AI could soon allow anyone to create and launch a virtual restaurant brand in under a minute, according to serial entrepreneur Marc Lore, founder of food-delivery startup Wonder.
Lore said Wonder Create can generate a restaurant's branding, menu and recipes before launching the concept across the company's kitchen network. "You type in what kind of restaurant you want to build," Lore said at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference on May 4. "It builds the restaurant - AI does - in under a minute."
"It could be a mega-influencer, a micro-influencer - anyone that wants to monetize their following," he added. "Anybody can make a restaurant."
As AI makes it possible to launch a restaurant brand in under a minute, financial planners note that the ease of creating new income streams doesn't eliminate the complexity of managing them, particularly when it comes to unpredictable earnings, scaling costs, and longer-term financial planning. In that context, some individuals are re-evaluating whether their broader financial strategy is aligned with a more entrepreneurial, AI-driven economy, where income can be faster to generate but also more variable and harder to forecast over time.
Wonder currently operates 120 kitchen locations and expects that number to grow to 400 next year, according to media reports. The company describes the kitchens as "programmable cooking platforms" capable of operating multiple restaurant brands simultaneously from the same location.
Wonder's Push Into AI-Generated Restaurants
Lore, who previously sold startups to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT), said Wonder Create was designed to let entrepreneurs, creators and influencers launch food brands without opening physical restaurants.
Wonder's kitchens contain roughly 700 ingredients and are increasingly relying on robotic automation, Lore said at the conference.
Lore also outlined plans for an "infinite sauce machine" capable of producing roughly 80% of sauces found in internet recipes today.
The company acquired Spyce Robotics for $186.4 million from Sweetgreen last fall as part of its push into automated meal production.
Robotics And Scale Inside Wonder's Kitchens
Wonder's kitchens employ robotic systems including conveyors and robotic arms, reflecting the company's broader effort to scale meal production without adding comparable labor costs.
The company sees a path toward dramatically increasing meal output without increasing headcount, Lore said at the Future of Everything conference.
"We have about 7 million throughput capacity with 12 people," he said. "We see a path to getting to 20 million throughput out of 2,500 square feet with just 12 people."
Wonder ultimately hopes to operate as many as 1,000 unique restaurant brands from the same footprint by 2035, Lore said.
Wonder's strategy also includes its acquisition of Grubhub, its purchase of Blue Apron and its recent $6.5 million deal for New York-based Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken.
Lore said the strategy could allow Wonder to rapidly scale restaurant brands across its kitchen network. "When you buy a brand - and you can buy a brand that has 10 locations, or even 50 locations - and then overnight put it in 1,000, there's just an incredible arbitrage there."
Challenges Facing The Ghost Kitchen Model
Wonder's approach arrives after earlier ghost kitchen startups struggled to maintain food quality and customer loyalty.
One of the most prominent examples was MrBeast Burger, which remains in operation after facing complaints over inconsistent food quality tied to its use of contracted kitchens, according to media reports.
Wonder's increasingly automated and standardized kitchen model is designed to create more consistency across locations, Lore said at the conference.
Wonder's systems currently focus on foods that can be standardized and automated reliably at scale, including burgers, wings, fried chicken and bowls, TechCrunch reported.