Blue Apron went live on Wonder earlier this week. | Photo courtesy of Wonder

Founded by billionaire entrepreneur Marc Lore, Wonder operates brick-and-mortar restaurants that serve food from multiple brands for delivery, pickup and dine-in. It has nearly 40 locations in the Northeast and plans to reach 90 by the end of the year.

As it incorporates meal kits into that business, the company will also continue to operate Blue Apron’s stand-alone meal kit service nationwide. But Blue Apron will look a little different for customers who use it within the Wonder app. In a break from meal kit tradition, they won’t have to sign up for a subscription to order meals. And they can get them delivered in as little as three days, which is faster than the typical turnaround for meal kits.

“There are a lot of barriers in the meal kit world, and this is a step in the right direction to knock some of those down,” said Daniel Shlossman, Wonder’s chief growth and marketing officer. He noted, for instance, that customers won’t need to commit to a certain number of meals per week or worry about having to cancel their subscription down the line. “We believe that it’s gonna be that great entry point for consumers," he said.

Founded in 2012, Blue Apron was a pioneer in the meal kit industry but has struggled since going public in 2017. Wonder plans to put its own mark on the company by focusing on convenience and ease of use. 

“One of the big things you’ll see us focus on in the next few months is moving a little bit further away from ‘Meal kits are how you go have fun and do an activity and have this unique experience once in a while’ to ‘Meal kits are the most convenient way to feed your family,’” said Whitney Pegden, Wonder’s newly hired GM of Blue Apron. 

Blue Apron recently introduced a line of 15-minute meals aimed at boosting convenience, for instance, and it could eventually add a non-subscription option as it has done for Wonder users. And in a bid to give customers a better deal, it also announced that it’s freezing prices and lowering shipping fees to $9.99.

Wonder officials said there are no plans to phase out the Blue Apron brand name over time.

“Blue Apron is a really well-established name,” Pegden said. “We think it adds a lot of value and people really understand what it stands for.”

As for how Wonder customers will incorporate Blue Apron into their regular ordering habits, that’s something Shlossman said the company will watch closely. Meal kit orders began flowing in Monday, and one of the first came from a person who hadn’t used Wonder since its early days, when it was still cooking food inside delivery vans.

“It shows how [meal kits] open up that opportunity in a lot of ways,” Shlossman said.

Meal kits are the latest news in what has been a period of rapid growth for Wonder. The company also recently acquired Grubhub, hired a COO and partnered with food manufacturer FreshRealm to help it scale up its meal production. Wonder also operates a B2B foodservice business called WonderWorks.

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