Wonder – Restaurant on Wheels by Alexander Gornyi

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

When delivered from a restaurant, the food is cold and doesn’t taste well. Brilliant chefs come up with special recipes ‘for delivery.’ Talented developers optimize the delivery people’s routes. The delivery people themselves put the pedal to the metal. Still, the fact is that Uber Eats and similar services deliver something that doesn’t stand comparison to real food.

Traditional restaurants, on the other hand, are outdated. One needs to consume through a mobile app, walking by foot is a previous century fashion. Yes, it’s an exaggeration. But not that much of an exaggeration, and in about five years reality will catch up with my today’s exaggeration.

And then it turns out that the food cannot be carried from a restaurant to a person, and a person cannot be carried to a restaurant. A third variant is the only thing that’s left – to carry a restaurant to a person. This is how Wonder, the American startup of the day, works. It buys mini-buses, equips them with restaurant kitchens, cooks food on the go, and delivers orders to the client’s door right off the stove.

Delivering something McDonalds-like, naturally, makes no sense whatsoever. Wonder licenses recipes from America’s top restaurants – and it seems like it cannot replicate all of them, given the limitations of a traveling kitchen. The bill turns out high. The price of 50 dollars for one meal even made it to their app screenshot.

For now, the startup only works in several counties in New Jersey, with the richest audience and far enough from major cities and most restaurants. At that, Wonder brings in monstrous amounts of investments – it’s been USD 850M in three rounds already, and they haven’t even begun scaling.

https://www.wonder.com/

Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov