Marc Lore, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur who has sold multiple startups to industry giants like Amazon and Walmart, has a new ambition: democratizing restaurant ownership through artificial intelligence. His current venture, Wonder, 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&8221;they are what Lore calls &8220;programmable cooking platforms&8221; that can operate as 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine, all within all-electric kitchens that are increasingly becoming robotic.

The Vision Behind Wonder Create

Speaking at The Wall Street Journal&8217;s Future of Everything conference this week, Lore unveiled the centerpiece of his AI strategy: Wonder Create. This initiative allows anyone&8212;from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers&8212;to use artificial intelligence to design and launch their own restaurant brand in under a minute. The virtual restaurant then goes live across Wonder&8217;s growing network of tech-enabled kitchen locations, currently numbering 120 and expected to reach 400 by next year.

&8220;You type in what kind of restaurant you want to build. It builds the restaurant &8212; AI does &8212; in under a minute. It does the name, branding, description, pictures, pricing, health information, and all the recipes for your restaurant,&8221; Lore explained during an interview at the WSJ event. The would-be restaurateur could then refine the prompt if changes were needed. When ready to go live, the restaurant would launch across all of Wonder&8217;s locations.

Lore described the platform as something like a &8220;Shopify front end with an AI prompt.&8221; This comparison highlights the ease of use and scalability that Wonder Create aims to bring to the food industry, lowering the barrier to entry for anyone with a culinary idea but without the capital or expertise to build a traditional restaurant.

The Technological Backbone

Wonder&8217;s kitchens are built around a 700-ingredient library. The &8220;restaurants&8221; they house actually consist of many different brands that operate from within these locations. In addition to a staff of up to 12 people per kitchen, cooking technology like conveyors and robotic arms are involved in the cooking process. The company recently acquired Spice Robotics, a maker of an automatic bowl-making machine previously used by Sweetgreen. Next year, Wonder plans to offer an &8220;infinite sauce machine&8221; that can create about 80% of all the sauces found in recipes on the internet today.

These robotic additions are not intended to reduce headcount but rather to increase the kitchen&8217;s throughput capacity. &8220;We have about 7 million throughput capacity with 12 people,&8221; Lore said. &8220;We see a path to getting to 20 million throughput out of 2,500 square feet with just 12 people.&8221; The goal is to have 1,000 unique restaurants operating out of that same 2,500 square feet by 2035.

This level of automation addresses a key challenge faced by earlier ghost kitchen concepts: inconsistent food quality. MrBeast Burger, a famous ghost kitchen experiment, faced widespread complaints due to reliance on dozens of different contracted kitchens and staff. Wonder&8217;s programmable, increasingly automated kitchens are designed to solve that problem by ensuring uniformity across all locations.

Use Cases and Potential Impact

Lore sees a variety of use cases for Wonder Create. A restaurateur could test recipes to gauge customer reaction before adding dishes to their own brick-and-mortar locations. Influencers could connect with their audience through their own restaurant brands without having to actually launch their own chains. &8220;It could be a mega-influencer, a micro-influencer &8212; anyone that wants to monetize their following,&8221; Lore said. &8220;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.&8221;

This vision aligns with the broader trend of platform-based entrepreneurship, similar to how Shopify democratized e-commerce or YouTube democratized video creation. By removing the need for physical locations, kitchen equipment, and supply chain expertise, Wonder could unleash a wave of food innovation from individuals and organizations that previously had no way to enter the market.

However, the success of this model is not guaranteed. Ghost kitchens had a rocky run in the early 2020s, with several high-profile operators scaling back or shutting down after struggling to build customer loyalty. While Wonder&8217;s added layer of automation and AI may address some of those pitfalls, the model remains unproven at scale.

Marc Lore&8217;s Track Record

Marc Lore is no stranger to ambitious ventures. He co-founded Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com, which was sold to Amazon in 2011 for $545 million. He then founded Jet.com, an e-commerce startup that was acquired by Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore joined Walmart as CEO of its U.S. e-commerce division before leaving to focus on Wonder. His experience in building technology-driven platforms that disrupt traditional industries gives him a strong background to tackle the restaurant business.

Wonder itself has been built through a series of strategic acquisitions. The company acquired Grubhub, gaining its 250-million-deliveries-per-year business, and Blue Apron, adding its meal kit operation. More recently, Wonder has focused on buying restaurant brands, such as New York City-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, which it snapped up for $6.5 million in February. &8220;When you buy a brand &8212; and you can buy a brand that has 10 locations, or even 50 locations &8212; and then overnight put it in 1,000, there&8217;s just an incredible arbitrage there,&8221; Lore noted.

Limitations and Realities

Despite the ambitious claims, there are still limits to what Wonder&8217;s technology can do. The company&8217;s team (including its robots) cannot toss and stretch pizza dough or slice and roll sushi. Instead, Wonder focuses on simpler basics like burgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, and bowls. This constraint means that the platform is best suited for certain types of cuisines, potentially leaving out more complex culinary traditions.

Moreover, the question remains whether many people actually want to create their own restaurant brand. The ghost kitchen trend of the early 2020s showed that while the concept was appealing, execution was difficult. Building a loyal customer base required more than just a brand name; it required consistent quality, good marketing, and operational excellence. Wonder&8217;s AI and automation may simplify some of these tasks, but they cannot replace the human touch that makes dining memorable.

Nonetheless, Lore believes that the combination of AI-powered creativity and robotic precision will redefine the restaurant industry. As Wonder expands from 120 to 400 programmable cooking platforms, and eventually to 1,000 unique brands per location, the company is betting that technology can solve the scalability problems that have plagued previous attempts at virtual restaurants. Only time will tell if this vision becomes reality, but Lore&8217;s track record suggests that he is worth taking seriously.

Source: TechCrunch News