---
title: Pepper alternative for small suppliers
Metadescription: Pepper publishes no price and is built for food distributors averaging about 200 trade buyers each. What a small producer needs instead, with figures.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-11-04
---

Token estimate: ~2,300

# Pepper alternative for small suppliers

Pepper is sold to food distributors rather than to the producers who supply them. On its own February 2026 figures it served more than 500 distributors turning over around US$30 billion between them and reaching 100,000 trade buyers - roughly 200 buyers per distributor - and its price is quote-only, with no figure and no currency published anywhere. A producer selling direct to twenty or fifty shops, cafes and pubs is buying at the other end of that scale, where [flat-fee wholesale ordering software](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/flat-fee-wholesale-ordering-software) is a published US$109 a month on Wholesale Handler's Pro plan for up to 50 trade customers.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## Pepper's smallest customer is a distributor

Pepper's chief executive describes the range it covers as "small distributors with a single warehouse and a couple of trucks all the way through to larger enterprises with billions of dollars of revenue and multiple warehouses". The gap he names Pepper as filling is distributors turning over US$250 million a year with no online ordering at all. A warehouse with trucks in the yard is Pepper's small end.

The market Pepper is addressing is the long tail of distribution rather than the long tail of production: 25,000 food distributors across the US and Canada, carrying about US$1.4 trillion of wholesale spend, of which the top 50 account for only a third. A baker, roaster, brewer or cheesemaker delivering their own goods is not in that count.

## Pepper's offer to a food brand is reach into distributors, not a storefront

Pepper also sells to manufacturers. What it sells there is advertising and market access _through_ distributors: a stated reach of 150,000 operators across 600-plus distribution partners, targeted campaigns placed on distributor order guides, product pages and checkout, and a GS1-compliant product content library kept in step across hundreds of distributors at once.

That is a demand-generation product for a brand already listed by distributors. It is not an ordering portal for a producer's own trade customers, and it does not give a supplier a catalogue, a cutoff or an invoice of their own.

## Pepper publishes no price and no currency

Pepper's pricing page carries no figure, no tier price and no currency. Its entire statement is that there are no hidden fees, with an invitation to talk about a plan tailored to the organisation, framed as a pay-for-performance philosophy. The buttons marked "Check Our Prices" go to the demo booking form, and the alternative route is a phone number for sales.

Lite, Pro and Enterprise do exist, as service levels on Pepper's Sales Hub, and the help documentation says to ask customer success about moving between them. No figure is attached to any of the three.

The cost of Pepper therefore cannot be established from the outside, in any currency, without a sales conversation. [Why wholesale software is so expensive](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/why-is-wholesale-software-so-expensive) covers why quote-only pricing is the norm in this field and what running the process costs a supplier.

## Onboarding runs one to three months, set by ERP complexity

Pepper's onboarding "typically takes one to three months depending on the complexity of distributors' ERP systems". It has integrated with 90-plus ERP systems and reports 500-plus integration projects over five years, which is the work that timeline is made of.

For a distributor mid-migration or still on spreadsheets, Pepper offers a CSV route instead of an ERP connection - a downloadable template, a defined set of required fields, and delta updates applied by downloading the catalogue, editing it and uploading it back. That is the lightest path in, and it exists because the ERP connection is otherwise the slowest part of the work.

A producer running on a spreadsheet has no ERP to connect in the first place. [Wholesale ordering software without ERP integration](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/wholesale-ordering-software-without-erp-integration) covers what the category looks like once that integration is off the table entirely.

## A twenty-customer producer and a 200-customer distributor buy different software

|     | Pepper | Wholesale Handler |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Sold to | Independent food distributors, single-warehouse to multi-warehouse | Producers selling direct to their own trade customers |
| Published price | None - quote only, no currency named | A flat monthly fee, published |
| Trade customers | Around 200 per distributor on Pepper's February 2026 figures | Up to 50 on the Pro plan |
| Getting started | Demo booking or a call to sales, then one to three months of onboarding | Self-serve sign-up, with a free plan below the paid ones |
| ERP | 90-plus systems, or a CSV route for distributors without one | No ERP connection |
| AI order capture | Order Agent takes orders by text, email and voicemail | Not built |

[Choco alternative for wholesalers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/choco-alternative-for-wholesalers) covers a platform that bills the supplier and puts the ordering inside its own buyer app, and [Upstock alternative for wholesale suppliers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/upstock-alternative-for-wholesale-suppliers) covers one that charges on monthly order volume and publishes its starting figure only.

## What Wholesale Handler does at that size

The paid plans differ only in how many trade customers a merchant can hold. Nothing is held back on the free plan and no feature unlocks on subscribing, so the decision is a customer count rather than a feature matrix.

-   Bring an existing customer list in from a spreadsheet, and keep those customers as managed accounts - the merchant takes their orders by phone, text or in person and no email is sent until they choose to invite them.
-   Group customers who share a delivery run into an order profile carrying its delivery days, per-day cutoffs, delivery charge and minimum spend, and update the run once for everyone on it.
-   Set a product as available March to April once and it repeats every year, with out-of-season customers told when it returns rather than finding it gone.
-   Price by weight or by catch weight, so a whole salmon or a leg of lamb is ordered by the piece and settled at the weight recorded at pick.
-   Collate every order for a delivery date into one total per product, and print it with checkboxes for the day's production.
-   Issue invoices with each customer's own payment terms and due date, track what is outstanding against what is overdue, and export invoice line items as a CSV with the column names an accounting package expects.

[Simple wholesale ordering software](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/simple-wholesale-ordering-software) covers how much documentation a small wholesaler should have to read before taking a first order.

## Limits

-   Pro is the highest plan, so its customer ceiling is the product's ceiling. A supplier past that number has outgrown Wholesale Handler.
-   500 products, 20 price lists, 10 team members.
-   No ERP or accounting-system connection. Invoice line items leave as a CSV.
-   No AI order capture from email, text or voicemail. An order arriving by phone or text is entered by the merchant.
-   No payment processing. Wholesale Handler records a two-sided payment handshake - the customer declares an invoice paid, the merchant confirms, disputes or notes it - but money moves through the bank, not through the platform.
-   No delivery routing or vehicle tracking.

## Q&A

**Q: Is Pepper more expensive than Wholesale Handler?**
A: That comparison cannot be made from published information. Pepper routes every pricing enquiry to a demo booking or a sales call, so there is no figure to compare against. Wholesale Handler's monthly price is on its pricing page, in the reader's own currency.

**Q: Does Pepper work for a producer selling direct to shops and restaurants?**
A: Pepper's distributor product is built for a business distributing other people's goods, and its manufacturer product sells advertising reach through distributors rather than an ordering portal of the brand's own. A producer taking orders directly from twenty or fifty trade customers is not the buyer of either.

**Q: How many trade customers does Wholesale Handler allow?**
A: Up to 50 on the Pro plan, ten on Starter and three on the free plan.

**Q: How large is Pepper as a company?**
A: Pepper was founded in 2019 in New York City and has raised US$96 million across three rounds, the most recent a US$50 million Series C in February 2026 led by Lead Edge Capital. Its own site claims over 600 independent distributors, 200,000 active operators and integrations with more than 90 ERP systems.