Food startup Wonder said Thursday it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for a proposed initial public offering, CNBC reported¹.

The company was founded in 2018 by Marc Lore, who previously started Diapers.com and Jet.com and sold those businesses to Amazon and Walmart, CNBC said¹. Wonder markets itself as a collection of restaurant brands available for delivery and takeout through a vertically integrated app¹.

CNBC said Wonder originally planned food delivery from vans with mobile kitchens and now operates about 170 brick-and-mortar locations in the United States¹. Those sites serve items from more than two dozen restaurant concepts, some tied to celebrity chefs, according to the report¹.

Starting Nov. 17, Wonder plans to roll out Wonder Create, under which influencers, entrepreneurs and brands can pay $10 a month to operate a restaurant concept from a Wonder location and take a share of order revenue, CNBC said¹.

The company has spent at least $1 billion on acquisitions including Grubhub, Blue Apron and logistics firm Relay, along with restaurant concepts, CNBC reported, financed by more than $3 billion in venture funding¹. A Series D round earlier this year raised Wonder's pre-money valuation to $9 billion, according to CNBC¹.

Lore told CNBC in September that IPO proceeds would support more acquisitions and a goal of making food more accessible¹. CNBC noted that public-market investors have recently been cautious about restaurant stocks and that IPO conditions have been uneven across industries¹.

Terms of the offering, including share count, price range and listing venue, were not disclosed in the confidential filing as described by CNBC¹.

Sources

1. CNBCMarc Lore's Wonder confidentially files for IPO11:27 AM

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