Marc Lore’s wonder grows, considering IPO

Food startup Wonder has seen its track record and valuation soar in less than a decade since its founding.

Still, the company has even more ambitious plans in store, including a subscription program that lets diners run their own “restaurants,” aggressive expansion in Texas, and a possible initial public offering.

Founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Marc Lore, Wonder touts itself as having “America’s best restaurants in one place.” Diners can order takeout or delivery from the company’s food hall-style locations using the Wonderbrand app or third-party platforms such as Grubhub, which is currently owned by Wonder.

As Lore explained to CNBC, “Wonder is a vertically integrated food technology platform that makes great food more accessible.”

To achieve its goals, Wonder plans to open stores in urban, suburban and rural areas across the country, aiming to keep prices below the cost of delivered groceries. Thanks to Grubhub’s ownership, Wonder customers who order through the startup’s app won’t have to pay delivery fees, nor will the prices of its menu go up to cover the cost of commissions to the delivery platform. Additionally, Wonder is automating some kitchen functions, including salad and bowl assembly, and soon sauce and drink assembly.

Lore said the company aims to fully automate food preparation and delivery by 2040.

Wonder must now convince diners that a platform built on cost savings and choice is valuable in a competitive industry.

Lore’s noble vision for Wonder has led the company to raise $3.3 billion from investors including: door dash, alphabet‘s venture arm and Gwyneth Paltrow. A Series D funding round earlier this year boosted the company’s pre-money valuation to $9 billion, just below the sale price of sandwich chain Subway two years ago.

Assuming the window for cross-industry public offerings reopens in the coming months, Wonder’s next pitch to investors could be an IPO roadshow.

“(The mission) is the real reason I want to go public and raise the capital we need to build that kind of generational business. It’s also about having public currency to do more M&A,” Lore said. “But I can’t speak to timing.”

Lore’s expertise lies in e-commerce, not restaurants.

He helped found Diapers.com’s parent company, which he sold to Amazon in 2010 for $545 million. Just six years later, Walmart paid about $3 billion for a follow-on venture, Jet.com. Lore will remain with Walmart through 2021 to accelerate the growth of Walmart’s e-commerce business.

Basketball fans may recognize Rohr as the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. In 2021, he and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez agreed to buy the team for $1.5 billion, but the deal doesn’t close until 2025. Lore recently entered into a deal to reduce its investment to a minority stake “to focus on my business,” Rodriguez said in an August statement, referring to Wonder.

Lore’s latest startup began with the idea of ​​offering food delivery to consumers’ homes via a Sprinter van equipped with a mobile kitchen. The truck was used for about two years before Wonder phased out the truck in favor of brick-and-mortar stores, which offer more food options and lower costs.

Lore’s successful track record has helped attract Wonder’s investors.

“At GV, we joke that we do enterprise software investing, AI investing, all the things that Marc Lore runs as active CEO,” said Dave Munichiello, a managing partner at GV, Alphabet’s venture capital arm, who has known Lore since his days at Diapers.com and is an investor in Jet.com through GV.

Lore himself believes his vision is the reason for Wonder’s multibillion-dollar funding.

“Everybody eats,” he said. “It can be defended against AI.”

Wonder spent more than $1 billion on acquisitions, excluding transactions for which financial details were not disclosed. Acquisitions like Grubhub, delivery and logistics provider Relay, meal kit provider Blue Apron and New York City’s buzzy restaurant concept were big-ticket deals.

But Lore said if Wonder can sell high-quality food at affordable prices, there is a “huge addressable market,” especially in suburban and rural areas where there are few dining options other than fast food and gas stations.

From Virginia to Massachusetts, 170 Wonder storefronts have popped up in the past three years. The company plans to expand into Texas for the first time next year, with a goal of opening at least 100 stores in the state by the end of 2027.

Wonder prepares the food in the commissary kitchen and transports it to each location, where employees open, cook and complete the menu items. The store is all electric and uses no gas or ventilation, allowing Wonder to quickly move into a new space, reducing renovations and red tape.

Its outlets offer a menu of more than 20 “restaurants” including Dhaba Indian Kitchen, Tejas BBQ and Pop Salad. Celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, and Marcus Samuelsson receive advances and stock so Wonder can use their names on some of these concepts. Recent acquisitions include brands with established followings, such as Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken and Salt Hank’s.

Wonder draws comparisons to ghost kitchens because it offers a variety of options under one roof. Ghost kitchens, once-bustling startups with no dine-in seating, have come under fire as orders for food delivery services dwindled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Ghost kitchen companies such as Kitchen United, once seen as potential disruptors to the restaurant industry, have sought bankruptcy protection and scaled back operations.

Mr. Lore disagrees with this comparison.

“You can see the front of the house in brick and mortar,” he said. “At lunchtime you can see people sitting there enjoying their lunch, so it’s not ghostly in that sense. But I think it’s also the fact that we’re vertically integrated.”

Wonder never marketed itself as a ghost kitchen, calling itself a “new kind of food hall” or “modern food court” before landing on a “vertically integrated food technology platform.”

The company plans to take the next step with Wonder Create starting November 17th. Influencers, entrepreneurs, and brands can pay $10 a month to start their own “restaurant” based at a Wonder location and earn a cut of the revenue from orders. Artificial intelligence can help you create your brand, including your name, logo, price, and recipes.

“It could be a restaurant for you and your friends, or you could be an influencer with a following,” Lore said.

He hopes WonderCreate will democratize restaurant ownership, eliminating capital, overhead and oversight of kitchen operations. The platform will eventually be rolled out to the public, where users will decide on menu items based on Wonder’s pantry.

In addition to Wonder Create, the company is also working on initiatives that utilize AI. MEL, a proprietary AI platform, can prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner for users using data from Oura rings and Whoop trackers, as well as customer health information such as blood biomarkers.

Although MEL is not currently available to Wonder customers, Lore uses AI to advise her on her meals, such as the chicken muffin she had for breakfast on a Tuesday in October.

Wonder has won the hearts of venture capitalists, but the battle for customers’ stomachs and wallets is even tougher.

Budget-conscious consumers are eating out less frequently and are becoming more selective when eating out. And while food delivery remains more popular than before the pandemic, consumers are ordering less delivery than they were at their peak during the pandemic. Fees that offset restaurant app fees and high menu prices make delivery even more expensive than restaurant dining.

Additionally, some consumers are skeptical about Wonder more specifically. Posts on social media criticize the quality of the company’s food and its venture capital funding.

“Okay, but average,” Philadelphia resident Amir Ings, 27, said on TikTok in late 2025, reviewing his three-taco order from Wonder. “My expectations were already in the drain. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, but it’s still not great. Also, I paid like $16 for this and it should have been $8 at most.”

Lore told CNBC that Wonder receives thousands of reviews from customers every day, rating the flavor, temperature and portion size of their orders on a scale of 1 to 10. Munichiello said Wonder begins its board meetings by talking about taste scores.

“We focus intensely on the quality of our food…We constantly cycle through meals that have low scores and over time, over the past 12 months, our taste scores have improved and our Google reviews have improved,” Lore said. “As we scale up, we expect the quality of our food to improve, but that’s not always the case.”

Despite the lackluster reviews on social media, Wonder has fans. Based on Indagari transaction data, Wonder had a higher weighted average retention rate (how likely a diner is to return) and lifetime value (how much money a customer spends over a period of time) than Cava and Sweetgreen.

Additionally, Wonder has achieved success by locating locations in some of the most competitive restaurant markets in the country.

“They’ve made this company work in New York, which is the most difficult place in the country to launch this model,” Municchiello said. “New York has a lot of options.”

Ultimately, Wonder hopes to attract investors in the rest of the United States and the public markets.

In March, the company hired Gabriel Scheibe Rabinovich, who previously worked at payment processing company Worldpay, as chief financial officer in preparation for its listing.

Lore declined to comment on the timing of a potential IPO to CNBC, but told Fortune that the company is “ready and poised to go public early next year.”

The Information previously reported that Wonder has been operating at a loss since acquiring Blue Apron and Grubhub. The company plans to lower the price of meals by focusing on automation and drone delivery. In the long run, the plan may reduce costs, but laying the groundwork isn’t cheap.

In recent years, investors have become less tolerant of startups pursuing growth at all costs, said Avery Marquez, director of investment strategy at Renaissance Capital. To sway investors, unprofitable companies must show that they are making progress toward profitability or that growth will continue long after the IPO.