Marc Lore, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur who co-founded Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.3 billion, is now setting his sights on the restaurant industry with an ambitious AI-driven platform called Wonder Create. The initiative, unveiled earlier this year, promises to let virtually anyone—from seasoned chefs to social media influencers—design and launch their own restaurant brand in under a minute using artificial intelligence. The virtual restaurant would then be available across Wonder's growing network of tech-enabled kitchens, which currently number 120 and are expected to expand to 400 locations by 2027.
Wonder is not a typical restaurant chain. It operates as a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform that evolved from food trucks to fast-casual outlets with 10 to 20 seats. These outlets are not ordinary restaurants; they are what Lore calls 'programmable cooking platforms'—all-electric kitchens capable of operating as 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine. The kitchens increasingly incorporate robotics, including conveyors and robotic arms, to handle cooking tasks. Wonder recently acquired Spice Robotics, a maker of an automatic bowl-making machine previously used by Sweetgreen. Next year, the company plans to introduce an 'infinite sauce machine' that can produce about 80% of all sauces found in internet recipes.
How Wonder Create Works
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, Lore explained that Wonder Create combines a Shopify-like front end with an AI prompt. 'You type in what kind of restaurant you want to build. It builds the restaurant—AI does—in under a minute. It does the name, branding, description, pictures, pricing, health information, and all the recipes for your restaurant,' he said. Users can refine the prompt if changes are needed, and when they are ready, the restaurant goes live across all of Wonder's locations. The company currently has a library of 700 ingredients, and the kitchens employ up to 12 people alongside cooking technology.
The goal is to allow people to experiment with food in new ways. For example, a restaurateur could test recipes on Wonder's platform to gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to a brick-and-mortar location. Lore also sees use cases for influencers who want to connect with their audience through their own restaurant brands without needing to build physical locations. 'It could be a mega-influencer, a micro-influencer—anyone that wants to monetize their following. Or it could be a private trainer that wants to make specific bowls. It could be a not-for-profit. It could be Disney for marketing their new movie. Anybody can make a restaurant,' Lore said.
From Ghost Kitchens to Programmable Platforms
Wonder's concept builds on the ghost kitchen model that gained popularity in the early 2020s, but with a key difference: automation and AI are designed to solve the quality consistency issues that plagued earlier attempts. Ghost kitchens allowed brands to sell food without owning restaurants, relying on contracted kitchens. However, high-profile operators like MrBeast Burger faced widespread complaints over inconsistent food quality because dozens of different kitchens prepared the food. Wonder's programmable, increasingly automated kitchens aim to eliminate this variability by standardizing preparation across all locations.
Lore acknowledges there are limits to what the current system can handle. The robotic arms and conveyors cannot toss and stretch pizza dough or slice and roll sushi. Instead, Wonder focuses on simpler basics like burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls. The company's throughput capacity is currently about 7 million meals per year with 12 people in a 2,500-square-foot kitchen. Lore sees a path to reaching 20 million meals from the same space with the same headcount by integrating more robotics. By 2035, he hopes to have 1,000 unique restaurants operating out of a single 2,500-square-foot location.
Strategic Acquisitions and Brand Arbitrage
Wonder has made several strategic acquisitions to fuel its vision. In 2021, it acquired Grubhub, giving it access to 250 million deliveries per year. The company also bought Blue Apron for its meal kit business and has been purchasing restaurant brands, such as New York City-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, which it snapped up for $6.5 million in February. Lore sees an opportunity in brand arbitrage: 'When you buy a brand that has 10 locations, or even 50 locations, and then overnight put it in 1,000, there's just an incredible arbitrage there.' This approach allows Wonder to rapidly scale popular concepts across its programmable kitchen network.
The combination of AI-powered creation, robotic cooking, and a large delivery network positions Wonder as a potential disruptor in the food industry. However, the model is still unproven at scale. While the company has ambitious plans to expand its kitchen count and brand offerings, questions remain about customer adoption and the long-term appeal of virtual restaurants. Will diners embrace brands created by AI and operated through a centralized kitchen network? Early results from ghost kitchens suggest that building customer loyalty is difficult without a physical space or consistent experience. Wonder's automation may offer a solution, but it remains to be seen whether the platform can deliver the level of quality and variety that keeps customers coming back.
Marc Lore's track record in e-commerce—he founded Quidsi (parent of Diapers.com), sold it to Amazon, then founded Jet.com and sold it to Walmart—indicates a keen ability to identify market gaps and build scalable platforms. With Wonder Create, he is betting that the same principles of convenience, efficiency, and technology that transformed online retail can also reshape how people access and experience food. If successful, the initiative could democratize restaurant creation, turning food enthusiasts, influencers, and even corporations into virtual restaurateurs without the traditional barriers of real estate, equipment, and staffing.
Source: TechCrunch News