Marc Lore Brings Entrepreneur Skills as CEO of Food Delivery Startup Wonder

Serial entrepreneur Marc Lore — the former head of Walmart’s eCommerce division, founder and former CEO of Jet, and former CEO of Quidsi — is putting his expertise behind fast-growing delivery startup Wonder, the Ashbury Park Press reported Thursday (April 14).

Launched last year, Wonder is piloting operations in 20 New Jersey towns, according to the report.

Wonder enables customers to order from 17 restaurants. A mobile food truck cooks the food while parked outside the customer’s home.

Ingredients are prepared and packaged at a large central kitchen before being sent to kitchen hubs, where the Wonder vans access them. Once the driver arrives at a destination, Wonder completes meal preparation inside its vans, which are equipped with kitchen appliances. Each van has one trained chef onboard and is dedicated to only one restaurant.

Read more: Jet Founder Marc Lore Planning ‘One-Stop Shop’ for Cooked Meals

Lore, a New Jersey native, has launched successful startups, including The Pit in 1999, an online collectible company rolled out as an alternative to eBay. Then, Lore and his business partner, baseball legend Alex Rodriguez, went on to buy the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves, according to the report.

Lore was appointed in September 2016 to lead Walmart’s eCommerce division following the $3.3 billion acquisition of his online marketplace Jet.com by the retail giant. Quidsi, the parent company of a family of websites including Diapers.com, was sold to Amazon in 2010 for $545 million, the report stated.

Striving to deliver fresh-made meals to people’s doorsteps from some of the country’s top chefs, Wonder’s board members include Gwyneth Paltrow, actor and founder of lifestyle business Goop, according to the report.

“Marc represents, I think, the goal outcome of what we’d like to see from entrepreneurs,” Aaron Price, CEO of TechUnited, a trade group for New Jersey technology companies, told the Asbury Park Press. “He’s someone who dreams big, and who has lofty goals, and sets his mind to achieving them at all costs.”