Will Marc Lore’s Ghost Kitchen Concept Work Inside Walmart?

Wonder Group, the ghost kitchen food hall founded by Jet.com founder Marc Lore, is opening a 750-square-foot location inside Walmart, marking its first shop-in-shop.

Wonder, which received a $3.5 billion valuation in a funding round in June 2022, earns much of its attention by being associated with serial entrepreneur Lore, who sold Diapers.com and parent company Quidsi to Amazon in 2010 for $545 million and Jet.com to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore oversaw Walmart’s e-commerce business for over four years following the Jet.com sale.

Promising to reinvent the at-home meal delivery experience, Wonder launched in 2021 by offering meals from the recipes of famous chefs such as Bobby Flay and Michael Symon cooked from vans parked outside homes.

In January 2023, Wonder abandoned the food truck concept in favor of opening retail locations, called “Fast Fine,” that allow for delivery, pickup, and limited dine-in options. A benefit is that while each van had one trained chef onboard dedicated to one restaurant concept, the physical locations can handle orders placed across multiple Wonder concepts.

Lore recently told Fox Business that the physical locations can support food preparation for 30 to 40 restaurants from a “small kitchen” in a “much more scalable model.”

The single kitchen inside the Fast Fine in Walmart’s Quakertown, Pennsylvania, location handles menus from eight restaurants with a fast-casual emphasis: Limesalt (Mexican), Yasas by Michael Symon (Greek), Alanza Pizza, Tejas Barbecue, Wing Trip, Burger Baby, Fred’s Meat & Bread (sandwiches), and Room for Dessert.

The concept allows customers to combine dishes from multiple restaurants in a single order for delivery, dine-in, or pickup.

“Let’s say you’re a family, and you want sushi,” Jason Rusk, SVP of Wonder, told Pennsylvania’s The Morning Call. “But your little one wants pizza. With Wonder, [the food] is all produced and made in the same area and same kitchen. It’s a blending of restaurants, quality of food, delivery.”

McDonald’s and Subway have shuttered hundreds of locations inside Walmart in recent years as stand-alone locations better support online ordering and drive-thru options. Walmart has since emphasized more diverse in-store restaurant options, including forming a partnership to open Ghost Kitchen Brands locations inside select stores offering delivery and to-go meals from up to 25 national restaurant brands, including Nathan’s Famous and Saladworks.

A recent CNBC article notes that many ghost or virtual kitchens have closed as brick-and-mortar restaurants have reopened post-pandemic and as consumers seek more transparency. Many ghost kitchen concepts were only accessible via delivery apps and offered little indication of where the food was being made or by whom. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2023 State of the Restaurant Industry Report, 70% of diners say it’s important for their food to come from a publicly accessible, physical location.

Wonder promises to bring more transparency to the ghost kitchen model with its physical locations and acquisition of the rights to use renowned chefs’ likenesses and recipes.

The Walmart location represents Wonder’s 11th storefront. Two to three more are planned inside Walmart stores as part of 25 new locations for Wonder this year, with a focus on the New York metropolitan area, according to Fortune.

Speaking to Fortune, Daniel Shlossman, Wonder’s growth and marketing chief, said the Walmart opening will show the Wonder concept is “adaptable” across spaces. He said, “We think the product-market fit works everywhere.”