Dinner Customized, Personalized, Delivered

 

Consumers are dynamic not static and restaurant delivery companies, restaurant technology companies, need to be as dynamic as the consumer or they will lose business to someone else.  Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®, stated, “Marc Lore’s Wonder establishes a new standard within the retail foodservice sector for meals, meal delivery, elevating customer pain points too quality touchpoints.”

Grocery technology wizard Marc Lore founder of Wonder, a mobile restaurant startup recently raised $350 million to fuel its growth. That’s real money, disruptive money and as you read on you will understand why.

Wonder was founded last year with the goal to customers a better food delivery option by partnering with well-known chefs and owning the meal process from start to finish. Key to its business model are delivery vans that double as kitchens, allowing food to be heated, assembled, and finished steps from the customer's home.

In less than a year, Wonder has expanded to 22 towns in New Jersey and is available in more than 130,000 households, according to Lore.  Let’s talk about empowering choice.  Wonder has created 19 restaurant concepts with chefs including Daisuke Nakazawa, Nancy Silverton and Bobby Flay. It has also brought 1,250 jobs to New Jersey.

Big goals require big bucks and the Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures will allow Wonder to continue growing. Lore has plans to enter more markets in the tri-state area and launch 11 more restaurants for a total of 30 by this time next year.

Lore stated, "Wonder has a real opportunity to not only completely change how people eat, but also to create a better future with access to the world’s best food in a convenient, affordable, and sustainable way".

So, how does the concept work?  Let’s see, consumers can use the Wonder app to order food on-demand from its various brands, which range from high-end options like Bobby Flay Steak to more casual fare like taco-bar concept Taqueria del Dia. The meals are started in a commissary and transferred to a Wonder-branded delivery van, where a chef fires, finishes and plates it outside the customer's door. Wonder also offers delivery and pickup services to local restaurants through a platform called Envoy.

Elevating delivery Wonder's model takes aim at some of the problems with food delivery, including food quality, which tends to decline in transit. "When our mobile restaurant comes to you, your fries are crispy, your pizza is melty, and your steak is juicy," according to the Wonder PR team.

It also claims to provide better food and service, with its exclusive, chef-driven menus and uniformed employees handling the deliveries rather than a third party.

So, after Lore left his role as CEO of Walmart's U.S. e-commerce business in 2021, the serial entrepreneur co-founded a number of tech startups, including "conversational commerce" venture Wizard and sports betting app Mojo. But Wonder was the one that truly captured his imagination, he wrote in a LinkedIn post in December. In that post, he declared that he was going "all-in" on the company as founder, chairman and CEO.

Lore continued, "It has a real opportunity not only to completely change how people eat, but also to create a better future by giving them access to the world’s best food—with nutritious options—in a convenient, affordable, and sustainable way,". Success does leave clues and I suggest that this company is one to watch for clues.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter