Marc Lore — whose $650 million acquisition of Grubhub last month is helping him scale his food delivery and take-out company, Wonder — is betting that artificial intelligence may soon handle your meal selection and delivery.
In fact, after a few months of testing the algorithm on himself, he believes it’s “dead on.”
“I’ve already started experimenting myself to see what [relying on an algorithm to select meals] is like. And so basically for lunch and dinner every day, I don’t know what I’m going to eat until I sit down,” Lore, who trusts the algorithm to select and deliver his meals, told NYNext.
By day, 53-year-old Lore is working to expand Wonder from its base in New York into the entire Northeast region. In the next 13 months, the company will balloon from 19 to 100 locations across New York, Boston, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia — and by the end of the decade, Lore said, Wonder will be all across the United States.
But he’s especially eager to expand on a future where Wonder does more than serve up meals.
Lore said the company is exploring ways to automate labor to decrease costs, but added that the “real breakthrough” is when AI will eventually be applied to the holistic customer experience — allowing Wonder to take into account someone’s budget, dietary preferences and the impact other meals have had on their sleep and blood sugar.
“We’re talking about five to 10 years into the future here. But I’m thinking about the bigger vision… there’s a real opportunity for AI to have a place in telling people what they should eat on a meal basis,” he explained. “Think about an AI that knows you as well as you know yourself.”
Lore tells NYNext he hopes to include technology like wearables that would monitor how certain meals affect your body — and advise staying away from anything that increases inflammation, for example.
The idea is to “monitor what you’re eating and be able to tell you before any doctor, any blood tests, that something is off when you eat this… something’s not working for your body, you’re having a reaction, getting inflamed when you eat these foods,” Lore explained.
“That is the future that really excites me.”
Wonder, which is valued at $5 billion after launching last year, offers dishes from as many as 30 notable eateries and chefs in a single location — including Fred’s Meat and Bread from Atlanta and the Michelin Guide-listed Chai Pani, founded in Asheville, NC, and big-name restaurant concepts such as Bobby Flay Steak and Jota By José Andrés. The idea is for people to be able to order multiple cuisines from the same app.
Lore’s recent partnership with Walmart — which put Wonder and seven of its cuisines inside one Pennsylvania location of the retail behemoth — could be a model for the rest of the country.
He declined to disclose anything about the company’s financials, but said multiple locations had double-digit profit margins. While food delivery is a much more challenging business than e-commerce, Lore believes the difficulty of the food delivery business is rewarded. Unlike the commodities that e-commerce giants deliver — like toilet paper or TVs — people will pay a premium for something unique like a Bobby Flay steak.
Lore is aware his vision for Wonder may take more than a few years to become reality, but putting it out there is part of his methodology. He is a shameless advocate of manifesting: Saying out loud exactly what he wants and what he believes he will have.
“I think a lot of people are afraid to be bold, to share [their dreams] because it feels risky. Like, ‘What if I don’t achieve it?’ or ‘I’m going to look stupid’ or things like that,” he said. “But I think it’s important … to create that vision. Work it through in your head to mold a piece of clay around that vision and then, you know, work backwards.”
And he’s not afraid of failure: “Yeah, you know the saying, don’t count your chickens before they hatch? I count them every day.”
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series that highlights New York City innovation across industries, as well as the personalities leading the way.