Every quarter, I bring Pepper's product leads onto a live webinar to show what shipped and what it means for the distributors running the platform. For Q3, I was joined by Alan Yao (Sales Hub), Susan Wie (Billback Agent), Anurima Sharma (scanning and C-store), and David Currie (Storefront) for an electric session on everything that's been released recently. If you missed it, here's the short version:

• Sales Hub: a prospecting pipeline managers can forecast from, and a dedicated Sales Hub view for reps on their phones.
• Billback Agent: a first public look at a new tool that matches a distributor's sales against GPO contracts and surfaces the billback dollars they're owed.
• Scanning: a clearer scan-to-order flow on phone cameras and Bluetooth scanners, plus better search by internal SKU.
• Multi-cart and flexible fulfillment: separate carts for each ordering area or rep recommendation, and fallback delivery days with their own fees.

Here's the full recap.

Sales Hub: A Prospecting Pipeline Managers Can Work From

Alan opened with the brand-new Prospects tab. Reps now set a stage for each prospect (cold, discovery, engaged, or quoted) and record the details a manager needs: the chef's name, the current distributor, an estimated close date, and an estimated weekly value.

That turns the map into a forecast. Managers see expected weekly value by close window, $17.5K in the next 7 days in Alan's demo, then 30 and 60 days out. They can filter by rep or stage and sort by value to decide which accounts to bring up in a one-on-one. A manager-only table compares reps on pipeline value, average time to conversion, notes taken, and conversion rate. Conversion counts a prospect only once it places a first order, not when it's set up in the ERP.

The second update is for reps on the road: Now a Switch to Sales Hub button opens a dedicated rep view on the phone, with order entry, accounts, orders, and notes. Every column from the laptop view is available, and reps can choose which fields show on mobile. Gross profit can be hidden when a customer is looking over their shoulder. Low-inventory lines turn yellow, and the drafts view shows every open order, rep-started or customer-started, so nothing slips past cutoff.

The audience poll backed up the investment: phone beat laptop and tablet as reps' primary device. Alan and David noted the exceptions. Very large orders, high-volume C-store accounts, and last-minute orders before cutoff still tend to happen on a laptop.

Billback Agent: Claiming the GPO Money You've Already Earned

This was one of the first times we've shown Billback Agent publicly. Susan framed it as Pepper's first tool for the purchasing team, not the sales team. Distributors in a GPO know they're earning deviations. The question is whether they're claiming all of them.

The workflow runs as a monthly checkpoint. For the most recently closed month, the team confirms four inputs are current:

• Exclusions: local or direct deals with a vendor, down to the operator-item level, so nothing gets double-dipped.
• Tiers: operator tiers for GPOs that use them, pulled from the GPO or a spreadsheet.
• Costs: PO or landed cost, pulled automatically for integrated distributors or uploaded from a sales file and item master.
• GPO contracts: loaded as a live feed, tens of thousands of contracts per GPO, with no upkeep on the distributor's side.

From there, Billback Agent matches invoice and sales data against contract items. High-confidence matches on GTIN, MPC, pack size, and brand go straight to confirmed; one pineapple juice match in the demo was worth $4,000 for September. I asked what happens when GTIN data is messy, which it often is. That's the AI review tab, where Susan expects teams to spend most of their time, approving or rejecting each suggested match side by side. The list gets shorter every month, because an approved or rejected match is never proposed again.

The Billback tab adds it up. In the demo, that was $96,000 claimable for one month, with another $9,000 still sitting in unreviewed matches. One click generates output files built for the distributor's existing process, whether that's vendor invoices or an upload into another system. Distributors told us they want to send claims to vendors themselves, so that stays in their hands.

Scanning: Built for the Person Walking the Aisle

Anu has been at Pepper for only about six weeks, and her focus has been making scan-to-order smoother and more obvious. Everything she showed works the same on a phone camera or a Bluetooth scanner. Much of it is optional, too, because some distributors hand the app to operators and others to reps. If you see something you want, your CSM can turn it on.

The first change is small but matters: a button that just says Scan. The old icon wasn't obvious, and people couldn't find it.

The bigger changes are in the scanning flow itself:

• Context on every scan: each item shows brand, unit, price, and the last quantity and date ordered.
• Fat-finger protection: scans default to the lowest unit of measure, so nobody adds ten times what they meant to. Distributors with case-ordering operators can change the default.
• Focus on the latest item: the item just scanned sits highlighted at the top, with its image, while earlier items collapse below. Scanning an earlier item again brings it back to the top.
• A running total: quantities adjust with plus and minus buttons, and the cart total updates as you go.

Anu also covered improved search by internal code. A distributor's six-digit SKUs used to collide with digits inside UPCs. Now an exact internal-code match shows up first, UPC search still works, and your CSM can set which code displays.

When I ran the closing poll, scanning was the audience's favorite update of the quarter.

Storefront: Multi-Cart and Flexible Fulfillment

When a rep and several people at the same location all add to a single shared cart, nobody knows who added what. Multi-cart fixes that. The default cart still exists and works as before, but operators can now add named carts for each ordering area, such as market, kitchen, and bar, and set each one to private or public.

The DSR use is the one I'd watch. David created a private cart called David's Recommendations, filled it with produce on sale that day, flipped it to public, and paired it with a text to the operator. It's an easy way to grow assortment without rebuilding the customer's order.

I asked whether separate carts risk turning into one accidental mega-order. They don't. Each cart checks out on its own, and order minimums, inventory and substitutions, and promotion thresholds are all validated per cart. Merging carts is on the feedback list. To flag which area an order is for, PO numbers and order notes can be customized per distributor and mapped through to the ERP and routing.

David also showed fallback fulfillment. If a customer's delivery days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they can still pick an off day, with a warning, as a second-run option. Distributors can set a separate delivery fee for those fallback or rush orders. I asked whether that's a profit driver, but David said it's about incentives: steer operators toward their regular days, and give them a way out when they're in a tough spot. Classic David Currie.

The Takeaway

Each of these updates puts a decision back in the distributor's hands. Managers see which prospects to push this week. Purchasing teams see the billback dollars still on the table. Reps and operators scan and build orders faster. And distributors decide how flexible their fulfillment should be, and what that flexibility costs.

Thanks to Alan, Susan, Anu, and David, and congratulations to Susan and Anu on their first product webinar. Most of what you saw is configurable, so if something fits your operation, ask your CSM to turn it on. See you for Q4.

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