To spotlight different perspectives and give an inside look at Wonder, we’re highlighting leaders from across the organization.
This month, we sat down with John Li, Chief Culinary Officer, to talk about the experiences that sparked his passion for food, the core principles driving his team's menu vision and how robotics and technology elevate kitchen teams.
A quick round to get to know John:
- Favorite Wonder order: Right now, it's Dabba’s Butter Chicken. It changes every time we launch a new cuisine since I tend to fall in love with whatever's newest.
- Book you’ve read recently or podcast you’ve listened to that you’d recommend: I listen to Pivot every week because I like keeping up with what's happening in technology, and the hosts have great banter. As for books, I just finished John of John by Douglas Stuart. It took me a little while to get settled into it because of the Scottish dialect, but I absolutely loved it. And right now I'm reading Loot by Tania James, which is a really compelling historical fiction set during British colonial rule in India.
- Coffee or tea: Coffee is absolutely my thing, and mochas are my weakness because I love chocolate. Roastd in Montclair is my favorite spot.
- Favorite way to unwind after a busy week: When I get home, the dogs immediately run over to say hello, which is honestly the best part of the day. I'll usually put on a podcast while I decompress, then my wife and I will take the dogs for a walk. People probably assume I cook all the time, but by the end of the week, I'm usually too exhausted. I save most of my cooking for Sundays.
- Favorite productivity hack: I'm an early bird. I'll get up early, have my double espresso and I'm wired until about two o'clock. That's when I do all of my best thinking and most productive work. Around 2 p.m., I hit a wall. Sometimes another double espresso rescues me. Sometimes it doesn't. I've learned to schedule my most important work in those morning hours when I know I'm operating at my best.
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When did you first discover your passion for cooking, and how did you end up in the culinary space?
I grew up surrounded by food—it was always the glue that held my family together. On my mom's side, several family members owned restaurants when they immigrated to the U.S., and my dad was an avid gardener. We had an enormous garden, and every weekend I'd be out there helping him grow vegetables that we’d eat. At the time, I hated it, but looking back now, I realize that growing food for our family was his way of showing love.
Those experiences shaped who I am. Like a lot of children of immigrants, I was expected to become either a doctor or an engineer. That's what I went to school for, but I hated it, and I wasn't very good at it. What I did have was a genuine curiosity about food—how flavors worked together, where cuisines came from and the science behind cooking. Eventually, I found a career that allowed me to combine creativity with science.
How do you describe what you and your team are responsible for?
If we aren't creating food that makes someone say, "Wow, that was even better than I expected. I can't wait to come back and order that again," then we haven't done our job. As a team, our vision is clear: craft the best version of every craving and invent new recipes yet to be craved.
Everything we do and every decision we make is filtered through what we call “Our four Cs.” The first is Care—care deeply about the consumer. One of the biggest shifts our chefs learn is to stop cooking for themselves and start cooking for the person they're trying to serve. The second is Commit—our commitment to quality. Every morning, we read through customer detractors to understand exactly where we fell short so we can get better. The third is Craft—constantly improving our craftsmanship and staying curious. And the fourth is Crave—designing recipes that people genuinely want to come back and order again.
We're investing in robotics, automation, and AI across the business. From your perspective, how will those technologies change the day-to-day work of chefs and kitchen teams over the next few years?
Robotics don’t replace chefs— they make chefs better. There are parts of kitchen work that are repetitive, physically demanding or simply not the best use of someone's creativity. If technology can take on those tasks, it allows chefs and team members to spend more time focused on the parts of the experience customers actually notice—presentation, quality, flavor, hospitality and continuous improvement. For me, technology should elevate people, not replace them. That's always been the goal.
How do you challenge your team to keep raising the bar while still creating an environment where people feel comfortable experimenting?
One of the things we talk about all the time is fast prototyping and iterative development. I don't believe you have to wait until something is perfect before putting it in front of people. I'd rather create something quickly, learn from it, improve it and keep moving than spend months trying to perfect an idea in isolation. That requires curiosity. I believe that curiosity is one of the most important traits we can hire for because curious people naturally ask better questions and continue learning.
The other thing is creating a little bit of healthy nervous energy. I never want us to become complacent or feel like we've figured everything out. The restaurant industry changes too quickly for that. We should always be asking ourselves how we can make something just a little bit better tomorrow than it is today.
Food trends and ingredient costs move fast. What's an industry trend, culinary technique or cuisine category your team is currently experimenting with that gets you most excited about the future of our menu?
What excites me most isn't necessarily one specific cuisine—it's the infrastructure we've built. Because of the breadth of our ingredient library and the capabilities we're creating through robotics and automation, we can unlock an almost endless number of menu possibilities.
Historically, restaurants have always been constrained by labor, equipment, kitchen space or ingredients. We're starting to remove many of those constraints. That means we can continue introducing new cuisines, seasonal items, limited-time offerings and entirely new experiences much more quickly than a traditional restaurant could.
If you could have any other job at Wonder for a day, what would it be and why?
I'd like to be in charge of the in-office snacks. I'd stock every shelf with all of my favorites, and I'd probably be way too opinionated about what deserved to make the cut.
More seriously, I'd love to spend a day on the Growth team. As a chef, you're always thinking about creating food people will love. The Growth team gets to understand why customers make the choices they do, how we can connect them with those experiences and what truly resonates with them.