How I Built This with Guy Raz - Resy and Eater: Ben Leventhal
Ben Leventhal's career began with a passion for restaurants, leading him to co-found Eater, a blog that became a major player in the food media space. Eater's success was driven by its unique approach to restaurant coverage, focusing on the dining experience rather than traditional reviews. After Eater, Leventhal co-founded Rezzy, a restaurant reservation platform that initially experimented with surge pricing but pivoted to a subscription model for table management, eventually being acquired by American Express. Leventhal's latest venture, Blackbird, aims to create a universal loyalty program for restaurants using a points-based system, allowing diners to earn and spend points across participating venues. This innovation seeks to enhance customer loyalty and streamline transactions for restaurants.
Key Points:
- Eater revolutionized food media by focusing on the dining experience rather than traditional reviews, gaining a significant following.
- Rezzy initially used a surge pricing model for restaurant reservations but pivoted to a subscription-based table management system, leading to its acquisition by American Express.
- Blackbird introduces a universal loyalty program for restaurants, allowing diners to earn and spend points across different venues, enhancing customer loyalty.
- Leventhal's ventures highlight the importance of adapting business models based on market feedback and industry needs.
- The success of these businesses underscores the potential of combining technology with traditional industries to create new value propositions.
Details:
1. 🎧 Wondery Plus & NerdWallet's Best of Awards
1.1. Wondery Plus Benefits
1.2. NerdWallet's 2025 Best of Awards
1.3. AI and Grammarly Integration
1.4. Earning Through Airbnb Hosting
2. 🍽️ Understanding the Complexity of Restaurants
- Independent restaurants face greater operational complexity than typical small businesses due to the need for on-demand food production, assembly, and delivery for each customer.
- The restaurant industry requires a dynamic approach to logistics, managing numerous moving parts that include sourcing fresh ingredients, maintaining food safety standards, and ensuring timely service.
- Unlike retail stores, restaurants cannot rely on pre-produced goods; each meal is assembled to order, demanding efficient coordination and skilled labor.
- Key challenges include inventory management to minimize waste, balancing staffing with fluctuating customer demands, and maintaining consistent quality under pressure.
- Implementing technology solutions like AI-driven inventory systems can streamline operations, reduce waste, and enhance customer satisfaction by ensuring accurate order fulfillment.
3. 📜 Ben Leventhal: From Passion to Eater's Birth
3.1. Introduction to the Show
3.2. Ben Leventhal's Journey and Motivations
3.3. Rezzy's Impact and Achievements
3.4. Challenges and Innovations
3.5. The Importance of Dining Experience
4. 📈 Eater's Growth and Influence in the Food Industry
- Eater began as a blog focusing on New York City restaurants and quickly rose to prominence within the food industry, becoming an influential platform owned by Vox.
- The platform gained popularity through its distinctive, snarky reporting style, which resonated with the audience, similar to Gawker's celebrity news approach.
- After leaving Eater, co-founder Ben co-founded Resi in 2014 along with Gary Vaynerchuk and Michael Montero, a venture that has become a leading restaurant reservation app.
- Resi innovated the reservation process with features inspired by Uber's surge pricing, allowing diners to pay extra for hard-to-get reservations during peak times, effectively optimizing restaurant seating revenue.
5. 💼 Transitioning from Eater to Resi
- Resi was acquired by American Express for around $200 million, marking a significant milestone in its business journey, positioning it for further growth and integration with Amex services.
- Resi currently lists approximately 16,000 restaurants on its platform, demonstrating its substantial presence and influence in the restaurant reservation industry.
- Ben has initiated a new venture named Blackbird, focusing on integrating restaurants, rewards, and virtual currency, highlighting his continued innovation and strategic vision in the hospitality sector.
- Ben's background includes studying finance at George Washington University and working at VH1, which provided him a foundation in both finance and media industries, essential for his entrepreneurial ventures.
6. 🚀 Resi: Innovating Restaurant Reservations
- The newsletter 'She Loves New York' garnered a cult following with a peak of 10,000 subscribers, demonstrating significant engagement through its unique, insider-themed content.
- The writing style of the newsletter was characterized as 'insidery' and 'quippy,' which contributed to its appeal and differentiation in the market.
- The newsletter was a non-commercial project, indicating that engagement was driven purely by interest and content quality rather than financial incentives.
- Despite having no commercial value, the newsletter's success showed potential for monetization if the right model was identified.
- Aligning content with current events and cultural moments, such as pop culture and events, was a key strategy in enhancing engagement.
7. 🔄 Resi's Business Model Pivot and Success
- Lockhart Steele, managing editor of Gawker, played a crucial role in early intelligence for She Loves New York by writing a blog called Below 14th Street.
- Gawker, an influential insider blog, significantly boosted traffic to She Loves New York through strategic linkages.
- The concept for Eater, a restaurant-focused blog, emerged from informal discussions at a bar, targeting a broad audience interested in restaurants, beyond just food enthusiasts.
- Eater was strategically launched as eater.curbed.com under the Curbed brand, utilizing existing digital media expertise and infrastructure, which was pivotal in its success.
8. 🤝 Partnerships and Expansions with Airbnb and More
- Eater evolved from posting a few times a day to up to 12 posts daily, indicating a strategic shift towards rapid content proliferation.
- By avoiding traditional reviews or food photos, Eater carved out a niche focusing on unique restaurant culture insights, differentiating itself in the market.
- Initial business sustainability was achieved through strategic reliance on advertisers like the New York Times, coupled with angel funding, forming a robust advertiser-supported model.
- The blogging cadence offered by Eater provided a competitive advantage, allowing for flexible and timely content updates.
- Curbed Eater enterprise secured angel funding to bolster growth and ensure long-term sustainability, indicating strong investor confidence.
- Under Locke's leadership, attracting numerous advertisers turned the venture into a well-backed content business, demonstrating effective business development.