Walmart gets a Wonder food hall concept

Delivery-focused food hall concept Wonder has opened its latest storefront inside a Pennsylvania Walmart. 

The location in Quakertown is Wonder’s first in a Walmart and first in the Keystone State. The company plans to open two more Walmart outlets, in Teterboro and Ledgewood, N.J., and said there’s potential for a fourth. Wonder has 10 stand-alone locations in New York and New Jersey.

Wonder houses multiple restaurant brands whose specialties are available for delivery, pickup and dine in. It calls itself “fast fine,” promising speedy delivery of elevated food in a limited radius. 

The Quakertown store will offer eight of Wonder’s proprietary brands: Limesalt, Yasas, Alanza Pizza, Tejas, Wing Trip, Burger Baby, Fred’s Meat & Bread and Room for Dessert. Customers will be able to mix and match from all of them in a single order.

Wonder was founded by entrepreneur Marc Lore, who initially set out to deliver food in vans outfitted with small kitchens. He later scrapped that idea in favor of brick-and-mortar stores that could act as delivery hubs. The business is vertically integrated, with its own manufacturing operation, tech stack and delivery drivers. It uses just a few pieces of specialized equipment to prepare all of its food.

Lore has a reputation as an innovator, having founded pioneering ecommerce sites Diapers.com and Jet.com. And he is no stranger to Walmart, where he spent four years building its ecommerce business before leaving to lead Wonder.

Teaming up with the retail giant could raise Wonder’s profile and pull in shoppers who want a bite to eat. For Walmart, it’s part of a new approach to foodservice in its stores. As more customers shop online rather than in person, it has wound down relationships with big chains like McDonald’s and Subway and is apparently betting that a more digitally oriented concept like Wonder will work better. The vast majority of Wonder’s orders originate online.

Similar collaborations have not had a great track record of late. Kitchen United, another delivery-focused food hall, in November ended a plan to put outlets in Kroger grocery stores. That followed another unsuccessful partnership between Kroger and the ghost kitchen concept ClusterTruck.

This story initially ran in SN’s partner publication Restaurant Business.