New service delivers best of Bay Area restaurants, bakeries to your door in Sacramento.

A new startup food delivery service will allow Sacramento area residents to buy food from Bay Area restaurants and bakeries. But this isn’t your typical DoorDash grub on-demand delivery service.

“Our secret sauce is that we just completely forgo speed of delivery,” said Jonathan Friedland, the co-founder of Locale..

Locale will deliver orders just once a week, on Saturday, and orders must be placed by Thursday night before midnight. That means, depending on when you order on the website, your food will arrive in, well, 2-6 days.

Friedland argues it will be worth it for top-rated pizza from San Francisco’s Pizzeria Delfina or bagels from Bochik Bagels in Berkeley, which a New York Times food reviewer described as having bagels better than New York City.

The first order period is this week through Thursday. Delivery will be on Saturday.

Two-year-old Locale also serves Los Angeles and San Diego.

It is the brainchild of Friedland, who co-founded the start-up with high school friend Chris Clark.

Fresh idea for a stale problem

Friedland, who graduated from engineering school at UCLA, in 2019, said he and Clark were regular customers of Manresa Bread in Los Gatos, the bakery conceived in the kitchen of three-star Michelin eatery, Manresa Restaurant.

He and Clark began to discuss why delivering baked goods via DoorDash or Uber Eats wasn’t feasible for establishments such as Manresa.

For one thing, Friedland said, bakeries need to plan their production demand several days in advance, making it impossible to know how much demand would arise from a traditional food delivery service.

Too many orders unsold would be a disaster, he said, because baked goods go stale fast.

Friedland said for consumers it didn’t make sense to order two pasties at an average price of $5.00 each.

“If you’re using DoorDash,” he said, “you end up paying $25 by the time commissions and delivery fees are figured in.”

Friedland said he and Clark decided that advance ordering could solve the problem and changing only one $5 delivery fee would ease the price consumers pay.

Locale customers can order from as many places as they want each week and will pay just the one $5 delivery fee each week. Locale currently offers delivery from 44 restaurants, 37 bakeries, 30 farms, 11 creameries, eight butcheries and fishmongers, and 11 cafes and juice shops.

The business model

So, how do Friedland and Clark make a profit?

Friedland said it’s from the wholesale price Locale pays the various food establishments for their products, discounts of typically between 10% and 20% off the retail price.

Delivery customers pay the retail price.

Venture capital money is starting to flow into their company. The startup in May attracted initial venture capital funds of $14 million in a first round led by Andreessen Horowitz, a well-known Silicon Valley VC firm.

Independent contractors using their own cars or employee-driven refrigeration trucks have been delivering the orders that are usually prepared on Friday or for bakery items early Saturday morning, to ensure freshness.

While bakery items will be delivered fresh, some items such as pizza will be half-baked and then frozen. Ten minutes in the oven is supposed to finish it off at home.

Some popular offerings

Friedland said delivery customers are happy with the quality, noting that the pizza from Pizzeria DelFina is one of the most popular items among Locale’s offerings.

“It’s been incredible,” said Delfina owner Annie Stoll on being on the Locale platform. She said $1,000 to $2,000 a week in sales are from Locale.

As for the pizza quality, Stoll said: “People will say it’s very, very close to eating it in the restaurant. It’s almost better than delivery of our pizza because it’s hot when you take it out of the oven.”

A frozen margherita pizza sells for $18 on the Locale site.

Another popular Locale food vendor, Bochik’s Bagels, also sells its bagels frozen.

“My bagel philosophy is that the best bagels are very recently out of the oven,” said bagel shop owner Emily Winston.

She said if that’s not possible, the bagel needs to be eaten that day, before it goes stale.

Freezing, she said, is a third option..

Winston said the bagels sold through Locale are sliced and then frozen after being baked at her store.

“A bagel stays awesome in the freezer,” she said. “You pull it out, it’s already sliced, you throw it in the toaster, and in two minutes you have a delicious bagel.”

A six-pack of frozen bagels sells for $18 through Locale or if picked up at Winston’s Berkeley store.

Friedland said Locale is very selective in choosing only quality food vendors. He said around 50 apply each week, but only several are chosen.

While the food offerings at Locale span the globe in terms of cuisine, Friedland said some foods are avoided.

Fried chicken and sushi are intentionally not part of the offerings for delivery customers. They just don;t hold up well in delivery.

Reverse delivery coming soon?

Friedland said Locale is also working with several Sacramento restaurants to offer their food in the Bay Area through delivery. He said one establishment is Solomon’s on K Street in downtown.

He said among Solomon’s offerings that will be transported to the Bay Area include bagels, cream cheeses, totkes (Soloman’s version of latkes), empanadas, Japanese cheesecake and sea salt chocolate chip cookies.

Friedland said the Sacramento area seemed like a logical extension for Locale because many area residents visit the Bay Area to eat at restaurants.

Another factor for the expansion, he said, is the number of Bay Area residents who have moved to Sacramento during the pandemic but miss their former eats.

“It will be nostalgia for them,” Friedland said of Locale’s offerings.

This story was originally published September 19, 2022 at 12:03 PM.