When Silvio Pufer first stepped into the culinary world, he was surprised by the amount of administrative work involved.
“It’s not just a night of sending nice plates to your guests. There’s a lot of work that goes into making that happen,” Pfuffer told Business Insider. Long phone calls from food suppliers and producers kept me away from the kitchen.
Food sourcing and purchasing is a confusing process, as farmers, wholesalers, logistics companies, and restaurants communicate in a variety of ways, including phone calls, emails, text messages, and PDF blasts. Because it starts as early as 4am. As product prices and availability are constantly changing, Seller issues frequent updates. For example, the price of wild fish can change three times a day.
When Pfüfer opened his restaurant in 2024, he wanted to streamline the food procurement process. At Matthias, in honor of his late grandfather, Pfeufer uses an AI-assisted platform for food business owners called Saltz to speed up food sourcing and reduce phone calls.
Pfeuffer, co-owner and head chef at the Berlin-based restaurant, said saving time is key. Saltz uses AI agents to directly connect restaurants and suppliers through a marketplace that integrates various catalogs, transactions, and logistics, allowing restaurants to compare and purchase fresh, high-quality, specialty products faster than traditional food sourcing processes.
The platform’s standardized, real-time food data could be transformative for independent restaurants like Pfeufer’s with limited purchasing power. Saltz declined to give exact numbers, but said thousands of buyers and hundreds of suppliers are using the company’s technology. The company says about 80 to 90 percent of its buyers are independent restaurants.
Connections with high quality and professional suppliers
Pfeufer said he chose Saltz because he liked how the platform modernized older processes. In the two years he’s been using it, he said he’s been able to discover new suppliers, place orders outside of business hours, and better monitor pricing.
Founded in 2022, the startup uses AI agents to ingest PDFs, emails, and text messages that food sellers send to Saltz, standardizing, enriching, and consolidating all data into a single platform. AI agents automatically update each seller’s listing on the platform, eliminating the need for manual updates.
Meanwhile, buyers can now see options, information, and up-to-date pricing for once disparate products in one place. You can also order food at a time that suits you and track delivery status. “You can do it yourself on a Sunday, at night, in the morning, and you don’t have to call,” Pfuffer said.
Matthias, who was awarded his first Michelin star in 2025 after 10 months on the job, requires his daily meals to meet high standards and the products to be of the freshest quality. Pfuffer orders vegetables, milk and other items from Saltz every week, and also orders fresh fish twice a week. Before using Saltz, the quality of the products wasn’t necessarily bad, but access to new or specialized suppliers was more limited and the supply chain was longer, he said.
“Fish is now often sourced directly from traders and farmers without the need for intermediate storage. This avoids additional storage periods that can negatively impact freshness,” Pfüfer said, adding that increased oversight of the supply chain and shorter periods mean his food is of more consistently high quality.
“We’ve definitely been able to connect with better suppliers,” he told Business Insider. The chef added that he still works directly with local farmers, as he is often looking for unusual items not listed on the platform.
With Saltz, Pfeufer can see more costs up front and better plan how much to charge for new dishes. “This makes all the calculations much easier, which is very important to us,” he said.
Agentic AI serves as a foundational tool
Saltz was founded by brothers Andrius and Thomas Schlimas, who previously built dropshipping platform Oberlo, which was acquired by Shopify. After spending four years inside Shopify’s supply chain machine, the brothers teamed up with industry veteran Reinis Strodas. Their goal is to modernize the $9.8 trillion food procurement industry.
“It’s impossible to understand or structure a mess of information that exists in many different places and doesn’t have a common structure,” Andrius said.
The Shrimas said previous failed attempts to modernize food procurement required a two-pronged approach. One is to force suppliers and buyers onto a single platform, requiring them to change the way they work or take on the time-consuming task of manually entering all PDFs, emails and text messages.
With Saltz, AI agents upload and update sellers’ product listings without requiring changes to individual stakeholder workflows. Thomas said having agent AI as the foundation of the process gives the platform an advantage.
“This gives us a speed advantage, and speed adds to market share in this market.”