Business of Food
Do You Want Your Food Made by a Robot?
E-commerce mogul Marc Lore's Wonder is leaning into automation in a $2 billion effort to do to restaurants what Amazon did to shopping.
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Wonder Group Inc., a startup trying to redefine what it means to be a takeout restaurant, spent $186 million on robotic lunch-making technology. The investment centered on a contraption, which could fill a small room, consisting of a track that carries single-serving bowls beneath a series of 4-foot-high tubes, each holding one ingredient. Guided by recipes, the system prompts various tubes to release arugula or roast chicken or green sauce at the appropriate moment, while gently rotating the bowls to keep everything evenly disbursed.