Wonder's One-Stop Shop For Cooked Meals

to just under a billion. In a market where checks are getting harder to come by, It's been, we know, a very volatile market. Latest funding raise giving Wonder a three and a half billion dollar valuation according to people familiar with the matter. So we wanted to get an idea of a little bit more about what this company is all about, what they're going to do with all

that money. Tim. We've got the CEO of Wonder, Scott Hilton, joining us on Zoom from Parsippany, New Jersey, also the former Chief Revenue officer of the US of US e Commerce at Walmart. Scott, great to have you with us, How are you good? Thanks for having me, Well, it's great to have you here. Okay, So Carol lives in New Jersey. I don't know if she lives in a part of New Jersey where Wonder operates, but it's based in New Jersey right now. And she described it as

a food truck. Um, and at its core, that's that's what it is. But it's also so much more So how would you describe Wonder? Yeah, it's so food truck, that's kind of the first thought that people have that it really is something completely different. So what what we are is it's on demand dining, so customers can order be an app. They have access to a range of restaurants from everyday food you know, pizza burgers all the way up to find dining like Bobby Flay Steak Uh.

As soon as they order, a mobile restaurant will show up at their location and cook that food hot uh and fresh right there at their location and serve it through their door. So within minutes after ordering, they enjoy really a restaurant quality meal wherever they are at their home or at a park or at work. I'm so in after getting delivery, after delivery that's cold and not at all. Even if it's from a great restaurant, it just doesn't doesn't fly. Um, So tell us about the

growth that you're seeing. Give us an idea of the metrics, who are your customers, where you're seeing the growth, and what you want to do with all this money. Yeah, so we uh we served twenty two towns now in New Jersey. It's about a hundred households. Uh, and it ranges in old demographics from something that looks more Middle America all the way up to a little bit wealthier towns. All those towns are growing. Customers have been really going crazy for this um are. We have really high scores

and it's it is a truly a great experience. UM. It was one of the reasons that the company was founded is is looking at the delivery platforms, Uber, Eat, Store, Dash, etcetera. They were growing like crazy before the pandemic. UM, but the but the customer experience was really lacking. UM. There was the quality, uh, the food problem cold or you know, uh, you know, kind of moist food as a steams on the way to the customer, as well as just having

access to those great restaurants. So that's really at the core of what we're what we're trying to solve, and it's working in all segments and so we're continuing to expand more as to the money that we've raised is going into the mobile restaurants themselves, the fleet um as well as just covering normal operating expenses. But the bulk of the bulk of the money is for expanding and

going and using it for the mobile restaurants. One thing that caught my eye though, in reading about this a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, is that Mark Laurie said to the Walls Journal that the company have aims to have a national footprint by twenty five. That's many, many many years away. And I mean you've worked at several different companies in that time period and the number of years that it would it would happen.

Think Marcus probably started and sold two different companies for hundreds of millions of dollars and several billion dollars in that you know, thirteen years that it would take to get to five. Why such a long period of time, Well, Uh, we're starting here in the northeast, um in the Tri state area, and will the time being be focused there as we grow out, but very quickly. The way of how we structured this model is we've been building up the infrastructure. It actually has taken its years to get

the methods figured out how to do this. We prep and park, cook our food and fairly large scale central kitchens that food is sent out in our cold chain to this fleet. Um, we can do that in parallel, you know, in many cities. So as we continue to grow, we'll be opening up different areas simultaneously across the country. But it just takes time to kind of get that infrasture infrastructure going before we uh, you know, start to scale beyond the northeast. What the trickiest part of it

is it? People? Is it is? You talked about this infrastructure that you know takes a while to set up. Um, what is the trickiest part? There's no single thing that stands out. You know if you ask me that same question maybe two years ago, Uh, it was could we actually create this incredible food in this process? And that the answer is, hands down, yes, we can do it. And so after that it's really just more kind of

vanilla flavored execution. It's not to say that there's not a lot of hard parts, but uh, we have a fleet production capability. We build these mobile restaurants, upfit them ourselves as well as outside parties do it for us, uh, scaling the food production, hiring the labor. So far, we haven't bumped into anything that really stands out. It's just a bunch of little things. What about prices. It sounds like something great to do for a party, But how much does it cost to bring a Bobby flay steak

to your house? Yeah, so Bobby Flays that are that's our most expensive restaurant. That's definitely a fine nine experience, and we see people doing it as a special occasion. For example, Bobby flay Stake went crazy on Valentine's Day. But we serve all the way down to sort of like you said at the beginning, Burgher's Pizza one of our restaurants. A couple of our restaurants we serve family style. It's even more affordable. We have to currently and we're

gonna be offering more. But for one of his his Takorea, it's effectively a taco bar. You can it feeds a family of four to five. You pick your proteins, you know, like cardinas or chicken, your side of rice, side of beans, corn. You can add on guacamole. But that goes for fifty dollars so it's a very affordable that fifty per meal or fifty for the whole truck, fifty for the fifty for it's a family style. So yeah, wow, that's pretty amazing.

We're gonna talk a bit more about it, um because I'm your more, you know, curious because I know the food industry. Sometimes the margins are so slim, so I'm curious about how that's playing out. We're gonna come back with Scott Hilton. He's chief executive officer of Wonder, former chief revenue officer of the U S e commerce business at Walmart. He's with us from her Sippany. Our conversation will continue, Tim Centivi, Carol Masser, this is Bomberg Business Week.

It's official. I'm on the wait list and Wonder is gonna let me know when they are near my home. So I'm kind of looking forward to Scott. When it's gonna be He'll tell you now, all right, Scott Hilton, chief executive officer at Wonder, former chief revenue officer of US e commerce at Walmart. When will you come to

Jersey City. I can't give a specific date, but it will be probably in the next couple of years, right, now we're headed north to Bergen County right now in the west field, every serving towns around there, and then we're headed north. All right, Well that's where I grew up in Bergen County. I get it. Like I was thinking about how this works. And it's probably easier right for your trucks to pull up somewhere where they can

easily park. You've also got a neighborhood that's um to be fair, uh, a wealthier neighborhood where they can do this. I mean, I'm curious about the metrics and how you kind of price this all out, you know, how do you cover costs and where do you kind of you know, weird weird does profits come from? Ultimately? Is it? Is it just building it up on volume? How do you how does this play out? Now? Actually, in this business, the margins and food are really really good, very different

than than say retail. When you're looking at it, say a typical restaurant, you know, they're they're looking at a food cost that's maybe in some cases, So you're starting off with really good margins. And we were verticalized. We own this whole thing. We're developing, uh, the processes for the food we prep at our own facility. So we've got a nice, healthy, juicy variable profit um and that's

how we get it to work. It's very different than if you're logistics player, uh like a door Dash or uber each where you're really just trying to take a cut, or even in retail um, you know you're you're not getting as healthy and margin as you see in the food industry. And by the way, you see that in

the multiples that restaurant change. The big restaurant change to get their typically three x multiple on their top line versus retailers are typicate one x. Companies like Amazon obviously get a little bit of an extra kicker there because they're the platform play, you know, high growth UM. But

restaurant chains have really, really healthy margins. I'm just gonna tell you we have a restaurant row in downtown Jersey City and it's all about restaurants and there's lots of space and it would be a perfect fit tonight, Carol. I'm not trying to sell you or anything. Hey Scott, Scott, it's interesting. I wonder what the competitive mode is. What if somebody's listening in California right now and says, hey,

this is a great idea. We know that Wonder is not going to be here, you know, for five ten years, I'm going to start doing this. Why won't they Why won't they succeed like you? Yeah, well, we may be in California before before ten years, but um, the reality is we've been at this for years and have spent an enormous amount of energy. Um, it's definitely not for the faint hearted, and we have to deconstruct every single

dish and get them to work in this process. And it's getting them to work means having amazing, amazing food quality, but also being able to serve it at speed that supports the profitability because we definitely want to move through move food through the mobile restaurant in a fast pace we can get onto the next customer. What did you learn from your e commerce experience, whether it's Walmart or elsewhere that applies to what you're doing now or what you're doing do you kind of throw out the old

rules completely? Well, look, every situation you're really have to tailor uh to what's going on and what the businesses. There's some general rules of thumb that always applies. Making sure that you first of all, have a good strategy, uh, you know, in terms of being able to execute on it and having economics workout. But after that, it's really getting the right team assembled. We've got some of the best uh team members that have stayed with us from

company to company that we've been on this journey. UM, as well as making sure you've got the right structure, structures of the team's work well together. Every every team member needs to be in the right position. And that's the only way you can really scale and and grow it quickly. You have to get that foundation right first. Okay, So speaking of scaling growing quickly, we got to ask Mark Laurie sold jet dot com years ago to Walmart

for three point three billion dollars. Before that, Quizzy that diapers dot Com to Amazon for five million dollars. Before that, you had a company sold to Tops for a few million bucks before the year two thousand. What's the future for wonder? Look the this this really has unlimited potential. We're not planning to sell this thing. It's got a lot of runway, a lot of upside, which is why we're able to raise that most recent round. UM. There's a there's a lot of a lot of runway left,

so we're gonna build it up alright, thirty seconds. What keeps you up at night? I sleep pretty well. Come on, all right, if you had to, if you have to pick one thing, and we've only got about twenty seconds left, what would it be that you talk about? You know, you talk about workers. They're not cheap nowadays. Just quickly, No, they're not. They're not, And that's fortunate why we have

the margins we pay. We pay really well. And it's a fun job that people that operate our mobile restaurants get to be, you know, run their own restaurant and serve customers. It's kind of fun. We as leaders of the company, we do a lot of ride alongs with them during the evening to see what's going on. It's it's kind of a fun role. We should do a rod along. Care on one time, we'll do a ride along with that food food included. Yeah, I was just

going to say, the doggy bags must be pretty pretty impressive. Um, come back to us, Scott, let us know how things are going, and especially I'm going to wait for that email about when you guys are in Jersey City. Scott Hilton, CEO at Wonder joining us via zoom from Parsippan, and then you're gonna invite me over for dinner that night. That's going to be the finally master pizza night. Okay, a road trip