Would you trust a robot to make your burrito? The chairman and CEO of startup Wonder, Marc Lore, is betting that his robots can cook a perfect steak much faster than their human counterparts, and that's not accounting for the speed achieved by his robotic kitchen.
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The mission of Wonder is to make more great food more accessible, and CEO Marc Lore is working to do just that.
Wonder is Pursuing a Bold Path Where the Future Means Food Accessibility
Wonder is pursuing a bold vision to become a vertically integrated food platform that combines restaurant brands, robotics, delivery, logistics, and AI. The company has expanded through acquisitions such as Grubhub, Blue Apron, Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, and Sweetgreen's robotics technology. Marc Lore believes automation can dramatically improve efficiency, with Wonder's new bowl-making robots capable of producing up to 500 customized bowls per hour. Long-term, Wonder aims to become a platform where entrepreneurs can launch food brands using AI-powered tools and its infrastructure.
The Future of Food Is Being Built Today: How Marc Lore and Wonder Are Reinventing Restaurants
When most people think about food delivery, they think about a restaurant making a meal and a third-party service bringing it to their door. Marc Lore sees something much bigger.
The entrepreneur who previously built and sold Diapers.com and Jet.com is now focused on transforming one of the world's largest industries: food. Through Wonder, Lore is creating what he calls a "vertically integrated food platform"—a technology-driven ecosystem designed to rethink how meals are prepared, delivered, and experienced.
At first glance, Wonder might look like another food hall or delivery service. But beneath the surface is a sophisticated operating system for food that combines restaurant brands, automation, logistics, delivery, and artificial intelligence into a single platform.
And the vision is becoming increasingly ambitious.
More Than a Restaurant Company
Wonder has spent the past several years assembling the pieces needed to create a new kind of food ecosystem. The company owns Grubhub, Blue Apron, multiple restaurant concepts, and a growing portfolio of food brands spanning everything from pizza and steak to fried chicken, salads, and Mexican bowls.
Recently, Wonder expanded its portfolio again by acquiring Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken while simultaneously launching new concepts including Pop Salad and El Diez Mexican Bowls. These additions help strengthen Wonder's strategy of offering customers a wide variety of cuisines through a single ordering experience.
The goal is simple: give consumers access to numerous restaurant brands from one kitchen, one app, and one delivery network.
For customers, that means unprecedented convenience. For Wonder, it means powerful economies of scale.
The Robot Revolution Arrives in the Kitchen
Perhaps the most exciting development is Wonder's investment in automation.
At a recent Fortune conference, Lore revealed that Wonder is deploying advanced robotic kitchen technology capable of producing up to 500 customized bowls per hour. According to Lore, a human worker might produce only 30 to 45 bowls in that same timeframe.
The technology, acquired through Wonder's purchase of Sweetgreen's Spyce robotics business, automatically assembles meals with remarkable precision. Ingredients are added according to exact customer specifications, creating consistent results while dramatically increasing throughput.
Lore described the system as producing meals with "no errors," helping ensure customers receive exactly what they ordered every time.
This isn't automation for automation's sake. It's about improving speed, consistency, scalability, and economics.
In an industry facing rising labor costs and increasing consumer expectations, that combination could become a significant competitive advantage.
Why Vertical Integration Matters
One of Lore's most compelling ideas is that Wonder controls more of the customer experience than traditional restaurant companies.
Rather than relying on separate restaurant operators, delivery networks, and technology providers, Wonder owns many of the critical pieces itself. The company controls restaurant brands, kitchen operations, delivery infrastructure, and ordering technology through Grubhub.
This integrated approach potentially allows Wonder to reduce costs while expanding into markets that might not otherwise support large standalone restaurant chains.
As Lore explained, the company can operate multiple restaurant concepts from a single location and even keep locations open later because resources are shared across the platform.
It's a strategy that resembles what Amazon did for retail and what Shopify did for e-commerce—building infrastructure that enables an entire ecosystem.
The Long-Term Vision
What makes Wonder particularly fascinating is that Lore appears to be thinking far beyond food delivery.
He recently discussed a future feature called Wonder Create, which would allow entrepreneurs to generate restaurant concepts using AI. Users could potentially create branded food businesses complete with menus, pricing, and marketing assets built on top of Wonder's infrastructure.
Lore described the concept as "Think Shopify on steroids."
If successful, Wonder could evolve from a restaurant company into a platform that enables thousands of food entrepreneurs to launch businesses without owning kitchens, hiring large staffs, or building delivery networks.
That's a fundamentally different vision than simply selling meals.
A Company Worth Watching
Wonder's success is not guaranteed. The restaurant industry remains highly competitive, and scaling a new operating model always presents challenges.
But what makes Wonder so intriguing is that Marc Lore isn't trying to build a better restaurant. He's trying to build a better food system.
By combining robotics, artificial intelligence, delivery logistics, restaurant brands, and platform economics, Wonder is attempting to create a new category altogether.
And if the company succeeds, the future of food may look very different from the one we know today.
