Erewhon: the 20 dollar smoothie that proves what it promises

Erewhon is a natural foods name that started in the macrobiotic movement of the 1960s and is now a small chain of upscale grocery stores in Los Angeles. In June 2022 it launched a smoothie with Hailey Bieber, released alongside her skincare brand Rhode: the Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie, with strawberries, coconut cream and supplements such as collagen and sea moss, sold at about 18 dollars at launch and closer to 20 in later reports. It became one of the most filmed drinks on the internet. Other celebrity and influencer smoothies followed, many for a limited run, at similar prices.

A smoothie at that price draws easy jokes, and they appear every time a new one launches. The interesting part is that the price seems to be part of what people buy. Videos of the smoothie in hand and in the parking lot are a genre of their own. A grocer turned a blended drink into a small status object, and the number on the label is doing a lot of the work.

What is actually being promised

Read through the Promise Ladder, the smoothie sits high. At the second rung, a solution promise, it would be a healthy drink that tastes good, and juice bars across the city keep that promise for much less. At the third rung, a value promise, it would be premium ingredients you cannot easily find elsewhere, which is partly true and still does not explain the queue. The pull comes from the fourth rung, cultural resonance: the drink is a way to belong, for a few minutes, to a specific version of Los Angeles wellness culture, with its skin rituals and its celebrity glow.

At that rung customers use the brand to say who they are. The smoothie is consumed in a minute; the photo of it stays on a profile for years. The product at the bottom of the cup still has to be good, because each rung of the ladder rests on the ones below it, but what is promised is membership.

Price as proof

Every promise needs a proof, something that shows it is real. Membership promises are hard to prove, because belonging is invisible. Price solves part of the problem. A 20 dollar smoothie is a costly signal: the buyer shows they can spend that on a drink, and the store shows that it does not need to compete on price. If Erewhon sold the same cup for 7 dollars, the drink would still taste the same and would prove much less.

This is why the usual pricing advice, that you should charge less to sell more, would hurt this product. For an offer like this the price sits inside the promise. Lower it and you remove the evidence. The store’s design, the curated shelves, the strict ingredient standards and the celebrity name are further proofs pointing the same way, and together they make the price feel consistent.

Where it can break

A promise held up by price and celebrity has two weak points. The first is overreach: the drinks lean on words such as skin, and once a product implies a health effect, someone will ask for the evidence. The second is repetition. Each new collaboration borrows a star’s audience, and if the drinks come too often they start to feel like merchandise, which drains the scarcity that makes a membership feel special. Erewhon’s tight geography, a handful of stores in one city, has so far worked as a natural limit.

The lesson for any company pricing above its category is to ask what the price proves. If the answer is only cost or margin, customers will resist it. If the price confirms a promise they want to be part of, they may share it on their feed for you.

If your team struggles to explain why your price is what it is, train your team to read price as part of the promise before you change the number.