LOS GATOS, California — Jonathan Friedland wondered why his favorite local bakery, Manresa Bread, wasn’t using food-delivery services such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, especially during a pandemic shutdown that kept customers home.
The simple answer, he learned, is that some restaurants and eateries that partner with those widely popular apps can’t know ahead of time how much food they’ll need in stock when orders start flooding in at rush hour. Miscalculations can lead to shortages or waste, sometimes a combination of both.
Friedland, a 2019 UCLA engineering graduate, began investigating how to solve that problem. So he and some close friends came up with Locale, a service that allows customers to place their orders days ahead, giving businesses a better handle on what to expect.
Through Locale, customers can place orders from businesses hundreds of miles away, expanding their world of favorite dining spots. For stores and restaurants, that means being able to hurdle geographical barriers and reach new customers.
Sustainability is the spirit of his venture, Friedland says. And thanks to the $14 million Locale raised in its latest funding round — led by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz — the company has pledged to pay delivery drivers on average 150% more than they would make for DoorDash.
In addition to the Bay Area, Locale has started operations in the greater Los Angeles and San Diego regions. Even with pandemic habits waning, Friedland says he is confident his business can build loyal customers.
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Could you explain what kinds of orders customers of Locale would place?
A: You could order a croissant from Manresa Bread in Los Gatos, you can order a meal kit from Brenda’s French Soul Food or Bob’s Donuts in San Francisco; Boichik Bagels in the East Bay — a really average order is diverse. We have 150 businesses.
It’s very rare that someone would order from just one business. This is a way for people to discover new food. We also want to keep customer trust. The businesses on (our app) are quality, they’re vetted. We get about a hundred applications a week for businesses to be on Locale, and we accept maybe two or three.
We try to keep it very curated by asking customers what they want and getting those businesses on our platform.
Q: How do you get customers to rewire their brains to think of what they’re going to eat days in advance, which sounds like the opposite of the immediacy you find on DoorDash?
A: It definitely takes some adjusting. We’re pretty early to this kind of model; there aren’t a lot of people doing it. At first, people are super confused when they place an order and see that it’ll arrive on Saturday instead of Wednesday.
So for new customers, there’s a learning curve, but returning customers really use it as a discovery platform. They kind of view it as, “Oh, I want to try this product, and I don’t really care when I get it.” And it’s a pretty reasonable delivery fee.
There are three things at e-commerce you can be good at. We’re really trying to be good at affordability and selection, and we aren’t trying to optimize for speed at all.
Q: It seems like you’ve really been able to sell investors on this business model. What’s your pitch to attract names like Andreessen Horowitz and their dollars?
A: Why they liked us was really because of our (customer) retention rates. They also liked how a lot of our growth doesn’t come from paid acquisition — like paid media, Facebook ads. Our pitch is that we’re different from DoorDash, we’re curated, we’re not in demand and we never will be.
It’s a lot of word of mouth — that’s where more than 25% of our customers come from — and vendors promote us as well because they see us as an additional revenue stream. They’ll put us in their Instagram and Facebook ads.
Q: How do you recruit drivers and deal with the costs and profit margins of paying them a livable wage of $25/hour?
A: We flier a lot on college campuses and drivers hear of us through word of mouth. We have a pretty good retention rate so we don’t need that many drivers per week. One reason we can pay them $25/hour is that, when they’re driving around all day, their time is optimized. Because our orders are placed in advance, there’s not a lot of downtime or waiting around.
Q: How did you evolve the business as the pandemic started to wane?
A: During the pandemic there was a lot of demand for basic needs like grocery items. We used to be able to get customers like it was nothing because people didn’t really have another choice. But we’re back to real life now and we’ve pivoted the business to focus on curation and food discovery. It’s been a pretty successful pivot so far.
Organization: Locale
Position: Co-founder
Age: 25
Birthplace: Los Gatos, California
Residence: San Francisco
Education: UCLA B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering
FIVE THINGS ABOUT JONATHAN FRIEDLAND
1. Son of Ukrainian immigrants; parents immigrated to California in their early 20s and met in San Francisco.
2. Worked a management consulting job for a year while getting Locale off the ground.
3. Used to be an avid cyclist, and often competed in 100-plus-mile bike rides around California.
4. Started Locale with best friend, Chris, whom he’s known for more than 12 years.
5. Appeared on an episode of Judge Judy in 2020 (he was the plaintiff).
