readers of The Supersonic to view it in full here. 

To help contextualize $FLY, I was able to persuade Momofuku CEO (and Blackbird Labs board director) Marguerite Mariscal to chat with me about it. 

Here is our conversation: 

Ben Leventhal
Marguerite, hello. Thank you for doing this. To jump right in, why is $FLY exciting and how do you think it benefits the industry?

Marguerite Mariscal
So I think you phrase it well in the Flypaper, where there's this history of third parties extracting value from us — whether it's delivery fees, reservations, booking fees, credit card fees etc. And, then, capturing—or lack of capturing—data about our customers. So, if Blackbird is attempting to more directly connect customers to restaurants…I think anything that attempts to create connective tissue between a restaurant and its customers is going to be positive for the industry.

BL
We tend to think that restaurants are direct-to-consumer businesses, but there are no other direct-to-consumer businesses on the planet that do such a poor job of understanding who their customers are— 

MM
If you look at a business like Noodle Bar, where historically it didn't take reservations during certain meal periods, you really had no way of understanding where your guests were coming from, how often they were coming through outside of just, you know, managers obviously paying attention.

BL
One of the things that I'm interested in is your take on how we’re positioning $FLY as a marketing currency — that you as a restaurant are going to have a steady inflow of points which you can use to acquire customers, connect with customers, figure out who they are, incentivize them to engage with you. How do you hope Momofuku, and the industry in general, makes use of $FLY? 

MM
So, I think you have your regulars, and they're always going to be regulars, and you're going to engage with them. But, I think the most interesting use for $FLY is for the acquiring of regulars. I think that there is a very organic kind of dance that happens when you've been in a restaurant a couple times, either in quick succession, or you've been coming every year for, you know, multiple years…I think good restaurants recognize that and reward that and try to start a conversation. But it's truly this organic process. It's truly an art. I think what's nice about Blackbird, what you’re trying to do, is provide restaurants with the ability to name that art and give managers a specific way of engaging. That way we can create a better flow where we're increasing the number of regulars because of the level of service and attention. Still or sparkling water? Left-handed? What's the last bottle of wine? But that's all a manual process right now. The hope is that with more data and more information, and with customers freely providing that information, it's going to increase the overall level of connectivity and the overall level of service that we can provide.

Photo Credit: Matthew Weinberger

BL
I've been obsessed with this idea for, basically, my entire career — the idea that restaurants have this connectivity to their regulars, which they are so dogmatic about, and it's so fundamental to the restaurant working, and yet the entire system of handling those regulars is stored in individuals’ heads! It's so tenuous as a system.

But, one of the problems in the current construct of restaurants seems to be that there isn't a better way of understanding the value of a customer. The interesting opportunity for Blackbird is to discover whether there is actually a way of scaling, as you put it, the acquiring of regulars. 

MM
I think the thing that Blackbird can potentially provide is this broader network of people who love dining out and love hospitality but that maybe have never been to our restaurant yet. So it's the ability to not just hope to recognize relatively frequent diners who can become regulars, but also these first-time guests who dine out a lot. If, for example, a restaurant knows that a new guest dines out seven nights a week— because they see a huge $FLY balance and a crazy dining history—but has maybe never been to that restaurant before, then he should be treated the same way that someone who's always been dining at your place because he's a great guest. Outside of Googling and social media, etc, it’s hard to quantify right now. I think Blackbird can unlock this kind of industry-wide customer as opposed to just those that are coming to you; it can create connective tissue across restaurants and across different organizations. I think it’s a real opportunity that is untapped at the moment.

BL
For sure. The first idea was that Blackbird should just be a currency for the restaurant industry. But as we explored that idea, we also discovered that—especially in the US, although this is to some extent a global phenomenon, too—there is no coalition loyalty program for restaurants like there is in practically every other industry. And that was how we started talking about $FLY, not only as loyalty points but as a way to help restaurants understand their guests beyond the context of the walls belonging to an individual restaurant group. 

MM
Insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results, right? I think anything that's attempting to point to the future is worth supporting. We can't keep trying to operate the same way we have and expect the profitability of restaurants, the longevity of restaurants to change.

Ok, Ben, my turn. So…why web3? Why is web3 fundamental to Blackbird and $FLY, and what benefits is that going to potentially provide?

BL  
I think there's a real chance that we can make a ton of progress and we can shift the paradigm of operating restaurants without much web3 at all. And if that's where we wind up going with all this – if we shift restaurants to a mindspace where profitability and customer acquisition and marketing and engagement and loyalty are all well-understood and scaling concepts – and there's no web3,  I'll still call it a grand slam.

But the reason that we are thinking very seriously about web3 being crucial here and we are building our rails using web3 technology is because I think that there's a strong possibility that this cutting-edge technology sets restaurants up even more favorably than historical legacy tech does. If we think about how $FLY potentially scales and potentially expands to this idea of becoming permissionless, thus creating a system that's truly co-owned and controlled by the restaurant industry [because the industry will own half of all $FLY], then we need cryptography and the blockchain to do that. We need to be putting restaurants in the best position possible. I think when we say we want Blackbird and we want $FLY to be a platform that's co-owned and co-controlled by the industry, that's what we mean. It's the opposite of what restaurants have today, which is a system that they have no control over. 

You don't control fees. You don't control data. You don't own loyalty. And, so, you don't own your customers. So, my answer to ‘why web3’ is because we are on a very ambitious and exciting heading, and web3 may help us get there. Blackbird or otherwise, the future of web3 is about us getting past these exotic use cases and moving on to thinking about web3 not as a consumer endpoint, but as technology to power consumer endpoints.

MM
Moving in the opposite direction of web3, do you think there was a golden age in which restaurants were very much in control? And there was that one-to-one relationship? For Momofuku, I think, it’s when we launched our own reservation system for Ko. You had your login, you had your info, you had your guest notes, and it was like a closed system that was just for us. I think it worked at the time and I think that it was a kind of foreshadowing of features that you would later see on OpenTable and Resy.

BL
I go way back to answer this question. In the pre-tech era of restaurants you had true connectivity. It's fascinating to me to think about how restaurants scaled in those days versus how they scale now. ‘21’ Club is sort of a personal obsession of mine. What they built was incredible. And, if you think about how Momofuku has built itself, I think you would find it has more similarities to ‘21’ than it does to probably any modern restaurant company. You've thought about the Momofuku brand as the asset. ‘21’ did the same — it was 100 percent a lifestyle brand. They published content, they had CPG products, they bottled and sold their own liquor at one point. They literally were selling the carts they used in the dining room; you could buy the ‘21’ Club roast beef trolly. 

MM
I think there are restaurants that do an incredible job of owning their customer, and I think ‘21’ Club is a great example. I think about Rao’s. I think about Galatoire's in New Orleans. I think about all these places that have this true kind of connection point. 

BL
Every single example that we just discussed, ‘21’ Club, Galatoire's, Rao’s…these are all restaurants that crossed the chasm into being luxury products, where the brand-consumer connection is the whole show. For me Ssam in the early days was like this, too.

MM
Yes, and they’re entertainment products, too. Or, in the case of Ssam Bar and the bo ssam, immersive entertainment, insofar as guests build their bite and have it their way.  

BL
100 percent. But, you know, for me, actually, the Ssam dinner is something totally different. For me, the luxury of Ssam is walking into the place and knowing you're going to get sorted in a special way. This is definitely something Blackbird is trying to arm restaurants to do. The whole thing about the Ssam bo ssam dinner is that you walk in and you know you're going to be sorted. This is the idea of loyalty that we’re aiming for. Because if you could just say to people, “We got you, we know that you've picked this place and we got you, don't worry, you're going to have a great night.” Then I really don't care what happens after that. I’ll wait two hours, if you need me to!

MM
I hear you. I hear you. I think, beyond rewards, beyond reservations, for a certain type of person, a person who dines out more often, it truly is just knowing that when you walk in, you will be sorted. It’s this idea of familiarity and consistency that to me has a lot of value. At a certain point, I almost don't want a bunch of extras and things, you know? It's those little moments that kind of make you feel like you're home as opposed to, you know, kind of stranger in a new restaurant. 

BL
Yeah. It’s almost like the KPI for Blackbird here is the number of times a night the restaurant says—in some way, shape, or form—“Hey, we got you.” Have there be a moment where you exchange information (via Blackbird, natch) and the restaurant essentially says, “Awesome. We got you.” 

MM
Yeah, like, no matter what, “Welcome back.”