Sweetgreen announced Thursday that it’s selling Spyce—the tech business behind its automated Infinite Kitchen—to digital food hall Wonder for $186.4 million.
The price tag comprises $100 million in cash and $86 million in Wonder stock.
The fast casual acquired Spyce four years ago for $70 million. Since then, the brand has opened more than 20 Infinite Kitchen locations across the U.S. The robotic system dispenses ingredients into a bowl along a conveyor belt, and produces hundreds of meals every hour, far surpassing a typical restaurant’s make lines. The technology has led to improved throughput, food quality, accuracy, and consistency, while also giving employees more time with customers and prepping ingredients, according to a news release.
During Q3, stores with Infinite Kitchens saw 700 basis points of labor savings and almost 100 basis points of COGS improvement compared to units of similar age and volume.
Thirty-eight Spyce employees—including cofounders Michael Farid, Kale Rogers, Brady Knight, and Luke Schlueter—will begin working with Wonder. But Sweetgreen isn’t totally parting ways. The transaction involves a supply and license agreement allowing the brand to keep installing Infinite Kitchens in restaurants.
The chain opened eight restaurants in the third quarter, and six of them had an Infinite Kitchen. Next year, Sweetgreen will debut about 15 to 20 net new locations, and approximately half of that will feature the automated system.
“We’re incredibly proud of the work our team and the Spyce team have done to develop, scale, and monetize one of the world’s most advanced robotic food technologies,” Sweetgreen cofound and CEO Jonathan Neman said in a statement. “We remain deeply confident in both the Infinite Kitchen’s future impact and the brilliant team behind it. As we focus on driving long-term, profitable growth, our collaboration with Wonder will enable us to continue expanding and enhancing the Sweetgreen experience for our guests, while unlocking new opportunities for innovation and scale in the years ahead.”
The benefits for Sweetgreen are twofold. First, selling Spyce provides the chain more room to focus on the core restaurant business and put additional resources toward pushing growth and profitability. Also, the fast casual will take advantage of Wonder’s “manufacturing scale, R&D investments and shared innovation, accelerating the refinement and rollout of additional [Infinite Kitchen] units,” Neman said.
Sweetgreen’s same-store sales fell 9.5 percent in Q3, including an 11.7 percent decline in traffic and mix, offset by a 2.2 percent rise in menu prices. Restaurant-level margin was 13.1 percent, compared to 20.1 percent a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA was negative $4.4 million versus positive $6.8 million in Q3 2024.
Wonder, with over 80 locations in the U.S., lets customers order from multiple restaurants on one ticket. Instead of having different stalls like food halls of the past, all of the meals are prepared in one kitchen. The company partners with the likes of Bobby Flay, José Andrés, Nancy Silverton, and Marcus Samuelsson, and restaurants such as Tejas Barbeque and Di Fara Pizza.
Earlier this year, the company purchased Grubhub for $650 million. In 2023, it bought meal kit service Blue Apron for $103 million.
The company is also getting plenty of support from the investment community. In May, Bloomberg reported that Wonder raised another $600 million in funding, lifting its valuation to north of $7 billion.
The purchase of the Infinite Kitchen assists with Wonder’s “evolution from a vertically-integrated, multi-restaurant operator, to a tech-driven food platform owning both robotics and infrastructure,” a news release said.
“The acquisition of Spyce’s Infinite Kitchen gives us leading robotics capabilities that will transform how food is prepared and served,” Marc Lore, founder and CEO of Wonder, said in a statement. “This technology enables us to eventually operate more than 100 restaurants across any cuisine type and price point, all out of a small kitchen, while serving food faster, hotter and with flawless accuracy and consistency. It furthers our mission to make great food more accessible, bringing more restaurants to more people, in more places, at more times of day and at more affordable prices.”
