Wonder’s chef-centric food-delivery trucks could solve the “soggy fries” problem
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Your filet mignon is en route… courtesy of Bobby Flay. Wonder Group designs exclusive meals with celeb chefs and then cooks them outside customers’ homes in mobile kitchens (think: fancy food trucks). On Tuesday, this food-tech biz — which has raised $500M to date — unveiled its new CEO: Marc Lore, the billionaire founder of Diapers.com and Jet.com.
- Fresh model: Wonder pays partner restaurants a one-time fee for the rights to prepare their dishes but keeps all delivery sales — unlike DoorDash and Uber Eats, which earn fees from restaurants for each delivery.
- 60 mobile kitchens are already cooking food and mixing cocktails in New Jersey. Lore plans to have 1.3K trucks in the NYC area by next year. Wonder also runs a separate service, Envoy, which lets customers order from local restaurants.
The “soggy fries” problem… Delivery behemoths DoorDash and Uber Eats are still losing money after raising billions, partly because delivery margins are thin and customers abandon apps easily if someone offers a better promo code (or their fries arrive cold). To solve the soggy-fries problem, Lore plans to copy ecommerce giants and streamline fulfillment — by using mobile kitchens to ensure food is piping hot. But the loyalty problem requires a different fix.
Exclusive content is king… even when it’s a sizzling steak. Netflix won over millions of customers by spending billions on exclusive “gated” content. Wonder plans to do the same — not with movies, but with exclusive mojitos. To build customer loyalty, Lore plans to copy streaming companies and “lock up all the best proprietary content” by forming exclusive partnerships with top restaurants. Think: Spotify-exclusive podcasts, but for pasta.