A tale of two food intermediaries

Marc Lore's Wonder will acquire Blue Apron for $103 million.

Photo credit: Derek Davis/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

During a trip to New York two weeks ago, I passed the new Brooklyn outpost of Wonder, on Schermerhorn street just a block from my hotel. I wouldn’t have noticed it but for a deflating tower of giant green balloons outside its front door, the smell of latex in the sun wafting down the street. 

Last week, Blue Apron, a publicly traded meal-kit company once worth $2 billion announced Wonder was taking over at a price of $13 per share, or about $103 million. It was a significant premium over Blue Apron shares trading at $5 and change. 

Wonder, founded by entrepreneur and former Walmart executive Marc Lore, was once the company that raised half a billion dollars to cook people dinner in their driveways. It since pivoted away from on-the-go cooking into a more stable but familiar ghost kitchen model, serving food from a handful of locations in New York and New Jersey, with more on the way.