Wonder, the billion-dollar food delivery service, is coming to Philadelphia
Tech entrepreneur Marc Lore has been the talk of the restaurant industry in recent years for Wonder, which offers multiple food brands out of one kitchen.
Wonder, a fast-growing food hall and delivery service backed by about $1.5 billion in investment, said it would open a location in Fishtown in 2025.
It will join Haraz Coffee House, an offshoot of the Michigan-based Yemeni coffee shop, in a new building at 23 W. Girard Ave., on a lot near Front Street formerly occupied by a 7-Eleven store. Haraz is now building its first franchise location in the region, at 3421 Chestnut St.
Marc Lore, the entrepreneur behind such businesses as eBay alternative The Pit, baby product retailer Diapers.com, and e-commerce site Jet.com, has been the talk of the restaurant industry in recent years for his development of Wonder, which bills itself as the “super app for meal time.”
Wonder, which recently announced the purchase of Grubhub, prepares food from many restaurants’ menus — including brands owned by celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay, Jose Andres, Nancy Silverton, and Marcus Samuelsson — in one kitchen stocked with high-tech equipment such as TurboChef ovens and self-venting automated fryers.
All food is made to order and delivered in under 30 minutes. Pickup and dine-in options are also available.
Wonder now operates 35 locations throughout New York City, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
The trade publication Restaurant Business called Wonder “a sort of self-contained restaurant solar system with its own supply chain, tech stack, and logistics network.”
In a review on Grubstreet, Matthew Schneier, chief restaurant critic at New York Magazine, offered mixed marks for the food but blasted Wonder for “gobbling up retail space and bulldozing local restaurants that might open instead.”
Locally, such a concept exists on a smaller scale with Pure Roots Provisions in King of Prussia, which opened in 2022, and Foodiehall in Cherry Hill, which closed in June after about three years.
A Wonder location is also believed to be opening at the Marketplace at Garden State in Cherry Hill, according to the Facebook page A View From Evesham.
Last year, Alterra Property Group and HK Partners teamed up to demolish the Girard Avenue convenience store where Wonder will be built. The new building, a 107-unit apartment building with 28 parking spaces and ground-floor retail with room for the two businesses, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. MSC handled the leasing.
The development partnership also built the Avant apartment building across the street, with 65 units, and retrofitted the former Kensington National Bank building at Frankford and Girard Avenues.