When every element of Marc Lore’s alternate dining model is finally in place, consumers won’t need to order restaurant meals anymore. Artificial intelligence will correlate their detected preferences with exact computations of their wherewithal and health status to pinpoint what they want, when they want it—even if they’re not conscious they did.
The order is automatically dispatched to one of Lore’s Wonder kitchens, where robots will complete the meal using sous vide-prepared ingredients cooked to order in high-tech ovens.
The finished order is delivered within 12 minutes in suburban settings and six minutes in urban locales.
If it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, consider that the post-ordering production process (though sans robots) is already in place at 38 Wonder kitchens in a swath extending north from New York City. Expansion into Philadelphia and Washington is underway, and founder/CEO Marc Lore believes there’s room for 7,000 Wonder locations nationwide.
Lore, meanwhile, is putting the AI selection process to a rigorous one-man test. “100% of my meals when I’m not on the road are AI [selected],” the tech veteran says of his first food-away-from-home venture. “It knows the food you want better than you do.”
After transforming the way consumers shop for everyday items like groceries and diapers, Lore is hellbent on upending their dining habits.
His enabler is technology. The AI ordering component is a work in progress, but a huge differentiator of the Wonder concept is the ability of each kitchen to duplicate the signature dishes of big-name chefs—celebrities like Jose Andres, Bobby Flay and Marcus Samuelsson.
The chefs worked with Lore's culinary staff to reverse-engineer the recipes for easy but exact replication. Through a combination of oven technology and a reliance on commissary-prepared sous vide components, the meals can be duplicated without a chef’s involvement.
Food editors have attested they can’t distinguish dishes from the chefs’ kitchens from the versions produced in a Wonder kitchen.
The selection doesn’t end with the chefs’ signatures. Wonder’s menu lists 24 types of cuisines, from pizza to barbecue to Spanish foods, all for takeout or delivery, all produced in one kitchen. The variety allows a family to order a variety of fare to the same location in one delivery.
Everything coming out of a Wonder kitchen is sold to-go via an app. Lore has dubbed the operations “delivery-first food halls.”
The app is critical to Lore’s vision. Wonder acquired GrubHub last year for $650 million and is combining the third-party ordering platform with the buyer’s digital directory. That way, explained Lore, consumers who want a meal delivered will be exposed to Wonder’s full array of options.
Similarly, Wonder has acquired the Blue Apron meal-kit service, with that option also showcased on the app. The move significantly reduces the need for advertising or other the other forms of marketing that were necessary to introduce the service to consumers. Now the option is front-and-center when they use the app to choose a dining option. The savings makes the meal-kit model economically feasible, as it may not have been in the past, according to Lore.
He told the COEX audience that he intends to add grocery options to the app sometime in the future. “The bigger vision is 90% of our [food] orders come through the system,” Lore said.
Similar ideas have been tried before, but Lore’s venture has traction—and ample capital behind the effort. He mentioned during his keynote address at COEX that Wonder has already spent “hundreds of millions” on setting up what’s now a significant network of outlets.
He indicated that he intends to add locations at a rapid clip. “We’re currently opening about one per week,” he told the COEX audience.
Within each facility, the front-of-house measures “maybe” 750 square feet, with about 1,200 square feet allocated for kitchen space, said Lore. Everything is electric; there’s not an open flame in the facility.
A farmer wannabe
Lore is not a complete newcomer to the foodservice business, having worked in his youth as a busboy.
He’s aspired to be part of the food supply chain since age 4, when he was taken by the notion of becoming a farmer.
The Staten Island native never made it to the fields, opting instead to become a tech entrepreneur. Among the innovations he hatched was Diapers.com/Quidsi, an online marketplace for families with toddlers. In 2011, its parent company would be acquired by Amazon.com for $550 million.
The native New Yorker also developed a grocery delivery service called Jet.com, which Walmart purchased in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore joined the retail giant as president and CEO of its domestic e-commerce operations. He and the retailer collaborated on the startup of a Silicon Valley tech incubator called Store No. 8.
Lore would later join Major League Baseball great Alex Rodriguez, a.k.a. A-rod, in forming a venture capital company called Vision Capital People, with the aim of investing in technology startups.
The two also collaborated to purchase the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team and the Minnesota Lynx WNBA franchise. According to news reports, the pair was joined by A-Rod's then-girlfriend, J.Lo, in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire the New York Mets pro baseball team.
Lore is himself an athlete, having qualified for the 1996 U.S. National Bobsled Team, but opted not to compete.
In a publicity stunt five years ago, he challenged pro-football legend Jerry Rice to a 40-yard race. Lore won.
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.