# Bowie Cheung

> Bowie Cheung is the co-founder and CEO of Pepper, an AI-first software platform for independent food distributors. Trained as an engineer and later an MBA, he worked at Bain & Company and became a founding operator at Uber Eats, eventually leading regional operations across the United States and Canada. In 2019, he co-founded Pepper with Chetan Narain and Ivana Tesanovic to bring modern ordering, sales, marketing, payments, and accounting tools to a fragmented industry that still relied heavily on calls, voicemails, emails, handwritten notes, and checks. Pepper says it now serves more than 500 distributors and 100,000 active restaurant and retail operators representing over $30 billion in annual gross merchandise volume, and raised a $50 million Series C in February 2026, bringing total capital raised to $100 million.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Pepper
- **Organizations:** Pepper, Uber Eats, Uber, Bain & Company
- **Education:** Master of Business Administration, Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, Master of Applied Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Science, University of Toronto
- **Known for:** Was a founding member of Uber Eats and helped scale its operations across North America., Co-founded Pepper in 2019 with Chetan Narain and Ivana Tesanovic., Built Pepper from an ecommerce product into a broader platform spanning ordering, sales, marketing, payments, and accounting workflows.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2014** — Worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company.
- **2014** — Completed the One-Year MBA program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
- **2015** — As general manager of Uber Eats in Toronto, helped launch the service’s expanded full-menu, standalone-app model in the city.
- **2014-2019** — Spent roughly four and a half years helping build and scale Uber Eats, later leading regional operations across the United States and Canada.
- **2019** — Left Uber and co-founded Pepper with Chetan Narain and Ivana Tesanovic.
- **2020** — During the pandemic, Pepper rapidly shifted from a restaurant-supplier network to Pepper Pantry, helping distributors sell directly to consumers before the company returned its focus to distributor software.
- **2021** — Pepper raised a $16 million Series A led by Index Ventures, bringing reported funding at the time to $20 million.
- **2024** — Pepper raised a $30 million Series B led by ICONIQ Growth and expanded its platform beyond ecommerce.
- **2025** — Pepper acquired vertical distribution software company Kimelo.
- **2026** — Pepper raised a $50 million Series C led by Lead Edge Capital, bringing total capital raised to $100 million, and acquired Y Combinator-backed Alima.

## Achievements

- Was a founding member of Uber Eats and helped scale its operations across North America.
- Co-founded Pepper in 2019 with Chetan Narain and Ivana Tesanovic.
- Built Pepper from an ecommerce product into a broader platform spanning ordering, sales, marketing, payments, and accounting workflows.
- Led Pepper through a $50 million Series C in February 2026, bringing reported total funding to $100 million.
- Pepper reports serving more than 500 independent distributors and 100,000 active restaurant and retail operators representing over $30 billion in annual gross merchandise volume.
- Pepper reports integrations with more than 70 ERP systems.
- Oversaw Pepper’s acquisitions of Kimelo in 2025 and Alima in 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Pepper announced a partnership with Essendant to add enriched product content for more than 32,000 items serving JanSan and foodservice distributors.
- **2026-04** — Cheung led a practical AI workshop demonstrating an email-triage agent and argued for keeping humans in control of outbound messages while trust develops.
- **2026-03** — Pepper acquired Y Combinator-backed Alima to strengthen AI-driven product-content matching, catalog enrichment, data infrastructure, and implementation tooling.
- **2026-03** — Cheung discussed Pepper’s growth and AI strategy in interviews with Pulse 2.0 and HNGRY.
- **2026-02** — Pepper announced a $50 million Series C led by Lead Edge Capital, bringing total reported funding to $100 million.

## Links

- Website: https://www.usepepper.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bowie-b-cheung
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/PepperEcommerce
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/use_pepper/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/usepepperecommerce/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/bowie-cheung
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18