Wonder Group, Inc., the food-delivery startup that owns Grubhub and Blue Apron, said Thursday it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range have not yet been determined, and the offering remains subject to market conditions and the completion of the SEC’s review, the company announced.
A confidential filing lets a company begin the SEC review process privately, without publishing its financials, and prepare for a possible public offering after review. Wonder announced no valuation, no listing date and no expected proceeds. An earlier private funding round – its Series D earlier this year – valued the company at $9 billion before the new money, but that private figure is not an IPO valuation; any eventual offering would establish its own price.
Wonder was created in 2018 by Marc Lore, the serial entrepreneur who founded Diapers.com and Jet.com and sold them to Amazon and Walmart, respectively. The company pitches itself as “the best restaurants from across the country, all in one place,” delivering meals and offering takeout through its own app. First imagined as a fleet of sprinter vans fitted with mobile kitchens, Wonder has grown into roughly 170 brick-and-mortar locations across the U.S., serving dishes from more than two dozen restaurant concepts, some carrying celebrity-chef branding.
Its portfolio came together through aggressive dealmaking: Wonder has spent at least $1 billion on acquisitions, including delivery service Grubhub, meal-kit brand Blue Apron and delivery-and-logistics provider Relay, plus a string of restaurant concepts – buying powered by more than $3 billion in venture funding. Lore has said IPO proceeds would let Wonder make more acquisitions and pursue its goal of making food more accessible.
What Grubhub and Blue Apron add
Grubhub is the restaurant-ordering and delivery service in Wonder’s portfolio. Its former owner, Just Eat Takeaway.com, completed the sale to Wonder on January 7, 2025, at an enterprise value of $650 million. Grubhub transferred with $500 million in senior notes, and Wonder acquired its assets and assumed its material liabilities. That brought a delivery marketplace into the same group as Wonder’s own food locations, making the business broader than a chain of kitchens.
Blue Apron is the meal-kit business Wonder acquired in 2023, adding an at-home cooking brand alongside prepared-food delivery. The agreement announced September 29, 2023 valued Blue Apron at $103 million, or $13 a share, CNBC reported at the time. Blue Apron said the plan was to continue serving customers nationwide under its brand, with expected opportunities to connect consumer apps and delivery logistics. Those were the acquisition’s stated plans, not new operating promises made in Thursday’s IPO notice.
The next product milestone is already dated: starting Nov. 17, the company plans to roll out Wonder Create, a program where influencers, entrepreneurs and brands can pay $10 a month to start their own restaurant business out of a Wonder location and earn a share of the revenue from orders. The program is not live yet.
According to CNBC, which reported the company’s operating figures and Wonder Create plans, the road to a public listing may not be smooth. Weak consumer sentiment has weighed on restaurant stocks in recent months, and market volatility has made for a shaky IPO market across industries – conditions that will shape when, and whether, Wonder actually prices its shares.
For customers, this announcement concerns a proposed share offering, not a new service launch or a change to an existing order. For prospective investors, there is no announced public-offering price, share count or listing date to evaluate yet. Wonder Create is a separate product plan, with a planned November 17 introduction rather than an outcome guaranteed by the IPO filing. Expansion and any eventual listing could affect workers and early investors, but Thursday’s announcement does not promise jobs or a timetable for selling shares.
JBizNews Desk | Wall Street
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