Sourcery raises $2.5 million to help kitchens source their food

Food companies, restaurants, caterers, and corporate kitchens have struggled to find and manage their suppliers in a digital way. Most are still using paper, the Yellow Pages, and telephone calls to do all that. Enter Sourcery, a Y Combinator-backed startup coming out of private beta today to help with that problem. The company has also raised a total of $2.5 million in seed funding in trickles since Y Combinator.

When an entrepreneur start a food business, it’s rarely because he or she adores the invoicing process. The passion is for food — not so much for managing paper trails and cash flows. But for Na’ama Moran, the less-sexy parts of running a kitchen are the prize. Moran, the CEO of San Francisco food service startup Sourcery, wants her platform to change the way small caterers, restaurateurs and kitchen managers source their ingredients from producers and distributors. Sourcery, which launches today with $2.5 million in seed funding, is a platform that lets food buyers browse a list of local distributors and handles payments and orders between the two. Like many startups, Sourcery is convinced it can transform the stodgy old status quo into something sleek, efficient and data-driven.