Marc Lore, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur known for selling startups to Amazon and Walmart, is betting big on artificial intelligence to transform the restaurant industry. His current venture, Wonder, is developing technology that could allow anyone—from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers—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, which currently number 120 and are expected to reach 400 next year.
Lore's background is rooted in disruptive e-commerce. He co-founded Diapers.com, which was acquired by Amazon in 2011, and later founded Jet.com, sold to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. After a stint as Walmart's head of e-commerce, Lore left in 2021 to focus on Wonder, a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform. The startup initially operated food trucks but has evolved into fast-casual restaurants with 10 to 20 seats. These are not traditional restaurants; they are "programmable cooking platforms" capable of operating as 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine, within all-electric kitchens that are increasingly becoming robotic.
How AI Creates a Restaurant in Under a Minute
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference, Lore described Wonder Create, an initiative announced earlier this year. The platform functions like "a Shopify front end with an AI prompt." Users type in what kind of restaurant they want to build, and the AI generates the entire brand—name, branding, description, pictures, pricing, health information, and all recipes. "AI does it—in under a minute," Lore explained. The would-be restaurateur can refine the prompt and tweak any details before launching the restaurant across all of Wonder's locations.
The system draws on a 700-ingredient library housed within each kitchen. The "restaurants" operating from these kitchens are actually many different brands that share the same physical space. This allows a single location to serve multiple cuisines, switching between concepts throughout the day. For example, a kitchen might produce burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls—simple basics that Wonder's robots can handle. The company has purchased Spice Robotics, maker of an automatic bowl-making machine previously used by Sweetgreen. Next year, it plans to introduce an "infinite sauce machine" capable of making about 80% of all sauces found in recipes on the internet today.
Addressing the Ghost Kitchen Problem
The concept of virtual restaurants is not new. Ghost kitchens—delivery-only food preparation facilities—promised to let brands sell food without owning a restaurant. However, the sector struggled in the early 2020s. High-profile operators like CloudKitchens and Reef scaled back or shut down after facing difficulties building customer loyalty and ensuring consistent food quality. MrBeast Burger, a famous ghost kitchen experiment, received widespread complaints over inconsistent food quality due to reliance on dozens of different contracted kitchens and staff. Wonder's programmable and increasingly automated kitchens are designed to solve exactly that problem.
By centralizing operations in standardised kitchens with robotic arms and conveyors, Wonder can control the cooking process from end to end. Lore noted that the company's current kitchen can achieve a throughput of 7 million meals per year with 12 staff members. With more automation, that number could rise to 20 million meals from the same 2,500-square-foot space. The goal is to have 1,000 unique restaurants operating out of a single 2,500-square-foot kitchen by 2035, Lore said.
Monetising Following and Experimenting with Food
Lore sees multiple use cases for Wonder Create. A restaurateur could test new recipes on the platform to gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to a brick-and-mortar location. Influencers—from mega-influencers to micro-influencers—could monetise their following by launching their own restaurant brand without the complexity of a physical chain. "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.
But whether many people will actually want to is an open question. The ghost kitchen model's rocky history shows that consumer trust and brand consistency are hard to achieve. Wonder's layer of automation and AI may address some of those pitfalls, but the model remains unproven at scale. There are also technical limits. Wonder's robots cannot perform tasks like tossing and stretching pizza dough or slicing and rolling sushi. The company focuses on simpler basics like burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls.
Expansion Through Acquisitions
Wonder's strategy extends beyond its own kitchens. Lore has assembled a portfolio of complementary businesses. The company acquired Grubhub, which handles 250 million deliveries per year, and Blue Apron, the meal kit service. These acquisitions provide distribution and production capabilities. Wonder is also buying restaurant brands directly. In February, it purchased New York City-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken for $6.5 million. "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," Lore explained.
The combination of AI-powered brand creation, robotic kitchens, and existing delivery infrastructure could lower the barrier to entry for restaurant ownership dramatically. However, success will depend on execution. Scaling robotic kitchens across hundreds of locations while maintaining quality and cost-efficiency is a significant engineering challenge. Moreover, convincing consumers to order from AI-generated brands rather than established names may require marketing savvy and time.
Lore's vision represents a convergence of e-commerce logistics, artificial intelligence, and food technology. If successful, it could democratise restaurant entrepreneurship—making it possible for anyone with a food idea to launch a global brand from their phone. But the ghost kitchen era's disappointments serve as a cautionary tale. Wonder's programmable platforms may offer a more controlled environment, but the ultimate test will be whether customers come back for seconds.
Source: TechCrunch News