How Wonder is Solving the 5:30 PM Dinner Panic for Moms

0:03 Pagine your family at dinner time. Your partner wants tie, your daughter wants pizza, your son wants barbecue. Now everyone in the household gets exactly what they want, delivered in less than thirty five minutes with no delivery fees. Welcome back to the Running Wine Mom podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Selinsky aka the Running Wine Mom. Today we're talking about the one thing that connects every single one of us cut around five thirty pm, the dinner panic. Our guest today is someone who has spent her career at mastering the how and why and what we bring into our homes. Courtney Laurie was a driving force behind making Wayfair a household name, and now she's taking on the most emotional room in the house, the kitchen. As a top executive at Wonder, she's helping Mark Laurie build what they call a super app for meal time those of us in Yardley and across the suburbs. It's more than an app. It's the ability to get a Bobby Flea steakout, Steak, Michael Simone Mediterranean and kids meal all in one delivery, hot and ready. I've been staring at the wonderstorefront and Yardly wondering. Is this the end of my cooking induced stress?

1:11 So let's get into it. Courtney, welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks for having me. I love Wonder. I live about five minutes from the Yardly one and it has been truly such a life saver. But for those who maybe have not heard of Wonder, can you talk about what it is and what the mission behind it is? Yeah? Absolutely so. Wonder is a food app with over one hundred restaurant locations, one of which is in Yardley, across the Northeast and mid Atlantic regions. We're also opening in Texas early next year, and we let diners combine dishes from over twenty different exclusive Wonder restaurants in a single order. And so let's put this in real life context, like, imagine your family at dinner time. Your partner wants tie, your daughter wants pizza, your son wants barbecue. Now everyone in the household, that's exactly what they want, delivered in less than thirty five minutes with no delivery fees. We also on the app deliver from thousands of different local, sort of neighborhood favorites as well, similar to what you would see on a group hub.

2:13 Yes, and it I mean truly, I love that I can ask my kids, you know, okay, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Great? You know? And then my husband what do you want? We all get different things and everybody is happy, and we are going to talk about how it is solving so much of the mental load. So you've helped businesses like Wayfair into the household name that completely changes how people shop for their homes. Now you're helping build wonder around meal time. Why did you decide like meal time is going to be the next thing that you changed for all of us? Yeah? I love this question. I think honestly, for me, the why meal time is personal and professional.

2:57 There's like sort of two sides to it for me. So maybe I'll start with the emotional side, Like the emotion and ritual surrounding meal time is so personal for me, and I think people at large it sounds like yourself as well. Like meals shape routines, they shape memories connection with our family, our kids, our friends, and I've personally always loved to cook and host people to sort of create those shared memories and experiences for people that I care about. I think that kind of comes from the fact that I have very vivid memories as a kid of meal time conversations and those were both good conversations and bad conversations, but those moments are so formative for people. So personally it was an exciting category to get into.

3:39 From a professional side of it, like the opportunity to just disrupt a category again that sorely needs it was very exciting. So you mentioned Wayfair in the case of that business, we really did unlock a very fragmented physical category of home goods and made discovery and shipping and delivery much more simple for people. And meal time really is the next frontier with that same set of ingredients for like true transformation. So it's it's personal and professional for me. Yeah, And I mean I have to say the like turnaround time in it getting delivered is huge because sometimes we'll deliver from other places and it's like forty five minutes to an hour. I remember, like a few weeks ago, I was at the gym, and the gym is like maybe seven minutes from our location, and I was picking the kids up from kids Club.

4:28 I ordered on the app. By the time that I got to wonder it was like ready for pickup, and I just picked it up and then we went home and I didn't have to spend all that extra time making and figuring out what dinner was. And so that was kind of going to be my next question. I think a lot of moms listening they feel that dinner is the most stressful part of the day, maybe in comparison to bedtime. So do you think that Wonder is solving a food problem or do you think it's solving a mental load problem. I can honestly relate about the stress part. Like I've got two boys, a five in two year old, and they'd be very thrilled with chicken nuggets and mac and cheese every day, but they don't get that. So but in all honesty, I think it's I think it's both. I think we're solving for both, and that's what makes the Wonder model so unique. Ultimately, our mission is to make great food more accessible for everyone, and really to make that a reality, we need to bring unmatched selection, variety so that everyone gets access and is satisfied at the end of their meal, Provide you know, flexibility like you're describing, you know, picking it up seamlessly and going home or getting delivery by the time that you get home.

5:32 Flexibility and convenience is so critical, and so I really see wonder solving both like what to eat and how to eat, but on your terms, which is kind of yes. And so when you pick a town or a city like Yardly for example, to open, you know it's such a food loving community. Do you look at the data or you just kind of look at the vibe of the area and what surprises you the most about the neighborhoods that you're opening. And yeah, I mean in terms of the places that we're selecting, we're definitely selecting areas that maybe have less options than they need or want, and so that provides, you know, our ability to have like an unmet need for families and folks in the suburbs Yardly in particular is interesting. I was looking in preparation for this conversation and seeing what folks order and barbecue and our tahase offering drives the most engagement in sales right now at the Yardly location, which is actually a little bit different than what we see from other locations, So that was a bit surprising.

6:36 Mexican and Italian or cuisines. That are always top performing in our various locations, but barbecue seems to be hot, the hot item for folks in Yardley. And that's so interesting because there's really not like any barbecue places in the area. So I feel as though that is and that's something in May that I am actually planning on ordering barbecue specifically, just because it's like grill season and I just love to try all the different stuff out, so you will be getting that from me as well. So if you were hosting a dinner party tonight ordering from Wonder and you can only pick three dishes from the Wonder roster to impress your guests, what are you picking from the menu.

7:19 And what my hostess had on. So for an app I would do the hot honey bonus wings. They're so delicious, like mixture of sweet and spice and just fulfilling. As an appetizer. For a main, I'd definitely say the Bobby Flay filet mignon and a steak sauce that's gonna like definitely impress guests. The steak sauce is so good. And then dessert from our barbecue Tajus menu, I would say the carrots who Flay, which is a surprise and delight item. You think carrots who flay? That could be odd. It's delicious. Try it, I will. I'm gonna add that one to my list as well. That sounds delicious. Now I'm hungry. I'm thinking may it's good, like good dinner party conversation, like who have a carrots who play? And who would make a Carrots who fly at home?

8:04 No, right, I've never seen that out before, So that's super exciting. So Wonder is bringing celebrity chef experiences to suburban doorsteps, which is super cool. Does this signal kind of the end of traditional suburban chain restaurant or is there room for both? What do you think? Absolutely both. I mean, most people don't want to cook every night or eat out every night. They just want choice and flexibility, right, And so we're really designed to complement local restaurants, not replace them. We do not expect all meals are going to be Wonder meals for a household, and that is honestly a big reason why we added the Grubhub restaurants and merchants to our app too, because we want local restaurants to also be able to reach new customers and grow their their businesses. You know, definitely, definitely both in this scenario.

8:50 And I do really love that about Wonder because you're like, I know when my husband was like looking on it the one night, He's like, wait, I do they He was like, why can I get this from there? I'm like, yeah, you can get literally anything like you want. Yeah, kind of in the area, which is really cool. So on the Running Wine Mom, we talk about trying to juggle it all. No one can jug it all, juggle it all. How does Wonder specifically aim to give moms their time back without the mom guilt of ordering takeout? Yeah, I'll put it in real life context. I guess like, let's just take that family of four I was talking about earlier. So rather than a mom cooking three different meals for the grown ups and the adults and then kid number one and kid number two, we Wonder, for our exclusive restaurants enable multi restaurant ordering, so that allows mom to mix and match dishes from multiple different restaurants and cuisines in a single order, delivered to your home or for pickup, and then everyone at the table is happy they have hot, fresh, delicious food delivered together and are satisfied with whatever you know, cuisine or dish that they wanted. And so now mom has more time to be present with her kids than behind the stove, which is about I personally face every night. And I don't think she can feel guilty about that. Yeah, you know, having the opportunity to be more present but still putting food on the table. And probably kids are happier because they got what they.

10:11 Wanted, right, So so true. And I'm just thinking in my mind, like when I'm making dinner, well, I do love to make dinner, but when I'm making I'm usually like sending the kids outside to go play. But when I order and then I can go outside and play with them, which is super important to rid. That because I do I do. I feel like I feel more guilty when I'm inside cooking than I'm actually ordering out, because I'm like, I just spent time with you guys. You know, agree, agree. It's like the kids are in school all day, you're work. Many people are working all day. You know, you want to have that small amount of time Monday through Friday to be able to have you know, quality time with the kids. Yeah, and so the CEO of Wonder is truly a visionary what's one piece of advice maybe that you've heard from him or he's given to you, that has changed the way you lead your team.

10:59 Yeah, Mark's super inspiring, just an awesome leader, I would say. He frequently says to me and the broader team, you know, almost everything is a two way door, meaning that if something doesn't work, that decision or that thing that you did can be reversible. Oftentimes it's reversible, and so you can try something, observe the outcome, undo, adjust if needed. And why I think that's important is that mentality really enables the team to move quickly. It enables me to allow the team to take bigger risks than maybe I would have originally thought and not be afraid to fail. So I've taken that to heart since joining about over a year ago. I love that so much.

11:40 I'm going to take that for my own advice because so many times I know thinking, you know about what can go wrong and how do we have to fix it? But it's like you can just go back through the door. It's so true. It's like, now that we're talking out loud, I never think about applying that same advice to my personal life, but yeah, it could fit there too, for sure. So Wonder is entering a space that traditionally people have huge customer loyalty already restaurants, take out delivery habits. How do you convince people to change their routines that maybe they've had for years? Yeah, I mean, I think as we talked earlier, like meal time, it's habitual, it's emotional to earn the right to be at the table, Like, we need to offer a value that no one else in the industry can can do. And so really that combination of food developed by chefs, the unmatched variety and selection in one single destination and one experience, we're really giving folks the freedom to eat on their own terms. To do that, Like, we also need to in this category explain what we do in a very functional way. But honestly, more importantly is the emotion. It's like seeing the faces around the dinner table and the stress that we all feel preparing for that. It's like how you show up to break through and convince people is just as important as the product that you're actually offering.

13:05 So true, do. You guys have any like psychology? Maybe people that you talk about going into the way Wonder thinks about customer experience or this is all like marketing team that kind of thinks about it. We do a lot of customer insights, So a lot of what we do, particularly the types of campaigns that we're creating, for example, it's all rooted in core customer insights and like hearing from actual customers qualitatively and then supported by quant on you know what they're looking for and what they want, and so a big, a big part of it for sure is driven by by customer need and I think that helps us resonate when we are coming in into a market new and fresh, when people don't know who we are.

13:49 Yeah, so, what's maybe a failure you had earlier in your career that actually helped you maybe prepare for the chaos of food tech setup. Yeah, Honestly, I think building a team from the ground up, you have to hire people that are smarter and more experienced than you, even in a startup environment, because they're not intimidated. Like they've seen the movie before. They understand how to get something that feels like a massive mountain, like break it down into complex pieces and be able to move and you know, the opportunity to sort of build the team and develop the team from the ground up and really hire smarter people than me. Enables you to move faster and not be intimidated by what's ahead.

14:32 And that's yeah, and that's you know, that says so much about a leader, because some leaders they want to be the top. But it's very important to have people that are you know, they're the ones. The team is a team, you know, and that's super important. All right, Let's do a couple of rapid fire questions. What's your best comfort food on the Wonder app when you've had a grueling, fourteen hour day. Ooh, burger, chee burger. It's gotten so good. We've really adapted and optimized our burger through the years based on customer feedback and we have we're starting to nail it. Yeah. So would you have white, red or rose wine to pair with a Wonder meal and a good yardly sunset?

15:17 Because I don't know if you know, but Wonder is across from one of the best sunset places in the area. I do know that I'm a rose all day. Yeah, it love it, Like no matter that what I'm eating, I could be eating a steak and I'm like rose. Listen, it's a little bit of both red and white. I love it. Yep, yep. If you could have any chef in the world, living or dead, create a menu for Wonder tomorrow. Who are you calling in the garden? Hm? I love it? Love that awesome. So we've talked about logistics, celebrity chefs, and the yardly community, but let's end it here. You're building a tool designed to solve the most basic human need, breaking bread. When the dust settles on this food revolution and people look back on how Wonder has changed the American dinner table, what is the one feeling you want a family using Wonder to have every time they close the app and sit down to eat together.

16:15 That everyone was satisfied, like in their minds, mentally and their bellies, Like what a better Like? I wouldn't want anything other than that. Yeah, well, I love it. I think that's going to be a great place to end it. Thank you so much for helping us take one thing off of our plates so we can actually enjoy what's on them. I really appreciate that. Yeah, thanks for having me, Samantha. As always, thank you so much for spending time with us today on the Running Wine. Mom, don't forget to subscribe leave a review and share this with someone who needs to hear it. You can follow me on Instagram at the Running Wine Mom Underscore in Courtney. Where can the listeners find you? And all the good Wonder things? Oh yeah, I'm on Instagram. Wonder is also on Instagram, so please follow us all of our new content launches so you can hear about new dishes that are launching new brands. And then I'm also on LinkedIn if anyone wants to reach out and connect.

17:05 Awesome and I will link all of that. So thank you so much for joining us today. Remember you were strong, you were capable, you were all amazing. Until next time, keep running, keep sipping, keep embracing the joy of motherhood, tears, and I will be back next Tuesday.