Marc Lore, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur who sold his previous startups to Amazon and Walmart, has big plans to infuse AI into his current venture, Wonder. The centerpiece of those plans is Wonder Create, an initiative that would let anyone — from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers — use AI to design and launch their own restaurant brand in under a minute. The virtual restaurant would then go live across Wonder’s growing network of tech-enabled kitchen locations, currently numbering 120 and expected to reach 400 next year.

Key Facts at a Glance

• Product: Wonder Create — an AI-powered platform that generates a complete virtual restaurant (name, branding, recipes, pricing) in under 60 seconds.
• Infrastructure: 120 programmable cooking platforms (all-electric, robotic-capable kitchens) today, scaling to 400 in 2025.
• Technology: 700-ingredient library; automated conveyors, robotic arms; acquired Spice Robotics for automatic bowl-making; planned "infinite sauce machine" covering 80% of internet sauces.
• Business Model: Partners operate virtual brands from Wonder’s kitchens, reducing overhead and enabling rapid scaling.
• Target Users: Food entrepreneurs, influencers (micro and mega), personal trainers, nonprofits, movie studios — anyone wanting to monetize a following or test recipes.
• Avoiding Ghost Kitchen Pitfalls: Wonder’s centralized, automated kitchens ensure consistent quality unlike failed ghost kitchen models like MrBeast Burger.
• Limitations: Cannot handle sushi, pizza dough stretching, or items requiring manual dexterity — focus on burgers, chicken, bowls.
• Future Goal: 1,000 unique restaurant brands operating out of a single 2,500 sq ft kitchen by 2035, with throughput rising from 7 million to 20 million meals annually.

How Wonder Create Works: The Shopify of Restaurants

Lore, speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, described the platform as like “a Shopify front end with an AI prompt.” A user types a description of the restaurant they want — cuisine style, target audience, any specific ingredients — and the AI instantly generates a full brand package: name, visual branding, menu descriptions, pricing, nutritional information, and all recipes. The user can refine the prompt until satisfied, then launch the brand across all Wonder locations with a single click. The entire process takes under a minute, lower the barrier to entry for food entrepreneurship dramatically.

Behind the scenes, Wonder’s kitchens are anything but ordinary. The company calls them “programmable cooking platforms” — all-electric, increasingly robotic facilities capable of operating as 25 different restaurant concepts simultaneously, each with its own menu and brand identity. A 700-ingredient library forms the backbone of the system, allowing recipes to be algorithmically varied without manual reconfiguration. Current kitchen technology includes conveyors and robotic arms for tasks like frying and assembling bowls. The recent acquisition of Spice Robotics adds an automatic bowl-making machine similar to those used by Sweetgreen. Next year, Wonder plans to deploy an “infinite sauce machine” that can produce roughly 80% of all sauces found in internet recipes, further reducing human labor in sauce preparation.

Lore emphasized that adding robotics does not mean cutting staff. Each kitchen employs up to 12 people; the automation is intended to boost throughput. “We have about 7 million throughput capacity with 12 people,” Lore said. “We see a path to getting to 20 million throughput out of 2,500 square feet with just 12 people.” This efficiency is central to the economics: by squeezing more meals from the same real estate and labor, Wonder can offer affordable kitchen space to hundreds of virtual brands.

Background: Marc Lore’s Track Record

Marc Lore cut his teeth in e-commerce by co-founding Quidsi (parent of Diapers.com), which Amazon acquired in 2010. He then launched Jet.com, an innovative e-commerce platform that Walmart bought for $3.3 billion in 2016. Lore served as Walmart’s e-commerce chief until 2021, helping the retail giant compete with Amazon. He left to launch Wonder, a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform, which has evolved from food trucks to high-tech fast casual restaurants. Wonder has also acquired Grubhub — handling 250 million deliveries annually — and Blue Apron, the meal kit pioneer. These acquisitions give Wonder a massive distribution network and supply chain capabilities. More recently, the company bought restaurant brands like New York City’s Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken for $6.5 million, with the intention of scaling them across its kitchen network.

Learning from Ghost Kitchen Failures

The virtual restaurant space has a checkered history. Ghost kitchen operators such as MrBeast Burger promised brands the ability to sell food without owning physical locations, but they often suffered from inconsistent quality and poor customer loyalty. MrBeast Burger, for example, faced widespread complaints because dozens of different contracted kitchens prepared its burgers with varying standards. Wonder’s model addresses this by controlling the entire kitchen ecosystem — equipment, ingredients, processes, and even robotics — ensuring that every meal from a given virtual brand tastes identical regardless of location. This centralized, automated approach aims to build consumer trust and repeat business.

Lore acknowledges the limitations of his current system. The robots and human staff cannot handle tasks requiring delicate manual skill, such as tossing pizza dough, stretching crust, or rolling sushi. Instead, Wonder focuses on simpler but universally popular items: burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and grain bowls. These categories are well-suited to robotic precision and high volume.

Use Cases Beyond Traditional Restaurateurs

While Wonder Create targets food entrepreneurs, Lore sees broader applications. Mega-influencers and micro-influencers could launch branded restaurants that connect with their followers, monetizing their audience without managing a physical restaurant. Private trainers could create customized meal bowls for clients. Nonprofits could use the platform for fundraising campaigns. Movie studios could promote new releases by creating themed pop-up restaurants. “Anybody can make a restaurant,” Lore said. The platform essentially democratizes food brand creation, allowing rapid testing of concepts before committing to brick-and-mortar investments.

Scaling the Vision

With 120 kitchens operational and a goal of 400 by next year, Wonder is building density in key markets. By acquiring existing restaurant brands with 10 or 50 locations and immediately making them available in 1,000 kitchens, Lore sees an “incredible arbitrage” in brand expansion. The ultimate ambition: by 2035, a single 2,500-square-foot kitchen could host 1,000 distinct virtual restaurant brands, each with its own AI‑generated identity and menu. Whether the public embraces this vision remains to be seen, but if any entrepreneur can navigate the challenges, it is someone with Lore’s history of disruption and execution.

Source: TechCrunch News