Fast Five Shorts | Does The World Need A Super App For Mealtime?

Wonder is acquiring Grubhub for $650 million, according to grocery Dive.

Wonder, a company that operates delivery focused food halls and the brainchild of Mark Laurie, will acquire food delivery provider Grubhub for $650 million from justeattakeaway.com Wonder, which has 28 locations in the Northeast, also raised $250 million in capital from new investors after previously raising $700 million in March with plans to reach 90 locations by next year.

It should be noted that Just Eat takeaway originally purchased Grubhub for $7 billion in 2020 and tried selling the company since April of 2022, said Mark Laurie about the acquisition quote.

We're excited to soon offer a curated selection of grubhub's restaurant partners directly in the Wonder app alongside our owned and operated restaurants and meal kits.

Bringing Wonder and grubhub together is the next step in our vision to create the super app for meal time re envisioning the future of food delivery.

End quote.

Chris do you agree with Wonders Mark Laurie that the world needs a super app for meal time?

100% not at all Ann.

Not at all.

No.

I'm not buying this at all.

And I kind of feel like I already have one and I have many options of them.

Like I've got DoorDash, I've got my local grocery, I've got Walmart, plus I've got Amazon.

So last time I checked, and last time I checked too.

The universal truth is I want choice.

I don't want to be forced to use one thing as a super app, especially in America.

So.

So this whole super app idea sounds like something you say to sound cool when you know you really aren't.

That's what I think about this and that's my take here.

Of course, with that said, I'm not P.T.

barnum, aka Mark Laurie, aka the greatest investor Showman on Earth.

But I just don't see the long term play here.

And I really don't.

The delivery space is crowded and it's consolidating already is another point I would add.

It's pretty much a white label service at this point across the industry.

I mean look at what Starbucks is doing in the first headline.

New Apron and meal kits.

Those are dying as well.

I tried them.

I fell in love with them during the pandemic, but they jilted me.

I'm not going to go back and I'm a jilted lover on the meal kit, so that's not appealing to me.

So the success of the super app concept, if you get right down to it.

And the success of this super app concept has nothing to do with grubhub.

It relies on the restaurant concept in and of itself of what Wonder is, which is supposed to be more geared toward the high end, which when I talk to people in the delivery space, customers don't want high end food delivered because it doesn't travel well.

They want consistently Chinese, Mexican, pizza, all those things.

But I'm sure, you know, and, but I mean, who am I?

I'm just some pundit.

I've been in retail 20, 25 years now.

Who am I to challenge the questions of, of Mark Laurie and Tony Hoggett recently of Tesco and Amazon Fresh, who both have probably literally on their resume, no experience in the restaurant space.

But who am I to question them?

You know, they, they, they sold Mark, and especially Mark Lorry.

He sold two businesses that never made any money and don't exist anymore.

But who am I to question them?

And I mean, come on.

I mean, I.

So I'm probably getting something wrong.

Well, I mean, if, if I'm trying to understand the thinking behind this.

I mean, it was a steal of a deal.

If it was, you know, valued during the pandemic, $7 billion and now it's 650 million.

Like, okay, it's one way to put it.

What could Wonder do with this?

They could get scale because of the other restaurants on the platform or people who are already going to grubhub.

They could allow for people to start to see Wonder's concepts and drive traffic in a way that maybe Wonder would have to invest a lot more money on to get people, you know, over to the platform.

And you've seen the value of using the platform.

So maybe if you look at it as like a marketing expense that can help the, this, the other thing that I Wonder, Chris, and this again, I'm digging deep for some of the under trying to understand this.

You're trying to find the good in this.

You're not really trying to find the good.

I'm trying to find the good in it.

But like, do you think that they gain information from the other grubhub restaurants on the platform?

Like Tony Hoggett coming in here is making me ask some serious questions about like the Amazon approach to business.

Like, do does Wonder see, like, ooh, Chinese is really popular and people really like hot pot or something like that in delivery?

Like, do we create a Wonder concept now that delivers hot pot and undercut the competition and now they have two hot pot options and wonder, you know, like, do they do something with the data from that?

I don't, I don't know.

Is there still ties to Amazon where, you know, yes, right now, part of your prime membership, you can get grubhub delivery, but do they start to use that?

That's an interesting question.

What happens there too?

Yeah, like, I think that I'm trying to dig, as you can tell, but I do think that there could be some things that they're at least going to put into practice and test with this acquisition.

The other you put about the Amazon thing, if you read that, if you read the articles, they too, they said that the Amazon, the Amazon partnership did nothing to help the grubhub business, which is fascinating too.

So that means you're buying a diamond.

My last word on this, Anne, is my tell on how silly this idea is if the next thing Lori goes and acquires is a drone company, because drones are coming for this space because they give more scale to last mile delivery.

And, and so if he next acquires that, that means he's all in on like this super app thing and selling it and trying to get out with a big exit like he has historically done in the past.

That's my tell.

So, so that.

Look how thrown up I, I just, I don't, I don't.

I already have a super app and it's called DoorDash.

It 100 is.

I'm sorry, Mark.