Vermont Information Processing (VIP), a software and data platform serving the food and beverage industry for more than 50 years, has named Emiliano Delucia Chief Product and Technology Officer — a newly configured role designed to unify product strategy, engineering, and technology development across the company following its acquisition of Encompass Technologies.
The Appointment
Delucia comes to the role directly from Encompass Technologies, where he held the same CPTO title and oversaw a platform modernization effort that produced several commercial products: OrderIQ, MileageTracker, ApIQ, and MerchSync, along with Cowork, an agentic AI platform purpose-built for food and beverage operators. His career spans more than 20 years in product and technology leadership, with earlier roles at Place, Red Ventures, and Halliburton.
The hire is a direct consequence of VIP's Encompass acquisition, which the company characterized as a combination of complementary strengths — VIP's deep distributor and operator relationships set against Encompass's more modern technology stack and AI capability. By elevating Delucia to a single, company-wide CPTO position, VIP is signaling that product integration, not just organizational consolidation, is the near-term priority.
AI and Integration Strategy
Andrew Criezis, Chief Executive Officer of VIP, framed the appointment around the pace of AI adoption across the company's portfolio. "As we look ahead, we have an opportunity to accelerate the pace of AI innovation across our business while continuing to invest in the products and capabilities our customers depend on," Criezis said. "Emiliano's leadership will be an important part of that next chapter for VIP."
Delucia, in his first public comments in the new role, emphasized a customer-first approach to technology deployment. "That means listening closely to customers, continuing to invest in the products they rely on today, and applying technology and AI in practical ways that make their businesses more efficient, connected and easier to run," he said.
For foodservice distributors, beverage wholesalers, and food and beverage manufacturers that rely on VIP's back-office and analytics platforms, the company says near-term continuity is guaranteed: existing products, support relationships, and account teams remain in place. Longer term, Encompass customers are expected to gain access to capabilities from the broader VIP portfolio, including advances in AI, data integration, and connected supply-chain technology — areas that have become competitive differentiators as distributors face margin pressure and demand for real-time visibility.
Industry Context
The executive appointment reflects a wider consolidation wave in food and beverage technology, where legacy enterprise software providers are acquiring AI-native platforms to modernize their product stacks and defend against cloud-native competitors. VIP's strategy — retaining institutional industry knowledge while grafting on newer engineering capability — mirrors moves made by peers across the foodservice technology and supply-chain software segment over the past two years.
For operators and distributors evaluating technology partners, the combined VIP-Encompass entity now presents a broader capability set, though the degree to which the two product portfolios become genuinely unified will depend on execution under Delucia's leadership. Coverage of related executive moves and M&A activity in the food and beverage software space can be found in F&B Industry News's mergers and acquisitions tracker.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
