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.
