Wonder debuts its robotic bowl maker
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The robot is live now in a location in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Wonder
Wonder is ready to start producing some of its meals with a robot.
The food hall/delivery chain on Monday debuted the automated Infinite Makeline at its Midtown East location in Manhattan, where it will churn out bowl-based meals from six of Wonder’s some 30 restaurant concepts.
The machine can hold up to 68 ingredients and produce up to 500 bowls in an hour, with an average order-to-ready time of less than three minutes. Bowls travel through it on a belt and are filled with ingredients dispensed from above. Human workers add some finishing touches at the end. It has achieved 99.9% uptime, Wonder said.
It can hold up to 68 ingredients. | Photo courtesy of Wonder
The Infinite Makeline is the latest iteration of the Spyce robotics technology that Wonder acquired from Sweetgreen last year for $186.4 million. Sweetgreen sold it to improve its balance sheet and focus more on its operations, but will continue to deploy the robots in its own stores through an agreement with Wonder.
Since acquiring the robot, Wonder has worked to expand its capabilities beyond Sweetgreen’s limited menu of salads and grain bowls. It can now produce food from six Wonder concepts: Royal Greens and Pop Salad (salad), Limesalt and El Diez (Mexican bowls), Yasas (Mediterranean bowls), and Hanu Poke.
It’s designed to improve Wonder’s throughput and consistency and reduce costs, repetitive work, and food waste. It’s a key part of the company’s plans to scale its many restaurant concepts across hundreds of locations while maintaining quality. It will also allow the chain to offer lower prices and longer operating hours than what would be possible with a human-only staff, Wonder said.
“The goal is to combine precision, timing and creativity, allowing chefs’ recipes to be executed consistently at a scale that would be difficult to achieve manually,” the company said in a statement.
Wonder is also working on robots that handle sauces and “mise” to further automate its operations.
After its Manhattan debut, the Infinite Makeline will expand to tens of locations in the Northeast, DMV, and Texas next year.
Founded in 2018 by ecommerce entrepreneur Marc Lore, Wonder has grown rapidly over the past two years and now has more than 150 locations in 10 Eastern states and Washington, D.C. Each location offers food from up to 30 proprietary restaurant concepts out of a single kitchen for delivery, pickup, or dine-in. Wonder also owns Grubhub and Blue Apron. It is planning to become “IPO-ready” by early next year.
