Wonder Debuts Robotic Meal Assembly System After Spyce Acquisition

Restaurant tech startup Wonder debuted its first robotic meal assembly system, named Infinite Makeline, in August, marking a significant step towards autonomous kitchen operations. This system is designed to assemble meals with no human intervention, moving closer to entrepreneur Marc Lore's vision of fully automated kitchens capable of preparing diverse dishes like pizza, burgers, chicken, and seafood.

At Wonder's Midtown East location in New York City, the Infinite Makeline system can autonomously produce up to 500 bowls per hour, utilizing 68 different ingredients. Wonder has projected that by 2027, "tens of locations" across the Northeast, the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, and Texas will be equipped with these robotic assembly machines. Lore stated that this level of automation is intended to reduce labor and operating expenses, increase the throughput of Wonder locations, and ultimately lower food costs for consumers, with the ultimate goal of making home-delivered meals cheaper than cooking.

Wonder, a New York-based company, operates a complex business with 160 locations, primarily on the East Coast. The company has been actively expanding through acquisitions in the food industry. In 2023, Wonder acquired the meal-kit company Blue Apron for $103 million. In 2024, it completed a $650 million deal for the mobile food delivery platform Grubhub. Late last year, Wonder also acquired Spyce, a company that developed the Infinite Makeline technology, from salad purveyor Sweetgreen for $186.4 million. These strategic acquisitions underscore Wonder's ambition to integrate various facets of the food service industry under its automated model.

Marc Lore, the founder of Wonder, has a history of successful e-commerce ventures. He previously founded Quidsi, an e-commerce platform sold to Amazon for $545 million in 2010. He then created Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion. Following the Jet.com sale, Lore led Walmart's U.S. e-commerce operations for nearly five years before departing to establish Wonder. The company recently announced a $650 million Series D funding round, valuing it at $9 billion in July, further supporting its aggressive growth and technological development plans.