Marc Lore, the serial entrepreneur who sold his previous startups to Amazon and Walmart, is betting on artificial intelligence to transform the restaurant industry. His current venture, Wonder, has announced Wonder Create, an initiative that allows anyone—from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers—to use AI to design and launch their own restaurant brand in under a minute. These virtual restaurants then go live across Wonder's growing network of tech-enabled kitchen locations, currently numbering 120 and expected to reach 400 next year.
How Wonder Create Works
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference, Lore described the platform as a combination of a Shopify front end and an AI prompt. Users type in what kind of restaurant they want to build, and the AI generates the name, branding, description, pictures, pricing, health information, and all recipes—all in under a minute. The user can refine the prompt as needed and then launch the restaurant across all Wonder locations.
Wonder's kitchens are not traditional restaurants. They are all-electric, programmable cooking platforms with a 700-ingredient library. Each location can operate as up to 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine. The kitchens employ up to 12 staff members and incorporate cooking technology like conveyors, robotic arms, and an automatic bowl-making machine from Spice Robotics, which Wonder recently acquired. Next year, Wonder plans to introduce an "infinite sauce machine" capable of making 80% of all sauces found in internet recipes.
Targeting Ghost Kitchen Pitfalls
The concept of virtual restaurants is not new. Ghost kitchens—commercial facilities designed for delivery-only food preparation—experienced a boom and bust in the early 2020s. High-profile operators like MrBeast Burger faced widespread complaints about inconsistent food quality, as they relied on dozens of different contracted kitchens and staff. Wonder's approach aims to solve this by using a unified, increasingly automated kitchen model where quality can be controlled centrally.
Lore acknowledged limitations: Wonder's robots cannot toss and stretch pizza dough or slice and roll sushi. Instead, the focus is on simpler basics like burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls. The company's goal is to increase meal throughput from 7 million per location with 12 staff to 20 million over time, while maintaining the same headcount. By 2035, Lore envisions 1,000 unique restaurant brands operating out of a single 2,500-square-foot kitchen.
Use Cases Beyond Traditional Restaurants
Wonder Create is designed to allow people to experiment with food in new ways. A restaurateur could test recipes to gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to a brick-and-mortar location. Influencers can connect with their audience through their own restaurant brands without launching physical chains. Lore suggested that mega-influencers, micro-influencers, private trainers wanting to offer specific bowls, non-profits, or even Disney for movie marketing could all create restaurants on the platform.
However, the question remains whether many people actually want to do this. The ghost kitchen model struggled to build customer loyalty, and Wonder's automation layer may address some of those pitfalls, but the model remains unproven at scale.
Background: Marc Lore's Entrepreneurial Journey
Marc Lore first made his mark in e-commerce by co-founding Diapers.com and the parent company Quidsi, which he sold to Amazon in 2011 for $545 million. He then co-founded Jet.com, an online marketplace that was acquired by Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore stayed at Walmart as head of U.S. e-commerce until 2020, when he left to focus on new ventures. Wonder, founded in 2018, initially operated food trucks before evolving into fast-casual restaurants and eventually its current format.
Integration with Grubhub and Blue Apron
Wonder's strategy extends to acquisitions. The company acquired Grubhub in 2022, bringing a platform with 250 million deliveries per year. It also purchased Blue Apron, the meal kit service, to leverage its supply chain and recipe development. Recently, Wonder bought New York City-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken for $6.5 million. Lore noted an "incredible arbitrage" in buying a brand with 10 to 50 locations and then putting it into 1,000 Wonder kitchens overnight.
The Future of Food Delivery
Wonder's model represents a significant bet on AI and robotics to solve the operational challenges of food delivery. By allowing anyone to create a restaurant brand with minimal effort, the platform could democratize the industry. Yet, the ghost kitchen precedent suggests that technology alone may not guarantee success. Customer loyalty remains elusive, and the ability to produce consistent, high-quality food at scale is critical. Wonder's programmable kitchens aim to achieve consistency, but the ultimate proof will be in consumer adoption.
As Wonder expands from 120 to 400 locations next year and continues to integrate robotics, the company is positioning itself as a vertically integrated dining platform. Lore's vision is clear: by 2035, a single kitchen could host 1,000 different restaurant brands, each designed by an AI prompt and operated by a blend of humans and robots. Whether this future becomes reality depends on whether the public embraces AI-generated food brands and whether the technology can deliver both novelty and quality.
Source: TechCrunch News