When I have friends visiting Los Angeles and I ask where they’d like to eat, of all the incredible restaurants that the city has to offer — old Hollywood steakhouses, elite sushi counters, taco trucks, bustling Korean barbecue spots — there’s one place that always comes up these days: Erewhon.
Best known as a wonderland of intriguing specialty products with prices that feel like performance art — $24 coconut yogurt, $75 matcha, $18 bottles of camel milk — the health-focused grocery store opened in LA in 1969. But in 2011, it fell under new ownership that rebranded it as an ultra-premium food destination rather than a hippie-food depot, and in 2022, all hell broke loose when Hailey Bieber’s $21 strawberry smoothie debuted and became an instant phenomenon, bringing national, even global attention to the once-lowkey chain. New Erewhon locations opened one after another in Silver Lake, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, West Hollywood, and Studio City, with several more planned for the future. Its reputation is now both aspirational and polarizing; it’s known for its elaborate Tonic Bar beverages (including a never-ending series of celeb collabs), upscale hot bar, high concentration of influencers, and adherence to a particular mushroom-supplement vision of West Coast wellness.
Despite becoming more and more omnipresent, the store seems to show no signs of waning interest from the public. I’m consistently fascinated by how many people in LA can afford to make the high-price-point chain their everyday grocer. A friend once casually told me she spends $2,500 at Erewhon every month. “On what?!” I asked, incredulous. “Oh, you know — food, my supplements,” she replied nonchalantly, as though spending $30,000 annually on groceries as a childless adult was perfectly normal. That exchange should perhaps have been a canary in the coal mine for what came next: the elite membership tiers that Erewhon announced in mid-April.
Erewhon’s long had a membership program that can be joined by anyone for a $200 annual fee, offering 10 percent cash back, exclusive offers and discounts from “leading lifestyle brands” (examples include Lululemon, Cadillac of Beverly Hills, and a variety of five-star hotels), and a free smoothie each month. But it recently unveiled significantly more exclusive membership tiers, including the Premier tier, automatically granted to those who spend $5,000 or more per year at the store, and the Reserve tier, for members who spend upwards of $15,000 annually. These new tiers offer priority checkout, free delivery, “Your Drink Made First” privileges at the smoothie counter, and for Reserve members, a free daily coffee and pastry, butler-like assistance (carrying your groceries to the car; saving you a table in the cafe area), and most intriguingly, access to a “personal in-store concierge.”
When Eater reached out to Erewhon for more details about the new tiers, its reps declined to give much comment but offered something even more illuminating: the opportunity to let us try Reserve membership perks for ourselves. I volunteered immediately. I am largely a Trader Joe’s regular, but I also patronize the three Erewhons within a 15-minute drive of my house when it feels reasonable (aka more often than I like to immediately admit), usually for canned adaptogenic beverages or a visit to the sushi case. The temptation to experience the Erewhon princess lifestyle in the name of journalism was simply too powerful.
When you’re granted Reserve status, your rewards are visible through the Erewhon app. There’s a tally of how much money you’ve spent at the chain since starting or renewing your annual membership, as well as a list of amenities available to you at your tier. A button appears on your home screen that says “Concierge Check-In,” which allows you to request your complimentary refreshments, a personal shopper, curbside service for pickup orders, the ability to chat with a store director, and a table in the dining area. Unsure of what would happen, I selected my nearest location, hustled over with my friend Jamie in tow as an emotional-support human, and smashed that check-in button.
Foolishly, I first attempted to use the concierge service at the Silver Lake Erewhon. Some Erewhon locations read as safe spaces for being as unapologetically entitled as you wish, but the Silver Lake location — perhaps because it sits near roughly 7 billion thrift stores and 4100 Bar, the Union Pool of the West — retains a faint air of anti-snob humility. Even if the customers ultimately retreat to gated Spanish villas in the hills (there are still plenty of celebrities in this Erewhon’s aisles), it’s still considered gauche to openly behave like a rich asshole in Silver Lake, so one major obstacle was my own embarrassment. I typically avoid valeting my car or allowing a hotel bellhop to carry my bags because I find it somewhat mortifying to outsource labor I can easily do myself. When I envisioned an Erewhon employee following me around and retrieving products I was fully capable of finding and reaching on my own, I feared it would seem pompous and self-infantilizing.
Nonetheless, I committed to the bit. Before arriving, I designated my “daily beverage” in the Erewhon app (a double iced espresso with oat milk and a creamtop), selected my complimentary pastry (the chocolate banana bread; it’s good!), and for good measure, I also put in an order for a smoothie (The Madwoman) and eyed the little checkbox ensuring that “my drink was made first” and that I was cutting the line of commoners who don’t spend $15,000 a year at Erewhon.
I half-expected a Jeeves-esque butler to approach me using facial-recognition technology and predict that I might want liposomal sea moss supplements, $55 sour apple creatine gummies, and a shot of Germ Warfare, a tiny bottled wellness tonic that tastes like medieval poison and is a signature Erewhon creation. Instead what happened was (at least at first) … nothing. My smoothie did arrive unusually quickly — just seven minutes instead of the common 20 — but when I asked about my coffee and banana bread, employees looked at me with visible confusion. “You ordered it through a concierge?” one asked cautiously, as though I might be hallucinating. It was via this interaction that I learned I was the first person ever to request concierge assistance at the Silver Lake Erewhon.
After being redirected to a white-tableclothed folding table that appeared to be newly erected in the store’s former adjacent wine shop, where I found myself lingering with growing embarrassment and a strong urge to take my smoothie and run, I was approached by two very lovely Erewhon employees named Justin and Fernando, both of whom were extraordinarily kind and patient as I attempted to understand what, exactly, the concierge service was supposed to do. Was this a personal shopper? Could be! Perhaps a meal-planning consultant? “Not necessarily at the moment,” Justin said, though he quickly added that it was “a good idea.” The concierge service, as it currently exists, appeared less geared toward radically transforming one’s shopping excursion and more toward smoothing out its friction points. Reserve members can bypass checkout lines, coordinate with store leadership to check stock before arriving, request specific employees to assist them, and generally receive what Justin described as “the best guest experience.” The service adapts itself to each customer’s comfort level… or ego level. He was quick to emphasize that the program is still so new they are “figuring out the ebbs and flows of it.”
Elite as it might seem, it turns out there are plenty of Reserve members — even at the Silver Lake store. “You’d be shocked how many people spend enough to get Reserve,” Justin told me. “When I’m ringing people up, I see, ‘You’re a Reserve member, you’re a Reserve member, you’re a Reserve member…’” Justin said. Still, they may be too timid to actually use the concierge service or find it unnecessary. “I think other stores have definitely seen more of it,” he added.
Soon, Jamie and I were being absorbed into the gravitational pull of Erewhon hospitality. We asked for recommendations for snacks that might be enticing, and were directed to Erewhon’s kale chips (honestly, best-in-class), Buffalo-cauliflower-flavored popcorn, and Hot Girl Pickles, which I unfortunately hated the moment I actually tried them at home, but were a nice idea. Justin enthusiastically walked us through the hot bar offerings with the reverence of a Michelin sommelier describing vintage Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The cauliflower was beloved. The sliders were wildly popular. The hot wings, a new addition, had “the perfect sauce ratio.” Samples were offered of “anything we want.” “Our chef is one of the best,” he assured us before passionately recommending the butternut squash tagine, which Jamie sampled and immediately exclaimed was delicious. I thanked Justin and Fernando for their services and apologized for taking up so much of their time, despite their unshakeable positivity and friendliness.
The Studio City and Grove stores seemed more lubricated for concierge activities; at one point, I was scolded by an employee at the Studio City location for reaching for my own iced espresso from the new pick-up fridge, which is manned to protect the preordered goods of members. Over the next week, I returned multiple times to collect my free coffee and banana bread, occasionally adding a smoothie, some pesto kelp noodles, or one of the wildly expensive combo plates I’ve unfortunately become addicted to.
Eventually, I decided that the only way to get the truest version of the concierge service would be to go to the location that must, ostensibly, have the most concierge-ready customers: the Beverly Hills Erewhon. I entered to find a sea of Balenciaga and Alo, as well as a high number of free-range tweens at the smoothie bar. Once again, I checked in to the “concierge” on my app and hovered by the door, waiting for my coffee. Upon realizing that No One Was Coming to Get Me, I asked a friendly-looking employee whether I could use the concierge service. She retrieved a smiley, unflappably chill store representative whom I proceeded to grill about the lives of the Beverly Hills stores’ Reserve members.
How many are there? “Many. Lots. So many,” he said, adding that the pastries now sell out much earlier than before on account of all the Reserve members snagging their free croissants, breads, and muffins. “And then there are the black card members…”
My ears perked. What’s the black card?! “Oh yeah, it’s not online. You get that if you spend, like $25,000 a year.” (When I reached out to inquire about the “black card” membership, Erewhon declined to comment and neither confirmed nor denied its existence.)
The representative told me that only a handful of people had actually requested concierge assistance so far. “But I don’t mind when people ask,” he said. “We’re here anyway. I like talking to people here.” He recommended some ashwagandha beverages, pointed me toward his favorite yogurt flavors, and told me interesting observations from his time working there (apparently the Beverly Hills store has a very active singles scene). He also offered to carry my groceries to my car, which I politely declined.
The most interesting thing that happened at the Beverly Hills store, other than the potential reveal of a mysterious “black card” membership tier, was that while I was checking out at the priority lane that’s exclusively for high-tier members, a woman in gigantic, face-obscuring Moncler sunglasses approached, stood right next to me, and put her items next to mine as though I was invisible. The woman working checkout gently informed the woman that I existed and asked her to please wait a moment until my transaction was complete. Her phone, glowing at full brightness, displayed her Erewhon membership dashboard directly in front of me. I glanced down. She had already spent almost $15,000 at Erewhon this year alone, meaning she was already on track to qualify for Reserve status again next year. Her lifetime savings totaled nearly $3,500, which meant she had likely spent roughly 10 times that amount — about $35,000 — at Erewhon in the past two years. Apparently, she’s far from the only one.
Initially, it was thrilling to receive free drinks and pastries every day, but over time, the novelty began to wane. I realized that the appeal of Erewhon Reserve has less to do with the monetary value of the perks themselves than with the fantasy they represent: ascension into a more exclusive echelon and access to frictionless, flawless consumption, akin to the feeling one has in a high-end airport lounge. The flex isn’t really in the pastry; it’s in the feeling of becoming the sort of person who never has to think about paying for pastries at all. These days, VIP treatment often means less human interaction, not more.
A few days later, I — unrelated to Erewhon, and very related to attending a densely populated karaoke night — came down with a rendition of the flu that I have come to describe as “an evil entity that escaped a bog.” Lying on my sofa for days, immobile and sweaty, I found myself taking advantage of the Reserve-member free delivery to obtain a steady stream of juices, soup, and Germ Warfare. As much as I tried to will myself into a state of self-flagellating guilt for spending an ungodly amount on luxury wellness goods, I was mostly grateful to receive a bit of edible and drinkable respite from every other awful feeling in the world — and to not have to pay delivery fees on it.
Overall, the Reserve membership, while a bit shameful to qualify for in terms of necessary spending, is not some absurdly decadent billionaire service, despite how it may sound. In practice, it’s mostly a gratifying set of convenience perks for Erewhon’s ultra-regulars. But if there’s one thing Erewhon understands better than almost any other modern retailer, it’s that today’s version of luxury is mostly about reducing inconvenience for people already accustomed to abundance.
And perhaps more importantly, the brand understands how to transform grocery shopping into a lifestyle — one with an ever-raising ceiling for extravagance. So… who has the black card?
