They say you can’t reinvent the wheel, but Wonder – the food service that partners with chefs and restaurants across the country, replicates their dishes and then delivers them to your door in an average of 35 minutes – is having a go.
The new Larchmont outpost, the first Wonder in Westchester, opened July 18, with debuts in Scarsdale and West Harrison due to follow in the next few weeks.
The business was launched in 2018 and originally comprised a fleet of roaming food trucks that delivered food directly to customers’ homes – think Mr. Softee meets DoorDash – before moving to brick-and-mortar “restaurants” in 2023. Founder Marc Lore, the billionaire former president and CEO of Walmart eCommerce U.S., who also launched Diapers.com and Jet.com, is said to regard his new baby as the Amazon of restaurant food home delivery. The guy thinks big.
With more than 50 establishments already operational in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Wonder finds its unique selling point in the customer’s ability to combine several different types of food – smoked chicken wings from Tejas Barbecue, say; a ranchero bowl from Limesalt; or filet mignon and a lobster Cobb from Bobby Flay Steak – in one order. “Multiple restaurants, one delivery,” as Wonder calls it. Choice, the American fixation, is what Wonder’s all about.
As an old restaurant hand and previously writer of the Table Talk column at the Westfair Business Journal, I was excited to make a first visit to the Wonder Food Hall in Larchmont to see it for myself. The first thing I found was that the establishment, located in the Ferndale Shopping Center, isn’t a hall at all. It’s a compact, anodyne space with just eight fixed tables, a monitor for digital ordering and a small pickup counter.
A slightly down-in-the-mouth employee reluctantly helped people figure out the ordering process and joylessly dispensed orders as and when they were ready. And eating in was a trifle dispiriting. I might have been chowing down on food that was a distillation of a recipe dreamed up once upon a time by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, but I hardly got the sensation of eating in a temple of gastronomy. To be fair, though, Wonder does market itself primarily as a food delivery service.
Many have warned of the death of “fine dining.” And while this may well be the birth of what the company calls “fast fine dining,” if successful at the very least it will certainly be another body blow to traditional “eating out,” which is as much a social and sensual experience as a culinary one.
So, while the lover of starched white linen and social, buzzy restaurants in me says “no,” the unapologetic, dyed-in-the-wool, hard-nosed capitalist in me – with more than a sneaking suspicion that the developers of this new “restaurant” concept are sitting on a goldmine – says a wholehearted “yes.”
Which is why, pure and simple, this Wonder of wonders makes the grade as one of this week’s best business choices.
For more, visit wonder.com.
