I can't stop thinking about these two Erewhon shoppers from The Cut.

"It’ll always be in my budget, even though I’m a starving artist."

Image via Instagram.

I retired from going to Whole Foods in 2019. It’s not because I got tired of over-paying for staple pantry items or that they under-poured a glass of cab at their flagship location. Obviously they do both of those things and none of us bat an eye.

Instead, I said farewell due to the atrocious parking situation. A parking garage? To go to a grocery store? What is this, Gotham City? When I go to a grocery store, I like to park my car and walk a half-mile to the entrance like a normal person. But if I have to get on an elevator, escalator, or airport-style people-mover then it’s pretty much a dealbreaker at this point.

These days, I do curbside pick-up. It gets you out of the house but doesn’t require you to bareknuckle box for the last finally-ripe organic avocado. I now re-purpose that pent up anger into road rage en route to pick up my groceries, but that’s neither here nor there.

But even as yuppie as the grocery stores can trend here in the LA of the Southwest (Austin, Texas), we still pale in comparison to the Tier 1A Yuppie Scum Grocery Store that is Los Angeles’s own Erewhon. If you’re not familiar with Erewhon, The Daily Mail recently said this about it: “The luxury grocery store beloved by Hollywood A-listers, where a bottle of WATER will set you back $26 and Kourtney Kardashian's smoothies cost as much as $22.”

Essentially, Erewhon is kind of like if you gave ayahuasca to a personified version of Whole Foods, and then gave that same Whole Foods a trust fund as it reintroduced itself to society.

Recently, The Cut wrote an article titled Meet the People Working 3 Jobs to Afford Erewhon. And for obvious reasons that had nothing to do with the tagline — “Even though I’m a starving artist, it’s become my identity.” — I simply had to hate-click it. And once I did, it became extremely evident that I needed to break pieces of it down like it’s 2015 and I still blogged daily.

I also pre-gamed this piece by giving some knee-jerk reactions to it on this week’s Monday episode of Circling Back, which you can listen to on Spotify here:

As always, you can read it in full here (it’s paywalled unless you’re in an incognito window) or you can simply read the worst parts below. Original text in block quotes.

Spencer, 23, makes roughly $40,000 annually as a freelance voice-over artist, content creator for a hummus company, and college-essay tutor — forcing her to share a carpeted, un-air-conditioned apartment in Brentwood with a roommate — yet she is not willing to give up one luxury: Erewhon. Each week, she spends between $50 and $75 (though sometimes, she admits, as much as $200) at the cult high-end health-food store in Los Angeles, which has also become a social scene attracting TikTok wellness influencers, health nuts, and, on one occasion, a dominatrix. Her favorite items include French Squirrel’s Bisous, a “nutritious version” of puppy chow ($9); a keto brownie that is “literally five bites” ($10); and a package of three peanut-butter-filled dates ($8) that she acknowledges could probably be DIY’ed for less money. “I’ve made jokes about how no matter what, it’ll always be in my budget, even though I’m a starving artist,” she says. “It’s become my identity.”

I need to know which hummus company Spencer works for so I can make sure to pass over it the next time I’m shopping at Central Market (alternatively titled Peasants-R-Us when compared to Erewhon). If you’re a Sabra employee who has to take a stray because of Spencer’s actions here, I’m sorry.

Side Note: I know carpet isn’t totally en vogue on new builds but I feel like that was an unnecessary qualifier for her apartment? Like maybe she likes how it feels between her toes. I’m not intentionally trying to support someone who works three jobs just to go to a status-driven grocery store but here we are.

Puppy chow? Keto brownies? Peanut butter filled dates? Uh, h’yeah, Spencer, you can make all these snacks at home for about a fraction of the price. I’d say you should freeze a couple of those keto brownies and thaw them out next week, but I’m scared you’re more likely to be rifling through the garbage cans outside for the leftovers of the one Gwyneth Paltrow threw out this morning.

Spencer is an Erewhon addict. She spends most of her disposable income — and then some — on elevated groceries. She’s joined by others who shell out thousands of dollars per year on jars of chicken noodle soup and regularly fork over $20 for a single smoothie.

Let’s play a game called “They’re a 10 but they’re in crippling credit card debt because they’re obsessed with pre-made food from Erewhon.”

On a recent morning, Spencer leans against the smoothie bar at Erewhon Market and orders the smoothie of the month — Thorne’s Super Greens Coconut Shaker — which retails at $13. “Have you tried it?” she asks the barista. The barista shrugs. “It was okay. It’s not the best thing we’ve ever launched.” Spencer nods intently. “One of my friends said that it was horrible.” At least it’s free, she acknowledges. “Well, not technically free since I pay for a membership.” (Spencer, who pays $200 per year for a membership, gets one free monthly smoothie.)

Hand up, every single bit of food named in this column has actually sounded phenomenal so far. But that’s mainly because I’m not physically handing over my AmEx to pay for it.

But what I love here is how apathetic and New York-feeling the smoothie baristas are. “It was okay. It’s not the best thing we’ve ever launched.” It’s like a Cool Teen when they’re out to dinner with their parents and they order the most expensive thing on the menu because they don’t know any better.

“It’s fine, Mom,” he says. “Now stop being so annoying.”

It’s an uncharacteristically light Erewhon trip for Spencer, also an aspiring wellness content creator, who has come to collect her smoothie as a post-yoga reward. She weaves through the narrow aisles jam-packed with colorful, if not somewhat perplexing, products like $40 Neptune Blue sea-moss gel and $11 pea-flower and turmeric bread. She leads me to the produce section and points to a 16-ounce container of crimson strawberries, which cost $24. “I would never buy that,” Spencer insists. “Actually, I used to buy cut fruit sometimes. That was when I was dating my ex-boyfriend and he would buy salmon for his dog here.”

Neptune blue sea moss? Pea flowers? Turmeric bread? I feel like I’m replenishing my rations in a Goop-designed fantasy video game for PS5.

And I’m not sure what’s more egregious here: the laziness of buying pre-cut fruit (even people who buy pre-cut fruit will admit they’re lazy) or her ex-boyfriend copping that Verlasso for his retriever. I need to know how that relationship ended.

Despite its current reputation, Erewhon came from humble beginnings. Named for Samuel Butler’s satirical utopia in Erewhon, the store started in Boston, specializing in macrobiotic-rich foods before making its way out west in 1968. In 2011, Tony and Josephine Antoci bought Erewhon, kick-starting the once-niche vendor’s transformation from hippie health-food store to a luxury-wellness behemoth. The store became a fixture on social media, earning a regular place on DeuxMoi’s Sunday Spotted, and has capitalized on the hype, partnering with Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid, and Kourtney Kardashian to craft signature smoothies priced just under $20 and boasting ingredients like mesquite, chlorella, spirulina, and vanilla collagen.

I know what you’re thinking: “Will, if you lived in LA, there’s a 100% chance you’d be at Erewhon every single Sunday buying healthy food trying to undo all the Canadian beers you drank all weekend.” To those critics, I’d like to acknowledge how correct you are.

Deux Moi? Hailey? Bella? Kourtney? Can you imagine how good it would be for the Sunday Scaries Instagram if I was in the background of their paparazzi photos drinking a $22 smoothie or chugging down a 68-ounce Voss in a bunch of athleisure?

I’m not proud of the person I’ve become but at least I’m aware of it.

Erewhon’s pronounced dating culture also lends to its cachet. “It’s like Tinder for groceries,” says Adam Shapiro, 65, who goes there for soup. “I have friends in their 30s and they like it because it’s a pickup place for young, good-looking, fit people who want to hook up.” Spencer concurs. “Every time I go, I make it a point to look really cute because it’s obviously a dream to meet my future husband while at Erewhon.” For her, it’s a love language. “There’s this boy in San Francisco and he texted me yesterday and said, ‘Can you ship me the peanut butter? I’ll literally pay you,’” she says, gesturing to the wall of $30 nut butters before us. “I’m seeing someone else, so I don’t think I can do that. I think that’s emotionally cheating.”

How low is the bar here, people? We’re really going full-Swifty here and Mastermind’ing meet-cutes at Erewhon? That’s what we’re fucking doing here? I swear to all that is holy, if Spencer is actually simping hard enough to ship this dude his desired nut butters, I may need to pay him a visit so he stops texting her about it. This is a classic example of breadcrumbing (with turmeric bread, of course).

Luba Kaplanskaya lives with her parents and works part-time jobs in marketing, at a law firm, and as a nanny. However, the 25-year-old, who reports an income of roughly $50,000, believes life is about luxury and that Erewhon allows you to feel luxurious no matter your income. “I love to take Erewhon when I’m flying, ’cause I freakin’ fly economy, I’m not private-jetting anywhere,” she says. “To just be in a comfortable sweat suit or a Lulu ’fit and then have Erewhon? I feel like I’m worth a billion dollars.” Kaplanskaya used to go to Erewhon more frequently while she was babysitting. “I get reimbursed for anything that I buy during my time with the kids, so I would give her one sip of the $16 smoothie and charge them for it,” she says. “They actually told me to stop shopping at Erewhon because it was too expensive.”

They need to put this paragraph as the foreword in every economics book on every college campus in America. Truly has it all:

• False feelings of luxury that actually make you less luxurious overall.

• Stunting on people in economy with a plastic container of curry chicken salad and the “Erewhon” logo on it.

• Nannies bleeding their bosses dry by way of overpriced smoothies.

Don’t get me wrong, I probably fell in love with a girl at some point in my life who is exactly like our girl Luba here. Hell, I might’ve even married one. Unfortunately, when it comes to my writing, it’s very much a “do as I say, not as I do” vibe around these parts.

Back at the Erewhon smoothie counter, a muddy-green concoction awaits Spencer. She gingerly takes a sip of her drink. Her face contorts in disgust. “That’s literally heinous,” she says, retching. “It’s like a combination of dirt water and the grass on your shoes.” She offers me a sip; it tastes like kale juice poured into a chalky mixture of vitamins and topped off with a few drops of peppermint oil. “Knowing me, I’m gonna go to my car and make a TikTok reviewing it,” she says. As I prepare to drive off, I see Spencer stationed in her car, retrying her smoothie for the camera. She repeats the same process as before, coughing and fanning her face. “Not to be dramatic, but this was horrible,” she reports to her followers.

“Not to be dramatic, but this was horrible” could apply to so many things here that I’m actually starting to get a headache going through them. Now if only there were a place in Austin where I could go overpay for some magnesium, B-complex vitamins, and essential oils to cure it.

Actually, there definitely is. Dammit.

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