Pepper acquires YC-backed Alima to bring AI to food distribution catalogues | TNW

This article was published on March 25, 2026 Pepper, a New York-based technology platform for independent food distributors, has acquired Alima, a Y Combinator-backed startup that built ordering and procurement software for small food distributors in Latin America. The deal, announced on Tuesday with no disclosed financial terms, brings Alima’s two cofounders into Pepper’s leadership team and extends the company’s push into AI-driven product content and data infrastructure for an industry that still runs largely on phone calls, faxes, and personal relationships. Jorge Vizcayno, Alima’s chief executive, will lead Pepper’s product content platform and data infrastructure, which uses AI to match and enrich product catalogues at scale. Blanca Espinosa, Alima’s chief marketing officer and cofounder, will head customer implementation, applying AI tooling to the onboarding process that has historically been one of the most friction-heavy parts of selling software to food distributors. The acquisition is small in isolation but revealing in what it says about where vertical software for food distribution is heading. Pepper and Alima were built on the same premise: that independent food dist