Wonder confidentially files for a US IPO
Marc Lore's food hall chain, valued at more than $9 billion, asks the SEC for confidentiality after laying off hundreds of staff in September.
Wonder, the multi-brand food hall chain founded by Marc Lore, confidentially filed for a US initial public offering on Thursday.
The company wants to be "IPO-ready" by early next year. A confidential filing lets Wonder gather feedback from the Securities and Exchange Commission while keeping its financials private until closer to the listing; it has not set a share count or price range. Lore previously built Diapers.com and Jet.com, selling the latter to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion, before founding Wonder in 2018.
Wonder has raised more than $3 billion since Lore founded it, and was valued at over $9 billion after a $650 million Series D round in July. The company, which also owns Grubhub, Blue Apron and the food media outlet Tastemade, has roughly tripled its footprint over the past year to about 170 locations along the East Coast. It plans to enter Texas next year. Each location carries 20 to 30 restaurant concepts that Wonder created, licensed or acquired.
A decade of discounts and acquisitions now has to answer to public shareholders.
Layoffs precede the roadshow
The IPO push followed cuts. In September, Wonder laid off 7% of its corporate staff, about 150 people, to streamline operations. It also let go 533 food workers in New Jersey as it consolidated two production plants into one with higher capacity.
Wonder plans to lean further into automation, using robotics and artificial intelligence across its kitchens. The company says the technology will make delivery more affordable and let it offer customers 21 meals a week. It also wants diners to use AI to build their own restaurant concepts and personalised meal plans.
A delivery empire built through acquisition
The IPO would cap a run of deals that folded Grubhub's delivery network and Blue Apron's meal kits into Wonder's food-hall model, a strategy that now competes directly with the Amazon-Uber Eats partnership that replaced Grubhub as Amazon Prime's delivery perk this year.
Wonder has not disclosed revenue figures ahead of the filing, though investors will get a fuller picture once the draft prospectus becomes public closer to listing.
