We tried Wonder, Marc Lore's food hall venture, to see if it's the all-in-one meal option executives promise

We tried Wonder's food hall and delivery.Ashley Rodriguez/Alex BitterMarc Lore's Wonder is opening dozens of locations.Wonder combines the efficiencies of a ghost kitchen with dine-in, pick-up, and delivery options.Business Insider ordered from two Wonder food halls to see what the experience is like.Wonder, Marc Lore's latest startup, promises great food and fast service — and that's a big promise.The company, which started off serving made-to-order food from vans in suburban New Jersey, has pivoted to opening food halls. Each Wonder location uses a single kitchen to cook food from several menus devised by celebrity chefs, from Marcus Samuelsson to Bobby Flay. You can get your food any way you could want it, from dining in to picking it up to having someone drop it off at your front door.In short, Wonder wants to be the "super app for mealtime," as a company executive told Business Insider in February.Wonder has 56 locations open, all on the East Coast of the US. By the end of 2025, the company expects to have 90 locations.Business Insider ordered from two Wonder food halls — one in New York City, the other in Washington, DC — to see if the experience is as wonderful as promised.Here's what we found:Reporter Alex Bitter visited this Wonder location in Washington, DC.Alex Bitter/BIThis Wonder location opened in July and sits near the intersection of 14th Street Northwest and U Street Northwest — a place with lots of apartments and townhomes nearby, as well as a lively nightlife scene.It's the first of several locations that Wonder plans to open in the Washington, DC area.Wonder's Food Hall was new, clean, and welcoming.Alex Bitter/BIAs I (Alex) walked into this Wonder location, I found it bright, clean, and easy to navigate. There were tablets for placing orders to the left and a pick-up area with shelves to hold orders on the right.Through a doorway between the two was the kitchen. Wonder uses a single kitchen to prepare food from many different menus — a setup similar to a ghost kitchen.I noticed these colorful printed menus on the shelves by the ordering area.Alex Bitter/BIBesides scrolling on a tablet, you could look at a printed menu before ordering. Each menu was designed by a different celebrity chef.I scrolled through the touchscreen to see my options.Alex Bitter/BIAfter scrolling through the options, I decided on M's Spicy Fried Chicken Deluxe Sandwich Combo with Streetbird Slaw and a bottled lemonade ($13.95) from Streetbird by Marcus Samuelsson as well as a Sirloin Steak ($28) from The Mainstay by Marc Murphy.Not everything on the tablet was available.Alex Bitter/BIWhen I tried to look at items from Bobby Flay Steak, I got a message saying that the restaurant was "closed."I'm not sure what this meant. Wonder relies on a single kitchen to make orders at each location, and the kitchen here was clearly open.There was some seating for in-store diners at this Wonder location.Alex Bitter/BIThere was enough seating at this Wonder food hall for around a dozen dine-in customers. I was visiting on a weekday night just before 8 p.m., and the location wasn't busy.The seats were comfortable, but it didn't feel quite like a "food hall," which conjures up images for me of chefs preparing food in front of you or some other visual entertainment as you wait for your food.The layout seemed focused on takeout and delivery orders.Alex Bitter/BIThe design of this Wonder food hall seemed optimized for delivery. Workers from the kitchen brought out orders destined for delivery customers, while a steady stream of drivers came in and out of the store.After exactly 10 minutes, my order was ready.Alex Bitter/BII barely had time to wash up in the restroom and snoop around the store before my steak and sandwich were ready. The wait time was shorter than many of the experiences I've had at fast-food restaurants in the last few years.Everything looked good at first glance.Alex Bitter/BIThe steak and sandwich were warm and obviously fresh out of the kitchen as I took them out of the bag. This spread cost just under $50.I enjoyed the chicken sandwich.Alex Bitter/BIUnlike a lot of fried chicken sandwiches at this price point, this one used a whole cut of chicken instead of a processed patty. And while I could've used a little more spice, the sauce was flavorful.The Sirloin steak was more marginal.Alex Bitter/BIThe steak, which I ordered to be cooked medium, felt slightly rarer than that.More importantly, it had hardly been seared, which meant that I didn't get that beefy hit that even cheap steaks can provide. Perhaps I should've paid a little more to smother it in one of the optional sauces.As a home chef, I know that good steaks don't take long to cook. I would've loved to watch how Wonder's staff prepared this one.The coleslaw was tasty.Alex Bitter/BII appreciated that the coleslaw wasn't too wet or sweet like some fast-food versions of the dish are.The lemonade was sugary but not bad.Alex Bitter/BIWonder seemed to be saving time and work by offering drinks in bottles, cans, and other packages. There weren't any soda fountains in sight.Overall, it was a fine, but unremarkable, meal.Alex Bitter/BII might come back for the fried chicken sandwich. That, plus the fast service, means I might stop by again to try something new from Wonder's several menus.But I probably won't be ordering a steak here again.Editor Ashley Rodriguez ordered from Wonder for delivery in New York City.Ashley Rodriguez/BII (Ashley) used the Seamless app to place my order mid-afternoon on a weekday. More than 20 Wonder "restaurants" seemed to be available during lunchtime. Most of them weren't labeled Wonder brands, though, so it wasn't immediately obvious without checking the address.I ordered from a location in Staten Island, New York.We had Wonder deliver the food to our home in Staten Island.Ashley Rodriguez/BIEach menu had a handful of starters and entrées unique to the restaurant, along with the same selection of kids' options (chicken tenders or Mac and cheese), beverages, and desserts. The limited menus made it hard to find something everyone in my family of three was excited about. We settled on shawarma from Maydan by Wonder (one of five I saw with Wonder in the name).We ordered lamb shawarma, vegetable shawarma, and a sea salt chocolate chip cookie. It came out to $47.50 before tax, tip, and the app service fee. Even with the $7 credit I got for spending at least $35 on my first order, it was steeper than I'd usually pay for shawarma, of which there's no shortage of spots nearby.Using a third-party app complicated our order.Ashley Rodriguez/BIWhile Wonder says that it offers a wide selection of mix-and-match meal options from its different menus, ordering through an app like Grubhub, which Wonder bought in January for $650 million, or its sister app Seamless, limits you to a single restaurant. When I tried to add items from more than one Wonder menu to my order on the Seamless app, I got a prompt indicating that I would need to place a separate order.A spokesperson for Wonder said that the company's own app or website "is the most seamless way to enjoy the full mix-and-match experience across our menus.""Seamless and Grubhub currently list each of our brands individually, and we're actively exploring ways to improve that experience," the spokesperson said.The food came quickly — on the low end of the estimate in the app.Ashley Rodriguez/BII ordered at 2:08 p.m. and was given a 29 to 44-minute delivery window. When I checked the app at 2:37 p.m. to see the status of my order, it had already been delivered.The food inside the bag was what I had ordered.Ashley Rodriguez/BIThough it sat on my doorstep in the rain for a few minutes, the food arrived warm and well packaged. A trio of sauces I'd selected came included with each shawarma.The shawarma tasted better than it looked.Ashley Rodriguez/BIThe meal itself looked a bit sad, with the herbs wilted and the vegetables overly soft.But I was pleasantly surprised when I bit in. The vegetables tasted fresh and well seasoned, and the sauces were flavorful.One of my dining partners said that the lamb shawarma was a bit one-note. The lamb didn't have the characteristic shaved texture of shawarma, but it was fine overall.The cookie was big — and tasty.Ashley Rodriguez/BIThe chocolate chip and sea salt cookie was large, soft-baked, and very good — it better have been for $5.I might try Wonder again if it's easier to order from multiple menus.Ashley Rodriguez/BIAs someone who typically orders for a family of three with different tastes and dietary restrictions (I'm vegetarian), I would be much more likely to order from Wonder again if I could choose from its range of menu options like you can in the food hall. I might have ordered a salad (I've ordered from Wonder's Royal Greens menu before and enjoy their concoctions), while my husband could have gotten Tejas Barbecue or Streetbird.All in all, we enjoyed the meal for what it was. We wouldn't go out of our way to order it again, but it was a quick, convenient, mildly healthy option (there were vegetables) when we were otherwise too busy to cook.Read the original article on Business Insider

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