Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur known for founding and selling e-commerce companies to Amazon and Walmart, is now betting that artificial intelligence will democratize the restaurant industry. His current venture, Wonder, a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform, has introduced Wonder Create, an initiative that enables anyone—from aspiring food entrepreneurs to social media influencers—to use AI to design and launch their own virtual restaurant brand in less than a minute. These brands then come to life across Wonder’s growing network of tech-enabled kitchens, which currently number 120 and are expected to expand to 400 by next year.

Lore’s Entrepreneurial Journey

To understand the significance of this latest move, it helps to look back at Lore’s career. He co-founded Diapers.com in 2005, which was acquired by Amazon in 2011 for $545 million. He then went on to create Jet.com, a startup that aimed to reimagine online shopping with dynamic pricing and savings through bundle buys. Walmart acquired Jet.com in 2016 for $3.3 billion, and Lore joined the retail giant to lead its e-commerce division. After leaving Walmart in 2021, he turned his attention to food and dining, launching Wonder with the goal of creating a modern, tech-driven food experience that could rival traditional restaurants and delivery aggregators.

Wonder started as food trucks but quickly evolved into fast-casual restaurants with 10 to 20 seats. However, these are not typical eateries. They are what Lore calls “programmable cooking platforms” — all-electric kitchens that can operate as up to 25 different types of restaurants depending on the cuisine. The kitchens are increasingly robotic, using conveyors, robotic arms, and other automation to assist a staff of up to 12 people. The company recently acquired Spice Robotics, a maker of automatic bowl-making machines previously used by Sweetgreen, and plans to launch an “infinite sauce machine” next year that can produce about 80% of all the sauces found in internet recipes today.

How Wonder Create Works

Wonder Create, announced earlier this year, is the centerpiece of Lore’s AI vision. The platform is described as a “Shopify front end with an AI prompt.” Users simply type a description of the restaurant they want to build, and the AI generates the entire concept in under a minute. This includes the restaurant’s name, branding, description, pictures, pricing, health information, and all the recipes. If adjustments are needed, users can refine the prompt. Once finalized, the virtual restaurant goes live across all of Wonder’s kitchen locations, allowing customers to order through the Wonder app or website.

Each programmable kitchen has a library of 700 ingredients, which enables the AI to create diverse menus. The restaurants are actually multiple brands operating from the same physical location—similar to the ghost kitchen model but with a high degree of automation and quality control. Wonder’s kitchens use a combination of human staff and robotics to prepare food, with the goal of increasing throughput without adding more employees. Currently, a kitchen can produce about 7 million meals per year with 12 people; Lore sees a path to 20 million meals within the same 2,500-square-foot space by 2035, with the same headcount. By that time, he aims to have 1,000 unique restaurant brands operating out of each kitchen.

Target Audience and Use Cases

Lore envisions a wide range of users for Wonder Create. A traditional restaurateur could use the platform to test new recipes and gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to a brick-and-mortar location. Social media influencers, from mega-influencers to micro-influencers, could monetize their followings by launching branded restaurant concepts without needing to manage physical kitchens. Other potential users include personal trainers who want to create custom meal bowls for clients, non-profit organizations, or even entertainment companies like Disney to promote a new movie with a themed restaurant pop-up. “Anybody can make a restaurant,” Lore said at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference.

This level of access represents a dramatic shift from the traditional restaurant industry, which typically requires significant capital, real estate, and operational expertise. By lowering the barrier to entry, Wonder Create could unlock a wave of culinary creativity and brand experimentation. However, the success of the model depends on whether consumers will embrace virtual brands that lack a physical storefront and whether the quality of food can be consistently high across all locations.

The Ghost Kitchen Legacy

The virtual restaurant concept is not entirely new. Ghost kitchens—commercial cooking facilities that prepare food exclusively for delivery—emerged in the late 2010s and early 2020s, promising to allow brands to sell food without owning traditional restaurants. However, many high-profile ghost kitchen operators struggled. For example, MrBeast Burger, a virtual brand launched by the YouTube star, faced widespread complaints about inconsistent food quality because it relied on dozens of different contracted kitchens and staff. The model failed to build customer loyalty, and several companies scaled back or shut down.

Wonder aims to avoid these pitfalls by controlling the entire supply chain—from the kitchen equipment to the ingredient library to the automation technology. Because Wonder owns and operates its kitchens, it can enforce standardized recipes and cooking processes. The addition of robotics further reduces human error and variability. Lore acknowledges that there are still limitations; for instance, Wonder’s kitchens cannot toss and stretch pizza dough or slice and roll sushi. The focus remains on simpler dishes like burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls, which are more amenable to automation and consistency.

Investments and Acquisitions

Wonder has been on an acquisition spree to build out its ecosystem. In addition to Spice Robotics, the company purchased Grubhub, a major food delivery platform with 250 million deliveries per year, and Blue Apron, the meal kit service. These acquisitions provide Wonder with a massive customer base, a delivery infrastructure, and meal preparation expertise. More recently, Wonder bought New York City-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken for $6.5 million. Lore sees an opportunity to acquire existing restaurant brands with 10 to 50 locations and scale them overnight across Wonder’s network of 1,000 kitchens. “When you buy a brand — and you can 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,” he noted.

This strategy could supercharge the growth of small regional chains, giving them national exposure without the capital expenditure of building new locations. At the same time, it allows Wonder to offer a diverse array of branded options to customers, increasing the value proposition of the platform.

Challenges Ahead

Despite the promising vision, significant challenges remain. The virtual restaurant model still faces consumer skepticism. Ghost kitchens have left a bad taste in many mouths, and building trust will take time. Additionally, the economics of running automated kitchens at scale are unproven. The upfront investment in robotics and kitchen technology is substantial, and Wonder must achieve high utilization rates to justify the costs. The company will also need to navigate regulatory hurdles related to food safety, labor, and franchising. While AI can generate recipes and branding, ensuring that the food tastes good and meets dietary requirements is a different challenge. Moreover, the platform must handle complex logistics across hundreds of locations, including inventory management, equipment maintenance, and delivery coordination.

Another open question is whether there is enough demand for the thousands of micro-brands that could be created. The internet is saturated with content creator brands, and consumers may suffer from choice fatigue. Wonder will need to curate the best concepts and give them marketing support to stand out. Lore is betting that the combination of AI-driven creation, automated cooking, and a seamless delivery network will overcome these obstacles.

In the coming years, Wonder plans to expand its kitchen network to 400 locations and continue refining its robotic systems. The ultimate goal, by 2035, is to have 1,000 unique restaurant brands operating out of a single 2,500-square-foot kitchen. Whether that future comes to pass depends on execution, but one thing is clear: Marc Lore is once again pushing the boundaries of technology to transform an industry, this time with AI and robotics at the forefront.

Source: TechCrunch News