Marc Lore, the serial entrepreneur who sold his previous startups to Amazon and Walmart, is betting big on artificial intelligence to transform the restaurant industry. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, Lore detailed his vision for Wonder Create, a platform that lets anyone—from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers—design and launch a fully branded virtual restaurant in under a minute. The concept combines AI-driven branding, menu development, and recipe generation with Wonder’s growing network of tech-enabled kitchens, which currently number 120 and are expected to reach 400 by next year.
Wonder, Lore’s current venture, is a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform that has evolved from food trucks to fast-casual restaurants with 10 to 20 seats. These are not ordinary restaurants; they operate as “programmable cooking platforms” capable of serving 25 different cuisine types from a single all-electric kitchen. Each kitchen is increasingly robotic and contains a library of 700 ingredients, allowing it to produce a wide array of dishes. The kitchens themselves house multiple brands, each operating from the same physical location. A staff of up to 12 people works alongside cooking technology such as conveyors and robotic arms. Recently, Wonder acquired Spice Robotics, a maker of automatic bowl-making machines previously used by Sweetgreen. Next year, the company plans to introduce an “infinite sauce machine” capable of producing roughly 80% of all sauces found in internet recipes.
Wonder Create was announced earlier this year as a way for anyone to use Wonder’s software to launch their own restaurant brand and recipes. Lore expanded on how AI would power this process. “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 explained. Users can refine the prompt if changes are needed, and then the virtual restaurant goes live across all Wonder locations. The goal is to let people experiment with food in new ways—for example, a restaurateur could test recipes and gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to a brick-and-mortar location. Lore also sees use cases for influencers and other public figures. “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,” he said.
The term “restaurant” here is used loosely, as these are virtual brands that operate from Wonder’s existing kitchens without a standalone physical location. This concept echoes the ghost kitchen model that gained popularity in the early 2020s. Ghost kitchens are commercial cooking facilities designed to prepare food for delivery only, allowing multiple brands to share space and reduce overhead. However, many ghost kitchen operators struggled with quality control and customer loyalty. High-profile failures like MrBeast Burger, which faced widespread complaints about inconsistent food quality due to its reliance on dozens of contracted kitchens, highlighted the pitfalls. Wonder’s approach aims to address these issues by centralizing production and automating many cooking processes, ensuring each dish meets the same standards regardless of location.
Lore’s career provides context for this ambitious plan. He founded Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com, which was sold to Amazon in 2010 for $545 million. He then launched Jet.com, an e-commerce platform designed to compete with Amazon, which Walmart acquired in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore joined Walmart as an executive and led its U.S. e-commerce operations for several years before leaving in 2021 to focus on Wonder. Wonder itself began as a food truck business in 2018, later pivoting to a delivery-focused model that combined in-house cooking with third-party restaurant partnerships. The company raised substantial venture capital, including a $700 million round in 2023 that valued it at $3.5 billion. Lore’s vision now includes integrating Grubhub and Blue Apron, both acquired in separate deals. Grubhub gives Wonder access to its 250-million-deliveries-per-year network, while Blue Apron provides meal kit expertise.
Wonder’s kitchens are designed for efficiency and automation. With 12 people, each location currently has a throughput capacity of about 7 million meals per year. Lore believes that by adding robotics, the same space can eventually produce 20 million meals annually. “We see a path to getting to 20 million throughput out of 2,500 square feet with just 12 people,” he said. The eventual goal is to operate 1,000 unique restaurant brands from each location by 2035. This scalability is key to the economics of Wonder Create. Lore noted that when you buy an existing brand—like New York City’s Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, which Wonder acquired for $6.5 million in February—you can instantly expand it across hundreds of kitchens. “There’s just an incredible arbitrage there,” he said.
Despite the promise, there are limits to what Wonder’s kitchens can do. The current setup cannot handle tasks like tossing and stretching pizza dough or slicing and rolling sushi. Instead, the focus is on simpler basics: burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls. The company’s AI system is designed to generate recipes within these constraints, using the 700-ingredient library. Lore acknowledged that not every type of cuisine is feasible, but the breadth of options is still vast. He also addressed concerns about job displacement. While automation will increase efficiency, it will not necessarily reduce headcount; instead, it will allow each kitchen to produce more meals without adding staff.
The user experience for Wonder Create is intended to be frictionless. A would-be restaurateur interacts with an AI prompt, similar to a “Shopify front end with an AI prompt,” as Lore described. The AI handles all aspects of brand creation: name, visual identity, menu descriptions, pricing, nutritional information, and recipes. Once satisfied, the user can launch the virtual restaurant instantly. The platform then manages logistics, including inventory, staffing, and delivery through Grubhub. This model could lower the barrier to entry for food entrepreneurs, who traditionally face high costs and regulatory hurdles. However, the success of such a model depends on customer acceptance. Ghost kitchens have a mixed reputation, and building brand loyalty without a physical storefront is challenging. Wonder’s investment in automation and quality control may help overcome these obstacles, but the concept remains unproven at scale.
Lore’s background in e-commerce and logistics positions him well to tackle these challenges. His previous ventures disrupted retail by leveraging technology and scale. With Wonder, he aims to do the same for food. The company’s integration of Grubhub and Blue Apron creates a closed-loop system: meal kits, delivery orders, and virtual brands all feed into the same supply chain and kitchen infrastructure. This vertical integration could provide cost advantages and data insights that pure-play ghost kitchens lack. Moreover, Wonder’s ability to buy and scale existing restaurant brands—like Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken—offers a path to rapid growth without building brand awareness from scratch.
As the food industry continues to evolve, AI and automation are increasingly seen as solutions to labor shortages, rising costs, and changing consumer preferences. Wonder Create represents one of the most ambitious attempts to merge these technologies with food entrepreneurship. Whether it will succeed depends on execution, but the potential is clear: anyone with an internet connection could soon create a restaurant brand and have it available for delivery in minutes. Dozens of influencers, trainers, and nonprofits have already expressed interest, according to Lore. The platform is expected to expand rapidly as Wonder adds more kitchens and refines its AI capabilities. For now, the idea remains a bold vision—one that could reshape how we think about restaurant creation and food delivery.
Source: TechCrunch News