Food delivery startup Wonder is reportedly accelerating its timeline for an initial public offering after founder Marc Lore successfully convinced venture backers that the company could achieve massive scale if users just bought the lumber and poured the concrete.
NEW YORK — Food delivery and ghost-kitchen startup Wonder is reportedly accelerating its timeline for an initial public offering after founder Marc Lore successfully convinced venture backers that the company could achieve massive scale if customers just bought the lumber and built the restaurants themselves.
Lore, the former Walmart e-commerce chief, outlined the strategy in a prospectus that leans heavily on what the company calls "user-built infrastructure." Instead of carrying the heavy capital expenditures of commercial leases and industrial kitchen equipment, the Wonder app will now simply prompt hungry users to secure zoning permits in their neighborhood, pour a concrete foundation, and install commercial-grade ventilation hoods before their order of rigatoni can be processed.
The legacy restaurant industry is burdened by the outdated assumption that the company selling the food should also provide the building.
The company is also touting deep investments in automation, which internal filings reveal is primarily a software feature that automatically charges the customer’s credit card for the raw materials required to assemble a functional prep kitchen. According to the pitch deck, once a user finishes framing the load-bearing walls and passes a municipal health inspection, an autonomous Wonder drone will drop off a frozen chicken.
The pre-IPO push will focus heavily on Texas, a market Lore identified as ideal due to its relaxed zoning laws and the willingness of local residents to perform heavy commercial construction in exchange for a moderately priced burrito. Analysts note the strategy has already generated considerable enthusiasm on the street, as eliminating the core functions of running a restaurant business provides a remarkably clear runway to profitability.
If the public offering proceeds at its targeted valuation, Wonder plans to use the newly raised capital to further right-size its operations. Upcoming roadmap features reportedly include an augmented-reality program that asks users to forage for their own side salads, and a premium subscription tier where customers can legally hire themselves as delivery drivers.