During the height of the pandemic, food tech experienced an explosion of new startups aiming to bring the industry online as one of the last bastions of e-commerce. But most of those products were retail-focused across consumer and B2B applications. Meanwhile, there was a massive dislocation in the food distribution market that was unable to get products in the hands of consumers who were stuck at home. Enter Pepper, a team of ex-Uber Eats employees who have spent the past 6.5 years building one of the first operating systems for independent food distributors, which represent two-thirds of the US wholesale foodservice industry. Last month, the startup announced a $50mm Series C ($100mm to date) as it has surpassed over 500 distributors and 100k restaurant and retail operators on its platform, representing $30bn+ in GMV. This week, HNGRY sat down with Co-Founder & CEO Bowie Cheung to discuss the opportunity to digitize the trillion-dollar wholesale distribution market and how Pepper will enable the once pen-and-paper industry to leverage the power of AI.