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Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
4 Expensive Grocery Stores Only the Rich Can Afford To Shop At
If it feels like your grocery bill has gone up exponentially over the last few years, that's because it has. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food prices have risen nearly 24% from 2020 to 2024. Check Out: Read Next: To cut back on costs, many Americans are being mindful about where they shop and opting for discount or low-cost grocery chains. Yet for some grocery chains, being out-of-budget for the average shopper is part of their renown. Here's a look at some of the most expensive grocery chains in the U.S. where only the rich can afford to shop. Right now Erewhon is only located in Southern California, but it's gone viral nationwide for its high prices. Hailey Bieber's famous Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie sells for $20, but if you want a really elite strawberry experience, you can purchase a single berry from luxury Japanese fruit vendor Elly Amai for $19. If you want to do a whole grocery haul at Erewhon, you can easily spend $1,000 on your cart, Vanity Fair reported. Learn More: Whole Foods announced that it was reducing prices on 25% of its products in 2024, but it still boasts hefty costs compared to some other grocery stores. For example, a 24-ounce package of organic chicken bone broth costs $12.79 at Whole Foods while a comparable product sells for $8.49 at Sprouts. Like Erewhon, the Gelson's chain of supermarkets is only located in Southern California. Established in 1951, the first location was created to 'provide discerning consumers with an extraordinary grocery shopping experience' — and that shopping experience costs a pretty penny. The chain was rated a 1 out of 5 by Consumer Reports for its price competitiveness, the lowest possible score. A single organic avocado will set you back $3.99 at Gelson's, while you can get a four-pack of organic avocados for $6.39 at Target. The first The Fresh Market store was opened in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1982, with the goal of bringing a European-style food market to America. Today, the grocery chain has 166 locations in 22 states. It was rated a 1 out of 5 by Consumer Reports for its price competitiveness. The store does seem to sell its products at a premium — 64 ounces of Organic Valley Omega-3 DHA, Whole Organic Milk sells for $7.69 at The Fresh Market, while other chains sell the same product for $6.89. More From GOBankingRates 5 Types of Vehicles Retirees Should Stay Away From Buying How Far $750K Plus Social Security Goes in Retirement in Every US Region 4 Things You Should Do if You Want To Retire Early 12 SUVs With the Most Reliable Engines Sources Mashed, '14 Most Expensive Grocery Chains In The US' U.S. Department of Agriculture, 'U.S. food prices rose by 23.6 percent from 2020 to 2024' Vanity Fair, 'How Erewhon Became Everyone's Favorite Grocery Store Hot Spot' Fortune, 'Whole Foods is cutting prices and ditching its 'Whole Paycheck' aura to appeal to inflation-weary shoppers' Consumer Reports, 'Grocery Store & Supermarket ratings' This article originally appeared on 4 Expensive Grocery Stores Only the Rich Can Afford To Shop At Sign in to access your portfolio
Fox News
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Single strawberry sells for $19.99 at grocery store: 'Still cheaper than eggs'
An organic grocery store on the West Coast is known for selling expensive food items. Recently, the Los Angeles-area grocery chain, Erewhon, went viral for its newest pricey offering: a single strawberry for $19.99. Each Elly Amai strawberry is shipped from Kyoto, Japan, and is handpicked to have the "perfect" appearance before it's packaged in its own case. Erewhon confirmed with Fox News Digital that the strawberries are picked in "their prime" and then hit store shelves within 24 to 48 hours, according to a spokesperson. "These strawberries are organic, which account for .002% of Japan's production," the spokesperson said. They are "not sour or tart," since high-quality strawberries in Japan are "preferred to not have any sour or tart flavors." Californians took to TikTok to document their experience trying the single-serving snack, including an Orange County food influencer and content creator known as "Lily" (@ocfeed). "I couldn't stop thinking about how many hours of my life I'd have to work to eat this singular strawberry, but hey, look how cute it is," Lily said in her video. Each strawberry is cultivated in Kyoto for seven years to "have perfect symmetry, brilliant color and exceptional size," Lily said. Lily described the smell of the strawberry as "incredibly fragrant" before confirming it tasted good, too. "It is, in fact, an exceptional strawberry, and I'd go so far as to say it's perfect," she said. "Like, put it in the dictionary as the definition." She added, "It's particularly sweet and floral, peak ripeness, everything." Speaking with Fox News Digital, Lily said she understands it's a "ridiculous price to pay, but once for the experience, it's fun!" Influencer Lauren Godwin, who has nearly 23 million followers on TikTok (@laurengodwin), also posted about her experience of trying the strawberry. "Not going to lie," she said. "1,000 out of 10." TikTok users had more to say about the price of one strawberry. "Good lord. It's a friggin' strawberry," @thebutternutty commented beneath Lily's video. "I'll get one locally and fresh picked in season for pennies." "Still cheaper than eggs," @alfieee467 chimed in. TikToker @aatorak wrote, "I'm convinced this is a social experiment." Underneath Godwin's video, others also considered the buy a "social experiment," slamming consumers for giving into the hype. "I would literally rather book a flight to Japan and pick it myself," user Emma G wrote. Erewhon confirmed that the cost of the strawberry is the same price as it would be in Japan – or even less. "The Japanese Yen is at an all-time low, and we're getting lower rates for introducing new markets to farmers," the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "The air freight costs just as much as the fruits. Elly Amai is flying them in due to the short length of peak ripeness. Strawberry season is only from December to June." For the best eating experience, Erewhon suggests not touching the strawberry with your bare hands unless you plan to eat it within three to four hours. "Strawberries are very fragile and need to be handled with care," the spokesperson said. "It's best to let them breathe at room temp for 15 to 30 minutes to bring out the aroma and sweetness."
The Guardian
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
I tried the viral $20 strawberry. It tasted like the end of the American empire
In Los Angeles, a strawberry – yes, one individual berry – is selling for $19.99. The berries are flown in from Japan, and Erewhon, a luxury grocery store, claims they're so popular it's hard to keep them in stock. The $20 strawberry, which has been labeled 'dystopian' and a 'social experiment', went viral after a TikTok influencer filmed herself eating it and saying 'wow'. That video – produced by an influencer who happens to be part of the family that owns Erewhon– quickly sparked a slew of copycats: from earnest reviews to parodies and pranks and even an on-camera taste test by ABC news anchors. In one TikTok video, a comedian in a blond wig eats the strawberry while crooning to the 'poors' watching his video: 'This is something you could never afford … I'm going to taste it for you since you never will.' The strawberry – absurdly priced, with what must be a staggering individual carbon footprint – seemed like an example of elite decadence so extreme that it could only be the product of an empire in decline. When I emailed one prominent scholar of the Roman empire about the strawberry, he referenced Petronius' Satyricon, in which the nouveau-riche Trimalchio serves his Roman guests appetizers arranged in the form of zodiac signs, dormice rolled in poppyseeds and a roast boar filled with live birds. My job as a journalist in this moment was clear: I needed to taste the strawberry myself, and I needed to ask more scholars if the $20 strawberry was a sign of the approaching fall of the American empire. High-end fruit has long been popular in Japan, where prized melons regularly cost hundreds of dollars and occasionally sell for tens of thousands. In 2016, a single bunch of Ruby Roman grapes sold for more than a million yen – about £270 a grape. Erewhon, the only grocery store to have inspired both a Louis Vuitton perfume and a Balenciaga collection, is not the first to introduce this luxury fruit trend to Americans. Oishii, a company that grows Japanese strawberries in the US, made headlines six years ago for selling a $50 box of strawberries that became trendy with American chefs, who liked to use them as the perfect minimalist end to an ornate omakase meal. The high-end fruit company Elly Amai said in a statement that its $20 berries 'require a lot of skill and special techniques to grow' and, unlike berries in the US, 'are meticulously monitored for quality and taste'. 'The strawberries that don't meet qualifications are not harvested by the farmers,' Elly Amai said, describing at least 'two checkpoints' for the perfection of each berry, one in Japan by the farmer, and one when the berries arrive in the US. Other companies have also stepped up to ship luxury fruit from Japan directly to American consumers. Ikigai Fruits, which launched in 2023, sells 'pearl white' Japanese strawberries that cost $128 a box, and extra-large 'Bijinhime' strawberries that cost $258. Takeru Saito, a sales assistant at Ikigai Fruits, said the company had been founded in part to provide a boost to Japanese farmers, who have struggled to attract young people interested in taking over jobs that are labor-intensive and comparatively poorly paid. 'The number of farmers is declining – and it's an ageing population as well,' Saito said. A government report last year found that 80% of Japanese farmers were over age 60. By selling very-high-quality fruit to an international market, Saito said, 'more farmers can make money'. In Japan, Saito said, the appeal of luxury fruit is rooted in tradition: fancy produce is a traditional gift for weddings, job promotions and other ceremonial occasions. In the United States, the expensive fruits are more of a novelty. In a statement, Erewhon said that its $20 Elly Amai strawberries 'are picked at their prime' in Japan and 'hit the shelves at Erewhon within 28 to 48 hours', which it described as 'faster than broccoli growing in California getting to markets in New York'. Flying the berries to Los Angeles quickly enough to preserve their freshness 'costs just as much as the fruits', the grocery store said. It did not immediately respond to a question about the strawberries' carbon footprint. California farmers, who produce 90% of strawberries grown in the US, were selling strawberries in early March for about 10 to 14 cents each, according to estimates based on data from the California Strawberry Commission. That makes Erewhon strawberries flown in from Japan as much as 200 times as expensive as a local berry. Could they be 200 times as delicious? It took me several days of calling Erewhon store locations to finally find one with the strawberry in stock. On a Thursday, an employee told me the berries might arrive in the early afternoon. I rushed to the store at 1 pm, and was rewarded with the sight of nearly 50 single berries arrayed on a shelf. Each strawberry rested on an individual pedestal, which resembles a small domed jewel case, or, as one TikToker put it, a stage. An explanatory plaque from Elly Amai promised 'an explosion of flavor that elevates the ordinary strawberry to extraordinary heights'. I found myself overwhelmed by the task of choosing one strawberry from the crowded shelf. Given the price tag, it felt like less a supermarket purchase than the start of a relationship. Which of these eerily perfect berries was the right one to bring into my life? The Onion had just published a satirical headline about Erewhon claiming the $19 strawberry was 'designed to be split', but I took that idea seriously. As a naturally frugal person forced to consume Erewhon products for my job, I decided the $20 strawberry had to be divided between at least three people. I let the berry reach room temperature, as Elly Amai recommended, and then carefully transported it to a friend's house, along with a control group of cheap supermarket strawberries that cost $4.99 for a box of 16. Examined close up, the contrast between the berries was startling. The $20 strawberry wasn't any bigger than the cheap strawberries, but it looked very different. Its color was a uniform light red, and its skin was glossy. Each pore around each of its seeds looked smooth and firm, as if it had just emerged from a high-end fruit spa. I had lived in Los Angeles long enough to know that such beauty is not natural: this berry looked as if it had a personal trainer, a facialist and a team of dedicated stylists. The ordinary strawberry, in contrast, looked blotchy, its skin uneven and some of its pores swollen. Its leaves were long and disheveled. We cut the $20 strawberry into eight slices, like a miniature cake. I popped one slice into my mouth. It was sweet, firm, neither too crunchy nor overripe. 'This is the platonic strawberry,' I admitted. We tried the ordinary strawberry next, but we might not have bothered: despite its deep red color, it tasted crisp and unripe, without much strawberry essence. We went back to eating our minuscule slivers of luxury strawberry, and riffing to each other on how to describe the taste. 'It's kind of like a dog breed – it's been cultivated to be perfect over hundreds of generations,' my friend said. The more we ate, the more unsettled we felt: there was something uncanny about the flavor of the $20 strawberry, as if the process of perfecting a natural thing had been pushed past the point of human enjoyment. As my friend noted, it was impossible to taste this perfect strawberry without thinking about the hundreds or thousands of imperfect strawberries that had been discarded along the way. In the past, we had usually eaten at least a handful of strawberries at a time, and the variations in flavor were part of the experience: one berry was more ripe, one less ripe, one a little squishy, one very sweet. As children, the surprise of each berry was mesmerizing, and even as adults it carried some nostalgic pleasure. It felt a little sad, in the end, to eat just one strawberry and to know that each bite would be exactly and perfectly the same. The experience, my friend said, felt more like sniffing a Le Labo perfume than eating a piece of fruit. Now that I had tasted the $20 strawberry, I still need to understand whether it was, in fact, a sign of cultural decadence so extreme that it might lead to an empire's fall. I emailed Michael Kulikowski, a Penn State University classics professor. He had good news: the reason many people associated the fall of the Roman empire with cultural decadence, he said, was that most people knew only a few things about Rome, including that it was very decadent, and that it fell. In fact, he said, Rome's most famously decadent periods came '300 years earlier' than the fall of the western Roman empire, at a time of imperial power, not imperial decline. Bryan Ward-Perkins, an Oxford historian and the author of The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, made a similar point: the Satyricon, 'the great literary testimony to Roman extravagant decadence', was written in the first century AD, 'when things were going very well'. Unfortunately, Kulikowski said, there were other signs that the American empire might be nearing its fall. Kulikowski argues that one reason the western Roman empire fell in 476, while the Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, survived, was because the '1%' of the western Roman empire grew so powerful that they did not need a state to function. 'They can withhold their taxes. When push comes to shove, they can raise their own private armies,' he said. In the eastern Roman empire, in contrast, the aristocracy was weaker, and they still found value in supporting the bureaucracy of the state. This was bad news for the current American empire: 'We have reached a very late Roman western state where the 1% does not need the state to survive,' Kulikowski said. 'If the US government stops being able to do much of anything, it stops to matter to them. That's a real parallel.' The $20 strawberry did not concern him, but the coming effects of Trump's tariffs did: 'A better sign of the fall of the American empire will be when [in a week or two] a pint of strawberries is $12 at the mid-market supermarket,' Kulikowski told me. As someone who does not think about the Roman empire very often, I found this analysis upsetting. I could only hope that future historians would get it right: whatever came next in the wreckage of empire, the $20 strawberry was not to blame.
USA Today
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Erewhon's viral $19 strawberry has the internet talking: Is the berry worth the price tag?
Erewhon's viral $19 strawberry has the internet talking: Is the berry worth the price tag? Reviews of the famous fruit product are mixed, with some saying it's the best strawberry they've ever tasted and others calling its mere existence dystopian Show Caption Hide Caption Erewhon's pricey strawberry goes viral Los Angeles grocery store Erewhon added a pricey single piece of fruit to their shelves, a $19 strawberry from the brand Elly Amai. One organic strawberry's unique packaging and price tag have piqued the internet's interest. It all started when Alyssa Antoci, whose family owns Erewhon, did a taste test of the $19 Elly Amai organic strawberry on TikTok in late February. "This is a $19 strawberry from Erewhon so we're gonna eat it," Antoci says in the video. "It's from Kyoto in Japan and apparently, it's like, the best-tasting strawberry in the entire world." The 17-year-old then removes the strawberry from its packaging and takes a big bite, telling viewers she could get behind the hype. "That's the best strawberry. That's crazy. That is the best strawberry I have ever had − in my life," Antoci says. "It's actually the best strawberry I've ever had and it's from Japan, I need to eat every last bit of it." Antoci's video has garnered over 17 million views and thousands of comments since it was first posted, even migrating off TikTok to other social media platforms, where users and A-listers alike are sharing their own reviews and thoughts on the $19 Erewhon strawberry. Even "Confident' singer Demi Lovato has tried the viral red berry. In a follow-up video, Antoci said the $19 Erewhon strawberry tastes like a strawberry "but times a thousand," like candy. Here's how the Internet feels about the $19 Erewhon strawberry. Why is the Erewhon strawberry $19? The famed red berry is grown in Tochigi Prefecture, nicknamed the Strawberry Kingdom, from December to June, Japanese supplier Elly Amai and Erewhon told Today. The strawberries, like Elly Amai's melons, are considered luxurious because they are sourced from "Japan's most celebrated farms, ensuring each piece embodies the meticulous care and craftsmanship of generations of Japanese farmers." Erewhon told Today that the viral strawberry was made available for purchase at an Erewhon store in Beverly Hills in early February and will be available at Erewhon's other Southern California locations in Santa Monica and Pasadena. "These strawberries have been flying off the shelves as soon as they arrive," Erewhon said in a Monday statement. "The response has been incredible, and we're struggling to keep them in stock!" The fruit's price is equivalent or less than what you would pay for the strawberry in Japan, Erewhon said. 'If you think logistics-wise, getting it here and being able to try it fresh from Japan, it's very understandable why the price is what it is,' an Elly Amai representative shared with TODAY. 'Don't hate on it until you try it.' Elly Ami immediately responded to USA TODAY's request for comment on Monday afternoon. Internet mocks, calls $19 Erewhon strawberry 'dystopian' No one's ecstatic about the price of the strawberry, but some have been tempted to try the fruit since it went viral. Others think Antoci's review and the virality of the strawberry is a little ridiculous and "dystopian," with some going as far as comparing it to "The Hunger Games" book and movie. "Watching from District 12," one user wrote. Another wrote: "If I dropped $20 on a strawberry, I'd probably convince myself it was the best one I've ever tasted too." Here's a few reactions, from TikTok to X, about the $19 Erewhon strawberry.
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Erewhon's viral $19 strawberry has the internet talking: Is the berry worth the price tag?
One organic strawberry's unique packaging and price tag have piqued the internet's interest. It all started when Alyssa Antoci, whose family owns Erewhon, did a taste test of the $19 Elly Amai organic strawberry on TikTok in late February. "This is a $19 strawberry from Erewhon so we're gonna eat it," Antoci says in the video. "It's from Kyoto in Japan and apparently, it's like, the best-tasting strawberry in the entire world." The 17-year-old then removes the strawberry from its packaging and takes a big bite, telling viewers she could get behind the hype. "That's the best strawberry. That's crazy. That is the best strawberry I have ever had − in my life," Antoci says. "It's actually the best strawberry I've ever had and it's from Japan, I need to eat every last bit of it." Antoci's video has garnered over 17 million views and thousands of comments since it was first posted, even migrating off TikTok to other social media platforms, where users and A-listers alike are sharing their own reviews and thoughts on the $19 Erewhon strawberry. Even "Confident' singer Demi Lovato has tried the viral red berry. In a follow-up video, Antoci said the $19 Erewhon strawberry tastes like a strawberry "but times a thousand," like candy. Here's how the Internet feels about the $19 Erewhon strawberry. The famed red berry is grown in Tochigi Prefecture, nicknamed the Strawberry Kingdom, from December to June, Japanese supplier Elly Amai and Erewhon told Today. The strawberries, like Elly Amai's melons, are considered luxurious because they are sourced from "Japan's most celebrated farms, ensuring each piece embodies the meticulous care and craftsmanship of generations of Japanese farmers." Erewhon told Today that the viral strawberry was made available for purchase at an Erewhon store in Beverly Hills in early February and will be available at Erewhon's other Southern California locations in Santa Monica and Pasadena. "These strawberries have been flying off the shelves as soon as they arrive," Erewhon said in a Monday statement. "The response has been incredible, and we're struggling to keep them in stock!" The fruit's price is equivalent or less than what you would pay for the strawberry in Japan, Erewhon said. 'If you think logistics-wise, getting it here and being able to try it fresh from Japan, it's very understandable why the price is what it is,' an Elly Amai representative shared with TODAY. 'Don't hate on it until you try it.' Elly Ami immediately responded to USA TODAY's request for comment on Monday afternoon. No one's ecstatic about the price of the strawberry, but some have been tempted to try the fruit since it went viral. Others think Antoci's review and the virality of the strawberry is a little ridiculous and "dystopian," with some going as far as comparing it to "The Hunger Games" book and movie. "Watching from District 12," one user wrote. Another wrote: "If I dropped $20 on a strawberry, I'd probably convince myself it was the best one I've ever tasted too." Here's a few reactions, from TikTok to X, about the $19 Erewhon strawberry. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Favorite social experiment:' Internet reacts to $19 Erewhon strawberry
