Name: The Infinite Kitchen
Uploaded: 2026-06-09
Duration: 19 min 7 s

Marc Lore wants to scale food service like software. At Wonder, AI designs menus, robots prepare meals, and drones coordinate delivery so anyone—a mom or pop, an established shop, or a global brand—can leverage a "programmable cooking platform" to turn a restaurant idea into reality. With national expansion on order and an IPO simmering, Lore is making the case that the restaurant industry doesn't need to be disrupted, but rebuilt from scratch.

Marc Lore, Founder and CEO, Wonder 
Jason Del Rey, Founder, The Aisle

The Infinite Kitchen

Conferences

Thanks for being here Mark. I was a little, I was, I was a little worried that if the NBA finals were going on and your team, the Timberwolves were in it, sorry about that, uh, we'd have a conflict, but lucky for us it's my Knicks instead. So, um, you actually grew up a Knicks fan, but that's a whole another discussion we could do that afterward, um. You've done a lot in your career, obviously. I'm assuming a lot of people in here know Mark for diapers.com and then working at Amazon, Jet.com, and then selling that for over $3 billion to Walmart, working there for many years. You've now been running Wonder for several years. For those who might live on the West Coast and haven't experienced Wonder or just someone who doesn't know what it is, can you give me sort of the 32nd version of what, what you've been building with Wonder? Yeah, I think, I think of Wonder is a vertically integrated food platform. Where we own all the restaurants on the platform, we do all the cooking and we do the delivery. So we bought Grubhub, so it's fully vertically integrated. We own 26 different restaurants and counting across every cuisine type from a high-end steakhouse, Bobby Flay steak to burgers, barbecue, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Middle Eastern fried chicken pizza, all out of a single 22,500 square foot kitchen. That's, all out of a 2500 square foot kitchen with very lightly trained. Folks back there it's very systematized we've got, you know, conveyors and automated expo area, um, but the food quality is cooked. To be as good as every cuisine that we compete against, and that's really the magical one that we put many years into culinary engineering and food science to be able to cook, you know, a steak in 6 minutes to perfect temperature, seared them both sides beautifully at a price point that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. Let's just quickly talk about the food because I think it gets overshadowed, and we'll talk about all the technology. I've had wonder a bunch. I think, I think the food can be very good. I think. Consistency, I think you've also said still constant work in progress. Like if you compare it to a Chipotle or a Cava, and I know you're doing something much more complex in terms of the amount of restaurants, maybe not at that consistency level. Like how do you think about getting there with how much different types of food you're offering? Yeah, I mean that's a good question, and we're obsessed about food quality, so we get. Data from about 20% of our customers every day, a score of 1 to 10 rating the meal, um, we usually get feedback and our chefs every day are looking and ranking the meals and the stuff that's at the bottom we're reiterating and reintroducing, and the food quality over the last 12 months has subjectively gotten better whether you look at internal metrics, whether you look at Google reviews, we're now across all locations at 4.4 rating. That's a lot higher than higher a year ago a year ago, the burger is phenomenal that we that we just upgraded and that will compete with the best burger in the market. We have a new pizza that's rolling out across all locations by September, so we're constantly iterating and then of course the infinite bowl making machine. Did everyone catch that? The infinite bowl making machine. So you acquired this company from Sweetre, correct? That makes that a robot that makes. Bowls and salads, is it salads too, or is it just it can make salads. It can make fast casual Mexican. It can make Greek bowls, poke bowls, any kind of bowl, and this is real. This is a real thing in production. So Sweetgreen is using it in 32 locations. They don't make salads any other way. The machine makes the salads. So the beautiful thing about this machine is the bowl actually is on a maglev, and the bowl spins and the ingredients are put very beautifully in the bowl, so it looks and presented. Credible and there's no errors, right? So you get exactly what you ordered. The machine can do 500 bowls an hour. And compared to what, what did one of your human workers do when it comes to or or you're not timing them on that way. I don't know exactly how many a single person can do, but it's not gonna be more than probably 30 bowls an hour, that's only 45. So what is, what does that mean for your expansion? Well, it just means that we could, you know, a third of our sales in bowl concepts the probably the the most inconsistency that we're seeing is in bowls because humans are making it and they sort of make it with different portion size or they might miss an ingredient and things, so really looking forward to that automation rolling out it actually goes into the first location next month. Um, so there, there, there's a long time, another longtime entrepreneur named Travis Kalanick who Uber founder, um, has gone on to do many things including some robotics in a kitchen. I, I believe you were friendly or friends with him at some point. Why not partner with him over actually making an acquisition like this? Yeah, um, first. First we, we, we did actually the first we did originally um try to partner with him and I guess the, the capacity wasn't there to make enough machines for us, um, but also sweet green machine was in production and one of the hardest things about this machine is not just making the bowls but making sure that they don't go down so it's got 99.99% uptime and then it's easy to clean. So those are things that you don't think about when you're when you're building a, you know, machine prototype so this has been in production it's proven it works um and the and the core customer role at a high level, the core customer for Wonder is it a family that has a bunch of different people who want different things and so they can order from one app instead of, you know, three different deliveries like what is the. What is the sweet spot or the ideal customer for Wonder? Yeah, so I'd say that the mission at Wonder is to make great food more accessible. So we're able to bring 26 different restaurants to places in the US from a geography standpoint that Fast Casual can't afford to open because we're able to aggregate demand across 26 different restaurants. So we go to Hackettstown, New Jersey if anybody knows that, but. There's there's no fast casual there. We're bringing all these fast casual restaurants. We're able to deliver a steak. We're able to deliver Thai or Indian, and maybe there's no opportunity, so there's that. We can stay open till 2 a.m. in the suburbs because we could operate all 26 restaurants with 3 people late night, um, and then of course, uh, what are those 3 roles? Do you know? One is running the, the hotline, one is doing all the finishing, and one person's doing bagging and handoff. OK, sorry, go, no, that's OK. And then, and then, you know, the biggest point on accessibility is that because we're vertically integrated we have one profit pool. If you think about restaurants today, they have to mark up their food on the delivery aggregators to cover the commission. Because the delivery aggregators need to make a profit as well, so there's two profit pools that increases prices for customers. We have one profit pool. The prices are much lower. So if you go on Wonder, you're going to get incredible value. You get a 10 ounce Bobby Flay steak cooked to perfection for $36 delivered without any delivery fees. That doesn't exist anywhere. You can't, can't do it. We have salad bowls and fast casual Mexican bowls that start at 9.95 for the same portion size you would get at a sweet green or Chipotle. Let, let's talk about, um, acquisitions for a second. So, uh, in a past life when I was writing about you a lot at Jet.com and then and then Walmart, you made a ton of acquisitions and typically. We'll see if you agree with this, but typically you were buying either businesses that had plateaued or were distressed in some way, and some of those deals got unwound at Walmart either while you were still there after you left. You've you've done a bunch of acquisitions at Wonder as well. I'm curious what you learned, if anything, from the strategy at Walmart that maybe changed your approach. At W, yeah, I think, I think it's important not to be in the middle so that's his barbell strategy either. You're buying something that's distressed because it's an asset or capability that the company needs and would take a lot of time and money to build, so you're looking to build versus buy. Grubhub's a great example. 400,000 restaurant relationships, 250,000 couriers, 8 billion in delivery volume. You bought that at a, at a very good price. It would have taken a decade to build that sort of capability, and we do think that is a valuable piece to the to the wonder story. Um, and then you have on the other side of the barbell, if you're going to buy restaurant brands, we're going to buy the most iconic beloved brands in the market. So the first one you did was Blue Ribbon fried chicken, fried chicken in New York City, and I, I thought when we discussed that at some point before you had made any deals that one of the theories were to buy food brands or restaurants that. Had strong social followings and also historical like cult following but maybe had plateaued or am I, am I thinking about it incorrectly? Well, we don't want to pay for a restaurant brands that are growing very fast because we don't want to pay for that growth. So and the ideal would be an iconic brand that's been around for a long time that's not growing, where you could just buy it, the brand for the Ebotaj generating. So you buy it. So so what's, so, so what's, what's next? I, I asked you backstage about Katz's Deli in New York. Yeah, what do you think? Something like that is, is, is a good example of a brand that's not scaling. So is that a yes? I mean it's it's it's not imminent now. Um, I, I do wanna get some questions from the audience. Um, if anyone has one right now we could take one, otherwise I'll come back in a few minutes. Anyone from Mark could be about NBA too. I know he loves those questions. Mark's the owner of the Timberwolves if, if, uh, and the links right? is that correct? OK, um, I'll keep going so. Drone delivery just started experimenting with that. I admit it even as someone who follows the place closely, when I see drone delivery and I know it's gotten to scale in some markets, I'm still like, is that really a future that a lot that like people across the US can expect? Yes, your answer is absolutely unequivocally yes. So in Texas right now there are tens of thousands of drone deliveries happening every week. So this is not some futuristic thing into the future. These drones, you, you, you probably imagine it coming down and buzzing on in the suburbs and people saying that I don't want these drones in the air. They're quiet. They fly at 300 ft. You don't hear them. You can barely see them. They come over your front lawn. A wire comes, zips down with a little box, leaves your, um, package, closes up, and zips back up. Absolutely quiet cool or freaky? You think cool? I think freaky too, yeah, a little bit freaky too, um, kids absolutely love it, right, every time, but it's 95% of the time the delivery is within 5 seconds of the time it tells you, so it's actually a countdown on your phone. That's how can you and can't you deliver that way? I mean anything up to 10 pounds. So if you're a lot of food, but almost. The orders below 10 pounds pizza box, you have a pizza gets cut in half and gets put in two things. There's stacks on top of them. That's the only, it's the only disadvantage. Everything else comes as is, but if you like your pizza whole, you don't want to cut it in half, then you're not going to do the drone delivery. But we're both from Staten Island, so we don't like our pizzas cut. I don't know. You do you? By drone I'll take it. OK, I'll take it. I'll take it by drone. Uh, has anyone had a drone delivery of anything to their home? Oh, there, can you tell us what? Google Wing, now you don't part you're not partnering with with Wing Zipline we're partnering with Zipline and but Wing 2, I mean both of those are sort of the, the two leaders in the space, um, but this is coming, uh, we're doing it in New Jersey. It's gonna be expanding. Across the US it's faster, it's more on time. The food's hotter. It's actually a great delivery mechanism. It also can help bring food to areas that are inaccessible. You can deliver to a lake, a campsite, a field, a beach. I mean think about that. Anywhere you can see the sky, you can get it delivered. So what is the, like, what is the roadmap there? Like what is reality in terms of like scale you can do in the next few years? I know reality is that we're opening 100 locations in Texas next year and they're almost all gonna have drone delivery. So it's happening. So these are 100 storefronts, 100 storefronts, 20 will open in January with drone delivery, and then we'll just scale from there. Any questions for Mark? Oh yeah, right, there's a mic right here. Please tell us who you are. I'm not gonna say who I am anymore, and, and the, I love Mark. Mark has not heard it, so I love Michael Schrag, MIT. Thank you. Loved, loved the, the, the wonder eaten there. Very, very well done. But also familiar with your, uh, um, Walmart experience. I've gotta ask, as you've built Wonder, what's the most important thing you've learned about the trade-off between scaling and customization quality? Because you know you you you've clearly unlocked ways to Package and bundle technology to facilitate cost efficient scale. What do you understand about the trade-off now that you didn't when you started? I think the opportunity is bigger than than we thought, so I don't see a trade-off. It's just the opposite. As we scale, it opens up the opportunity for even more assortment, you know, more of the robotics that we talked about, the infinite ball machine. We're building an infinite sauce machine that could make this is also real infinite sauce machine. Sorry, it sounds made up, so it is. Made up name, but I sort of like it. But but it could make nearly any sauce on the internet on demand. So it's got 152 raw ingredients. It could perfectly dispense according to a recipe, high shear blend, and heat the sauce. It can do 500 sauces an hour in 3 and 6 ounce cups. So imagine what that unlocks in terms of the creativity. You can make a pesto, a mole, an arabiata, a vindal. Sauce on demand according to your recipe. So having this automated sauce machine, automated bowl machine, there's more automation coming, the infinite beverage machine. I love the word infinite. It's just, I could tell infinite beverage machine will be coming out next year that can make any drink in Starbucks or Dutch Bros without any labor, including foam layer and blending. So we can talk about that, but. The thing I'm most excited about is one to create because anyone in the world will be able to plug into this automation and create their own restaurant and scale it across all wonder locations for 10 bucks a month. So think about Shopify and steroids. You don't have to do anything. You basically, who is, who is the person that wants to do this and why does the end consumer want this? OK, so who wants to do this? First of all, Wonder Create is just a, it's an AI prompt. You just type build. A fast casual Mexican restaurant for Gen Z, for people that love cycling. AI will build the entire restaurant using our automation and ingredient library. Brand it, name it. You own the restaurant. You own the name, all the descriptions, pictures, pricing, nutrition information. You could do it in 2 minutes. If you like what you see. You could ask AI to change it, but if you like it, you could publish it. It now goes live. You can push it out on DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub as well. So the creator makes about a I? Sorry, sorry, just one thing on it. I, I think of restaurant and food experiences at least in my life as like they can be really special right? and like restaurateurs and chefs, they are in some ways artists and um people have like deep connections and so I I just I wonder how you think about like all the infinite all the automation. Accept bringing accessibility, but. Perhaps losing some of the soul of, of what meals mean to people. Yeah, I think we're not trying to compete with restaurants where you sit down and you get that very custom chef experience. We're talking about how do you systematize Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Cava, Chipotle, Wingstop, like all these great fast casual brands that have great food tend to be more expensive. than fast food like Taco Bell or McDonald's, how do you bring down the price point of that food and make it more accessible to people both in geography, time of day, but also the price point itself? Automation helps do that. And only talking about systematizing so you as the creator, you're still coming up with your own sauce or your own dressing for your salad, but imagine you can Set the portion size precisely as you want it. What are your micro and macronutrients exactly? How much protein do you want? The machine will do it precisely. You could build a restaurant for people that are on Ozempic. Half the portion size, you know, like half the price point. There's a lot of flexibility, so I wouldn't think it's not about trying to wow people with something that never existed before, but just doing what exists today more efficiently, higher quality, and then. At a with a much faster delivery experience, more on time, hotter, more accurate, there's a lot of advantages, and then you get multi-restaurant ordering, right? Right. I, I have 11 final one. You've sold two businesses for a lot. You sold a third business for less but still a lot of money for a lot of people, but 2 businesses for a lot of money. We've talked about your motivation with this wanting an IPO, um, something that's followed you around I think in the industry is a question of can you build a long term sustainable profitable business. So where are you on that? And are you absolutely committed that a public company that Wonder will become a public company and not someone else's acquisition? Yeah, first of all, as you said, I mean, as an entrepreneur, the dream is to have that, you know, long standing legacy business that becomes a household name, and I think Wonder can be that. We are going to be ready to go public early next year. Um, and then we'll see where the markets are, but, um, yeah, I certainly expect this to be a, a big public company one day. I think the TA is there. We've got an incredible moat around the business that we're building. It can't be disremediated with AI. So, and then, and then making great food more accessible is, is a, is a passion of mine. I love the idea of being able to, you know, have people that are currently today eating Taco Bell for dinner and have them eat something that is healthier for a similar price point. I do think we can bring down the price of grapefruit quite a bit with automation over time and make it accessible in places and at times of day that it's not accessible today so we're, we are way over time um, maybe some people can track you down if they have more questions around campus, but thank you so much, Mark. Thank you.