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I’ve spent a large part of my career working at the intersection of foodservice sales, distribution, data, and technology. One thing I’ve learned is that buying technology is usually the easy part.

Getting people to use it and turning that usage into better outcomes for customers, sales representatives, and the business is where the real work begins.

That was my biggest takeaway from our recent webinar with Aaron Riutzel, IT Project Manager at Pacific Seafood, and Margaret Hancock from Pepper.

Pacific Seafood is a particularly interesting example because seafood distribution is not a simple business. Availability changes quickly, costs move constantly, and product specifications matter. A customer ordering halibut may care not only about the total weight, but also how many fish they receive. A restaurant may need a particular cut, pack, size, or production instruction communicated accurately through the warehouse.

Despite all that complexity, many seafood distributors still rely heavily on phone calls, emails, text messages, and the individual knowledge of their sales representatives.

Pacific Seafood is showing us what it looks like to modernize that experience without removing the relationships that make seafood distribution work.

Here’s what stands out for me from this conversation.

Someone Must Be Accountable for overall Satisfaction with Technology. 

My favorite moment in the conversation came when Aaron described his role as having total accountability for both customer satisfaction and sales representative satisfaction with the technology.

We do not often hear someone sitting between IT and the business describe their responsibility that way. Technology leaders are usually held accountable for deploying the system, keeping it operational, moving data correctly, or closing support tickets.

Aaron’s definition is much more meaningful: Does the technology actually make life better for the people using it?

Because Aaron came from sales before moving into technology, he can translate between two groups that do not always speak the same language. He understands what salespeople and customers are trying to accomplish, but he can also work with internal developers and Pepper’s engineering team to determine what data and functionality are required to make it happen.

That bridge has been essential to Pacific Seafood’s implementation.

The platform has continued to evolve based on feedback from customers and sales representatives. Pacific did not simply install an application and declare the project complete. The team listened, translated what users needed, worked with Pepper to improve the experience, retrained employees, and continued measuring adoption.

That is what good implementation looks like.

It is not a launch date. It is an ongoing operating discipline centered on the satisfaction of the people the technology is supposed to serve.

Pacific Seafood Reps are Saving Up to 15 hrs Per Week.

Before Pepper, much of Pacific Seafood’s local foodservice business still depended on sales representatives calling customers to capture orders.

There is nothing inherently wrong with taking an order over the phone. The problem is the amount of time it consumes.

Aaron estimated that moving customers into Pepper could save sales representatives roughly 10 to 15 hours per week. An order that might require a five or ten-minute phone conversation can flow into Pacific’s ERP in approximately 30 seconds once it is submitted digitally.

Aaron shared the example of a salesperson who inherited more than 100 accounts after another representative left the company. Pepper allowed him to move a significant portion of those customers into digital ordering, manage the larger book of business, and return to something resembling a normal workday.

That is the value proposition distributors need to understand.

Ecommerce is not there to replace the salesperson. It is there to replace the least valuable parts of the salesperson’s day.

When representatives spend less time typing orders, checking voicemails, and repeating routine transactions, they can spend more time introducing products, solving customer problems, protecting accounts, and finding new business.

Pacific’s experience also reinforced an important adoption lesson: Customers are not always the primary source of resistance. In many cases, salespeople are afraid the technology will weaken their customer relationships or threaten their roles.

The implementation therefore has to show representatives what they gain.

Pepper gives them tools to recommend new items, add products to an order guide, establish pricing, message customers, identify lost items, flag churn risks, and manage follow-up opportunities. The salesperson remains involved, but the relationship becomes more proactive and consultative instead of purely transactional.

The Best Ecommerce Experience Reflects the Reality of Seafood

A generic shopping cart is not enough for seafood distribution.

Pacific Seafood has worked with Pepper to create an experience that reflects how seafood is actually bought, sold, and fulfilled.

Customers can add item-level instructions that move with the order, giving the sales team and warehouse greater visibility into special requests. Aaron used halibut as a great example. Depending on the size range, ordering a certain weight could result in one large fish or several smaller fish. A note such as “two large fish” helps communicate the customer’s actual intent.

Pacific also uses low-stock and out-of-stock flags to give customers greater visibility into availability. Instead of ordering an unavailable item and finding out later that it cannot be filled, the customer can adjust the order while they are still shopping.

That transparency matters in a category where supply and availability can change quickly.

Pepper also gives Pacific Seafood a visual catalog that printed books and telephone ordering could never provide efficiently. Customers can browse products, discover new items, see promotions, and purchase on their own schedule.

Those promotions are producing meaningful results. Aaron shared that customers purchasing promoted products generated a 37% increase in basket size, and 38% of promoted items were purchased again after the promotion ended.

That is more than a digital convenience. It is a measurable sales-growth engine.

Leadership Must Stay Involved

Pacific Seafood initially measured several possible indicators of adoption: registered users, sales representative activity, customer usage, and other engagement metrics.

Eventually, the team settled on the clearest business measure: What percentage of total invoices originated from Pepper orders?

That metric is now incorporated into a dashboard sent to leadership every week. Pacific combines Pepper information with ERP data to show performance by location and help managers understand where adoption is growing and where additional support may be needed.

But the company is not forcing every existing customer into one ordering method.

Instead, Pacific has established a practical directive: Every new customer should be introduced to Pepper during onboarding. The customer still has a choice, but the digital experience becomes part of the relationship from the beginning.

That combination of expectation, flexibility, training, measurement, and leadership visibility is exactly why Pacific’s implementation is working.

Technology Adoption Is a Business Capability

Pacific Seafood has an ambitious goal to double the size of its business by 2031. Acquisitions and new locations may contribute to that growth, but the organization also recognizes that its technology capabilities must grow with it.

That means documenting institutional knowledge, investing in business applications, improving pricing decisions, automating email and purchase-order entry, and giving salespeople tools that help them manage more customers effectively.

Pepper is becoming more than Pacific Seafood’s ecommerce storefront. It is developing into an operating platform that connects digital ordering, customer engagement, promotions, prospecting, pricing, opportunity management, and AI-powered order processing.

The lesson for other seafood distributors is not simply that they should buy ecommerce technology. It is that they should choose a partner capable of understanding the unique realities of their business and then create the internal accountability required to make that partnership successful.

Pacific Seafood is doing both. 

And that is what makes its journey such a compelling example for the rest of the industry.