What started off as a response to a glaring industry gap has now evolved into a critical component of how independent distributors can compete and thrive in an industry dominated by giants.
Bowie Cheung’s deep connection to the food industry goes back to his early years working in restaurants. He got a firsthand understanding of both front and back-of-house operations which lay the foundation for his work at UberEats and later influenced his decision to start Pepper.
As one of the early team members at Uber Eats, Cheung helped turn what was once a small app delivering food from a handful of restaurants in Santa Monica into a global powerhouse, with orders coming from over a million restaurants and merchants. It was during this time that he noticed that while digital transformation was rapidly changing how restaurants interacted with consumers, many restaurants were still ordering food by telling distributors what they needed—whether in person or over the phone. Distributor sales reps (DSRs) would then have to manually input these orders into their systems after sifting through voicemails and sorting through countless emails and texts.
“It was obvious that there was an opportunity to create a ton of value by making digital tools and strategies that had already been successful in other B2B contexts, available to independent food distributors,” Cheung notes. “The largest broadliners, Sysco and US Foods, had already built technology that wasn’t necessarily great, but they were seeing these incredible economic returns from those investments.”
Motivated to close this gap, Cheung joined forces with Ivana Tesanovic, a former Siemens analyst and big data consultant, and Chetan Narain, an Uber Eats engineer and former Google developer whom Cheung had worked side-by-side with for four years. They had a vision for a platform that would equip independent distributors with the tools they needed to succeed and felt the combination of their operations expertise, analytics background, and product and engineering chops would help them shape a solution designed to truly empower distributors.
The Early Team
Pepper was focused on assembling a team with technical expertise, but also those who truly understood the foodservice industry from the inside out. This approach set Pepper apart from the competition. New hires didn’t just establish strong customer relationships—they brought the heart of the industry into everyday business decisions, infusing the platform with genuine, lived experience.
Notable early team members included Wes Finch, an agriculture expert and owner of a consulting firm focused on helping independent foodservice distributors embrace technology; Margaret Handcock, who spent her career elevating seafood brands with unmatched industry knowledge; and Jason Gunn, a former US Foods leader who combined his experience as a trained chef with expertise in managing product data, optimizing eCommerce, and driving branding initiatives.
Today, roughly one-third of Pepper’s more than 100 employees have backgrounds in food service distribution. According to Cheung, this has been instrumental in building strong, trusting relationships with customers and creating an invigorating workplace. “It feels like you’re collaborating with your most exciting customers every single day,” he says.
Greylock partner Mike Duboe, who led Pepper’s first round of funding, noted that “what’s unique about the team is it has one foot deep in the industry and the other foot deep in technology, allowing them to bring deep empathy for the customer into the software they are building.”
Building for the Distributors, with Distributors
As the team worked to develop Pepper, the trendline became clear. Though distributors want to embrace new technology, they’d been burned by other tech companies that promised a grand vision, but delivered very little in the end. “Restaurant owners, operators, and distributors told us they’d invest a lot of money and time into other tech solutions, but those investments would never paid off,” Cheung explains. This created hesitation to embrace change and developed distrust among technology partners.
The team knew they had to get it right. Previous startups and other technology providers in the space had underestimated the complexity of integrating eCommerce solutions with older ERP and CRM systems used by distributors. The average distributor has several thousand items in their catalog and the product details can be pretty complex. “With so many different systems in use, it’s more complicated than many people realized,” notes Cheung.
To avoid similar mistakes, the Pepper Team spent months working with potential customers, understanding all the operational details that would need to be accommodated in Pepper’s software. Cheung explains, “even though we’ve created a simple eCommerce experience, the technology behind it requires some seriously sophisticated engineering.”
The Pepper employees listened to voicemails, made calls, and manually entered data to better understand the distributor experience. When it came time to build ERP integrations, Narain and his team made a crucial decision: they invested heavily in building Pepper’s integration capabilities in-house. Rather than relying on third-party partners or taking shortcuts, they built the most advanced integration system in the industry—giving Pepper over 200 pre-built integration modules for more than 40 of the most common ERP systems in the foodservice market.
Cheung points out this decision was a turning point for the company. “We’ve seen other companies try to take shortcuts in this area, and they’ve failed because of it,” Cheung says. “Owning this capability and making it a core competency was key to our success.”
Building for the Long Term
Today, only a small fraction of the country’s 25,000 independent distributors use an eCommerce platform, but the opportunity has never been greater. “At first, it was about leveling the playing field with the big companies. Now with AI advancements, independents have the advantage because they’re able to be more agile and nimble,” says Cheung.
The company launched AI-powered tools like DSR Connect, that helps reps identify new customers, while AI breaks down restaurant menus into potential order guide items directly within the app.
DSR Connect also includes features that alert reps to upsell opportunities, product substitutions, and customer churn risks, all by tracking and analyzing buying behaviors. Additionally, the suite allows both sales reps and customers to place orders using natural language, whether through text or voice.
At the heart of this suite is Casey, a virtual assistant for DSRs, helping them access business insights through the chat function. Casey cuts down hours of analytic work and enables them to be more proactive in their sales strategy and approach. For example, reps can ask Casey questions about which customers have overdue invoices, what their top 5 selling items by {ingredient}, and so much more.
“The goal isn’t to replace human sales reps but to make their roles more engaging and customer-focused,” says Cheung.
Instead of arriving at account meetings with binders filled with weekly pricing, sales reps can now utilize a tablet paired with an AI chatbot that seamlessly connects to inventory and pricing data.
“We’re helping them transform them from order takers to consultative sellers,” Cheung explains. “AI is more the Ironman suit, than it is the Terminator. It’s about empowering humans to be better, faster, and stronger.”
Cheung continued, “We’re still at the beginning of the tech movement for food distribution, and there’s so much more to build.”
