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Wonder, the food delivery startup founded by entrepreneur Marc Lore, is reportedly teaming up with food giant Nestlé to grow a new business-to-business offering.

As part of the Cranford-based venture’s latest service, WonderWorks, it is selling state-of-the-art kitchen technology and prepared ingredients to other businesses, like hotels, hospitals and sports arenas, and has rolled the service out to about 50 locations, CNBC reported.

After securing a $100 million investment and strategic partnership with the food and beverage giant, Lore told the outlet it will allow his company to scale WonderWorks more quickly. A spokesperson for Wonder confirmed Nestlé’s investment and strategic partnership with the company to NJBIZ, but declined to provide specific details on the transaction.

“This strategic partnership will allow us to bring an innovative and new-to-market solution to our customers as they look for ways to scale their operations” a Nestlé spokesperson told NJBIZ. “It can help them improve food quality, drive labor efficiencies, and open up additional revenue streams.”

In addition to being a big presence in grocery stores with its snacks and frozen meals, Nestlé has a large food service business selling to more than 200,000 clients, such as cruise lines and college campuses — many of which are struggling to keep up with changing customer preferences when it comes to food.

The company has multiple locations in New Jersey; its Nestlé Health Science U.S. headquarters, Nestlé Product Technology Center and IT team are based in Bridgewater.

Melissa Henshaw, president of out-of-home for Nestlé, told CNBC, “With our partnership with Wonder, there’s this opportunity to help operators across multiple out-of-home segments be able to improve their food quality, have consistency, and actually open up some additional revenue streams that have been pretty challenged post-pandemic.”

As part of the new collaboration, Nestlé will customize pizza and pasta for Wonder’s kitchen equipment, which simplifies and speeds up cooking restaurant-quality food, according to the outlet.

Recipe for success

The partnership comes a few weeks after Wonder entered into a definitive agreement to acquire meal kit provider Blue Apron for $103 million. 

Under the terms of the deal announced Sept. 29, Blue Apron stockholders will receive $13 per share and Wonder plans to continue operations serving customers nationwide under the brand.

The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by Blue Apron’s board of directors, is expected to close before the end of 2023.

It follows years of ups and downs for Blue Apron, which was once a leader in the at-home meal delivery category. In recent months, the company has transitioned to become a more asset-light business, selling its operational infrastructure to California-headquartered meal provider FreshRealm for $50 million and making layoffs.

In commenting on the acquisition, Blue Apron CEO Linda Findley said, “By joining forces with Wonder, we continue to realize our vision of Better Living Through Better Food, and support how families and loved ones come together over food.”

“Wonder and Blue Apron deliver high-quality, chef-curated meals, making this a great match to offer more incredible mealtime experiences. The Blue Apron brand and products that our customers know and love will stay the same, with more opportunity for product expansion in the future,” she said.

Lore commented, “Wonder is creating the mealtime super app, serving a broad range of occasions that feature cuisines from some of the world’s best chefs and restaurants while leveraging our culinary engineering and vertically-integrated model.”

An evolving business

“At-home meals play a key role in this vision and have been on our strategic roadmap since the beginning. When the opportunity presented itself to unite with Blue Apron, pioneers in the meal kit industry, we knew it would accelerate our strategic position, create immediate opportunities for synergy and most importantly, enable us to further delight customers by expanding the ways you can access and experience Wonder,” he went on to say. “We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Blue Apron to the Wonder platform and look forward to working with Linda and her exceptional team.”

Originally founded as a business based on mobile kitchens that prepared celebrity chef-designed meals outside of customers’ homes, Lore announced in January the business was rethinking its approach and would instead focus on physical locations offering options from restaurants that Wonder has licensing deals with.

Featuring a collection of acclaimed cooks and eateries, Wonder describes itself as a “fast fine” option that allows customers to order from multiple restaurants at once for delivery, pick-up or dining in. In recent months, the brand has focused on pivoting to the new concept, opening three eateries in New York (Chelsea, Brooklyn and the Upper West Side) and two in New Jersey (Westfield and Hoboken).

By the end of 2023, Wonder plans to add two Bergen County outposts (1 Union Ave., Cresskill; 80 Godwin Ave., Midland Park) and one in Union County (219 Morris Ave., Springfield). The company also expects to open two more restaurants in New York as well as make its Pennsylvania debut in Quakertown.

Next year, Lore told CNBC, Wonder anticipates launching at least 20 more locations.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:32 p.m. ET Nov. 8, 2023, to include a statement from Nestlé.