Sam Bakhshandehpour Heads to Bilt to Create a New Kind of Hospitality Platform

Sam Bakhshandehpour left his high-profile role as CEO of José Andrés Group because he saw an opportunity to make an impact that goes far beyond the four walls of a restaurant.

He had been advising Bilt, a startup that enables members to earn rewards on housing, for about two years, and realized that this financial technology company had the power to transform the hospitality industry. In February, Bakhshandehpour joined Bilt as president of merchants, a role that involves growing Bilt’s partnerships with restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, retail, pharmacies and much more.

Bilt, which launched in 2021, lets members earn points on monthly rent payments without transaction fees. And it’s since grown beyond its Bilt Alliance of rental buildings into a program that applies to other housing payments.

Bilt members can use reward points to, among other things, eat, party, shop and book fitness classes in their neighborhood and beyond. They can also earn points by frequenting neighborhood businesses and booking travel. 

Bakhshandehpour’s initial conversation with Bilt founder and CEO Ankur Jain was about “delivering hospitality to residential.” Bakhshandehpour and Jain brainstormed ways to enhance guest experiences and help restaurants identify, satisfy and retain important customers.

“You start with housing, and you would always reference this hotel analogy,” Bakhshandehpour tells Observer about his discussion with Jain. “The home should feel like a five-star hotel. Your neighborhood needs to be an extension of that.”

On March 20, Bilt introduced Bilt Hospitality with an Instagram video that featured testimonials from heavyweights, including Observer Nightlife + Dining Power List alums Daniel Boulud, Danny Meyer, Jeff Zalaznick, Eugene Remm, Kwame Onwuachi, Elizabeth Blau, Michael Mina, Sean Feeney, Noah Tepperberg and David Grutman. As Thomas Keller says in the video, Bilt has created a platform that gives operators knowledge about who their guests are before they arrive.

This is an “orchestration platform” with an A.I.-powered concierge as a key feature. It doesn’t conflict with reservations apps or point-of-sale systems. It sits on top of a restaurant’s existing technology stack to help operators maximize revenue and turn first-time guests into regulars. Using Bilt’s platform, restaurants can enhance dining experiences by sending bonus dishes out to certain guests, offering special after-dinner drinks that encourage visitors to stay longer, having cars waiting for customers to transport them from one venue to another, delivering personalized greetings and seating guests in quieter or livelier areas based on preferences. It’s about optimizing everything all at once.

“All the data exists,” Bakhshandehpour says. “It’s just disjointed. Like, I know you have a shellfish allergy. That data sits in the reservation platform. In my CRM in the restaurant, I know you love wine. In the POS, it gives me the SKU-level data of what you like to order. The checkout has separate data. When you sit on top, you’re now unifying all of this to enhance experiences, capture more spend, extend the night and create more loyalty.”

Before Bakhshandehpour became a hospitality executive, he was an investment banker who led the global casino and West Coast real estate and lodging teams at J.P. Morgan. Then he became president and CEO of SBE Entertainment, where he ran hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. He is still a hospitality operator, active at The Electric Jane in Nashville. His leadership role at Bilt allows him to apply his knowledge and experience to help operators all over the country improve their businesses. 

“I’ve been fortunate,” Bakhshandehpour says. “I’ve spent my career building and scaling really iconic brands. It’s been such an incredible run. Bilt is something much larger than transactions within four walls. It’s about something that the restaurant industry, hotel industry and travel industry are all trying to solve. Where does my guest come from? What is the experience like inside the plane, the hotel, the restaurant? And where do they go after they leave?”

Bilt connects all of this.

“Bilt has a moat around housing, which no one else does,” Bakhshandehpour says. “So for me, it was really taking the lessons of my chapter of gaming and investment banking and the chapter of running hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, and moving on to how you use technology to enable the best guest experience that extends from the home into your neighborhood.”

Bilt’s A.I. concierge helps restaurants tailor experiences for guests, but this is about a lot more than dinner. In addition to restaurant reservations, Bakhshandehpour recently used the Bilt concierge to book a 9:30 a.m. flight to New York, have a Lyft ride waiting for him at the airport, find a hotel near his Meatpacking District office and schedule a 7 a.m. workout within walking distance of the hotel. When he showed up at the fitness studio, he was offered a free mat rental. It was a small but meaningful perk that made him happy, the exact type of moment he wants Bilt members to experience again and again.

He loves it when he hears about chefs welcoming Bilt members with personalized notes, gifts from the kitchen and invites to special events. 

Bilt’s app has a virtual wallet, so guests can quickly pay for meals without flagging down a server. Even though Bilt makes money on these transactions and works with hospitality groups to create house accounts, guests can also use any other payment method a restaurant accepts, whether it’s cash, a physical gift card, inKind or points from a hospitality group’s own loyalty program. One goal for all restaurants is repeat visitation, and Bilt is here to facilitate that in many ways. It’s about enhancing without interfering. No matter how a customer pays, the restaurant’s point-of-sale system processes the transaction.

Bilt already has a network of customers who occupy 6.5 million homes across the country, and it’s recently expanded beyond renters. In February, Bilt launched its Blue, Obsidian and Platinum cards, all of which replace the previously issued Wells Fargo Bilt Mastercard. Homeowners can now earn points on mortgage and HOA payments with their new Bilt card.

“The projection is over $100 billion of housing spend through the Bilt ecosystem this year,” Bakhshandehpour says. These residents are projected to spend another $20 billion at businesses in their neighborhood. So it’s clear why restaurants want to tap into Bilt’s membership base.

“We can create a whole neighborhood experience,” Bakhshandehpour says. “It’s about identity and recognition.”

There are many customers who have elite status and lots of rewards points with certain brands, but only those brands. Bilt is reimagining a hospitality industry where guests can get that kind of status the first time they visit many different restaurants, hotels and neighborhood businesses.

“In our world, we sit there and talk about the tip of the iceberg,” Bakhshandehpour says. “This is actually the iceberg. We talk to every restaurant operator and chef about those top 50 guests who will get the red carpet treatment. How do we create experiences that elevate 5,000 people to this status? This is larger than life, the possibilities of what this can become.”