Draft:Ben Leventhal

Benjamin Goldsmith Leventhal (born January 1, 1979), more commonly known as Ben Leventhal, is an American businessman, noted primarily for being the co-founder of popular restaurant blog Eater, the co-founder and former CEO reservations company Resy (acquired by American Express in 2019) and the founder and CEO of restaurant "hospitality technology platform" Blackbird.

Leventhal grew up in New York City and Westchester. He attended the Horace Mann School and the George Washington University and married Elizabeth Morgan in 2013.

Early Career
Leventhal's early career was spent at MTV Networks, where he was a "creative director" for VH1. In 2009 he left Eater and joined NBC Universal to run lifestyle content for NBC's local stations group. There he led the development and launch of a website called, the Feast. The Feast offered local content and a rating system called "Feast Rank," which aggregated reviews and presented them as a composite score. In 2010, Leventhal created Ozersky.TV, a collaboration with noted food personality Josh Ozersky. In 2013, it was noted that Leventhal was the president of a food technology startup called Kitchensurfing, now defunct, which raised $3.5M in capital from Union Square Ventures and others.

Eater
Along with co-founder Lockhart Steele, Leventhal launched Eater in 2005, initially an offshoot of the website Curbed. "Eater was all about creating heroes and villains. Nothing more, nothing less," Leventhal has said. In his role as co-founder and editor-in-chief of Eater, Leventhal was a pioneer of the modern professional food blog. Around the time of its launch it was said that Eater was "unsettling the ground of the restaurant industry." In 2013, Eater was sold to Vox Media. The famous Chef David Chang noted in his book Lucky Peach that Leventhal was the person who first told him that he had received two Michelin stars for his restaurant Ko. During his tenure at Eater, Leventhal rose to become a prominent figure in the American restaurant scene.

Resy
Leventhal, along with co-founders Gary Vaynerchuck and Michael Montero, launched Resy in June 2014, initially with twenty restaurant partners in New York City. The app charged customers a fee to book last-minute reservations during high-demand seating times. The company initially raised $2M in equity financing, led by Vayner/RSE and Lerer Ventures. In 2017 the home stay booking platform Airbnb led a subsequent $13M funding round for company. Resy was one of several technology companies that would test the waters of pay-for-play at restaurants. The idea at the time was controversial and in an A1 New York Times story, Leventhal said, "Restaurants want to attract good customers, and lots of them are people who don’t want to sit on hold, or write an email or stand around outside a restaurant waiting to get in...They are used to getting what they want with two taps on their phone.” In 2019 American Express acquired Resy. Leventhal joined American Express as CEO of Resy and GM, Global Dining. He exited Amex in November of 2020.

The name "Resy" was first used by Leventhal in a newsletter publication he ran in the early aughts called "She Loves NY."