Marc Lore Says Wonder Create Lets Anyone Open A Restaurant From A Digital Prompt

Marc Lore, the serial entrepreneur behind Jet.com and now the food-tech giant Wonder, says AI and robotic automation will soon enable anyone to open a restaurant with little more than a creative concept and a digital prompt. At the Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” conference, Lore described Wonder Create as a system where “You type in what kind of restaurant you want to build. It builds the restaurant — AI does — in under a minute.” TechCrunch reports the virtual restaurant would go live across Wonder’s network of tech-enabled kitchen locations, currently numbering 120 and expected to reach 400 next year. Lore also said these kitchens have a 700-ingredient library and can operate as “programmable cooking platforms” capable of operating as 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine. In parallel, Startup Fortune says Wonder Create generates a full restaurant brand, menu, pricing, nutrition, images, and recipes in under sixty seconds from a single text prompt, and that the resulting concept can be deployed across Wonder’s 120 automated kitchens staffed by twelve people, robotic arms, and a 700-ingredient library.

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TechCrunch reports that Lore’s vertically integrated dining and delivery platform evolved from food trucks to fast casual restaurants with 10 to 20 seats, but the “programmable cooking platforms” are the core of Wonder’s approach. Lore told TechCrunch that the company has “about 7 million throughput capacity with 12 people,” and he said he sees a path to “20 million throughput out of 2,500 square feet with just 12 people.” The same TechCrunch account says Wonder just bought Spice Robotics, a maker of an automatic bowl-making machine previously used by Sweetgreen, and that next year it plans to offer an “infinite sauce machine” that can make bout 80% of all the sauces found in recipes on the internet today. Zamin.uz adds that Wonder Create will allow anyone to create their own restaurant brand in just one minute and that the company plans to increase its 120 tech-enabled kitchens to 400 next year. Zamin.uz also says the system relies on a library containing over 700 ingredients, with robotic arms and automated equipment, and that Lore’s goal is to manage up to 1,000 unique restaurant brands in a small space by 2035.

Wonder’s pitch reframes restaurant entrepreneurship as prompt-driven creation and distribution, with Lore positioning the platform as a way for people to experiment with food without launching a traditional brick-and-mortar operation. TechCrunch quotes Lore saying, “Anybody can make a restaurant,” and it describes use cases ranging from influencers to a private trainer to a not-for-profit to “Disney for [marketing] their new movie.” Startup Fortune frames the ambition as a shift in where risk sits, arguing that Wonder Create separates the creative layer from production and distribution so a founder can avoid leasing a kitchen, hiring a chef, or negotiating with a delivery aggregator. The same Startup Fortune article points to Wonder’s acquisition of Spice Robotics as a signal that the company is serious about the mechanical side of scaling, and it says the acquisition “removes a dependency risk.” It also cites MrBeast Burger as a cautionary tale, describing customer complaints about inconsistent quality, unfulfilled orders, and food that did not match the brand promise, and it says the business collapsed publicly after that wave of issues.

“Marc Lore, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur who sold his previous startups to Amazon and Walmart, has big plans to infuse AI into his current venture, Wonder”

TechCrunch