GrubMarket Acquires Butter—A VC-Backed Food Wholesale Software Operating System; Mike Xu and Winston Chi Comment


Mon. May 20th, 2024 - by Jordan Okumura-Wright

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Growth in the fresh produce space has been dynamic, with some companies experiencing standout trajectories as they evolve their value propositions. GrubMarket is one such operation, which recently announced the completed acquisition of Butter. With this acquisition, GrubMarket will harness Butter's AI-powered e-commerce and payments technologies, which will expand its food supply chain suite of tools and AI-powered solutions.

Mike Xu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GrubMarket

"We are thrilled to welcome Butter and its formidable engineering team to the GrubMarket family," Mike Xu, Chief Executive Officer of GrubMarket, stated. "We have known about Butter for a little while now and are impressed with their ability to leverage advanced AI to build unique software applications that are highly complementary to our WholesaleWare and GrubAssist AI products. In addition, while GrubMarket has worked predominantly with customers in the fresh produce and meat categories, Winston, Shangyan, and team have built a strong customer base in other specialty food industries, including seafood. We care deeply about the food supply chain industry as a whole and want to do everything we can to empower all players in this space to leverage technology to run their businesses better."

Butter was founded by machine learning experts Winston Chi and Shangyan Li in 2020 and offers a modular software product suite with several solutions. These offerings include AI-powered, omnichannel sales empowerment tools for automating repetitive, manual order entry; and a cloud-based ERP with real-time inventory monitoring, customer relationship management, and order management to name a few of the many advantages.

GrubMarket recently announced the completed acquisition of Butter, harnessing its AI-powered e-commerce and payment technologies to expand its food supply chain suite of tools and solutions

The acquisition also aims to enhance the functionality of its existing portfolio of cutting-edge software products, including GrubAssist AI and WholesaleWare, according to a press release.

Winston Chi, Co-Founder, Butter
Winston Chi, Co-Founder, Butter

"The Butter team is incredibly passionate about helping food wholesale distributors better run their businesses by building software and AI that help them grow sales, streamline operations, and deliver excellent products and services, without drowning in manual tasks like repetitive phone calls and messy spreadsheet data entry," said Winston Chi, Co-Founder of Butter. "We were keen to join forces with GrubMarket, who shares our passion for being an AI-powered technology enabler and digital transformer to drive meaningful change for the food supply chain industry. GrubMarket's sterling reputation in the industry precedes them, and we are excited to work together to further GrubMarket's efforts, particularly around enterprise AI, to revolutionize the food supply chain industry through transformative technologies."

Butter's AI-powered e-commerce and payments technologies will also be integrated into WholesaleWare—GrubMarket's proprietary, AI-powered ERP software. To learn more about the acquisition and its benefits, please check out the full press release here.

"The Butter team shares our passion, and we are excited to collaborate with them to bolster our AI-powered software offerings as we continue to simplify, digitalize, and supercharge the food supply chain," Xu added.

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