Erewhon And Its Customers Do Sustainability A Disservice

Clarence Saunders revolutionized the food industry in 1916 with Piggly Wiggly, the first self-service grocery store. Before then, people bought their groceries over-the-counter like today’s pharmacies: they would tell an employee what they wanted and that employee would retrieve their items from the store’s inventory. Piggly Wiggly allowed people to pick what they wanted. Over time, supermarkets developed and the grocery store industry changed, with a growing number of store categories to meet different customer preferences and budgets. Today, you can shop at family-owned grocery stores, boutique chains, food cooperatives, supermarkets, or even hypermarkets.

The evolution of grocery shopping has radically changed, and has gone hand-in-hand with changes to the role of food in people’s everyday lives and routines. Putting food on the table used to take a lot of time and energy. Now, for most of us, it’s a quick and quotidian aspect of our lives that we don’t really think about.

The same could be said for many seemingly straightforward aspects of our lives today, like dishwashing, laundry, yardwork, and other chores. But those ordinary things we do on a day-to-day basis can now be held against our fragile psyches thanks to everyone’s favorite pastime: social media. And, in a world where the seemingly ordinary aspects of our lives seem to carry a bit more weight thanks to any number of global issues from war to famine to climate change to inequality, grocery shopping has certainly entered that picture.

Enter Erewhon–a trendsetting Los Angeles-based grocery store that sits at the nexus of many of the thornier aspects of modern life. As Erewhon sets out to do for food what Tesla has done for cars, it’s worth considering its impact and what it says about sustainability–and the bigger picture–in 2023.

The Disparity Between Erewhon’s Image And Reality

Erewhon’s locations are peppered in some of L.A. wealthiest neighborhoods full of people willing to pay $20 for a smoothie as part of a regular four-figure grocery bill. These are the parts of L.A. that the general public associates with Tinseltown such as Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Santa Monica. Movies and music videos depict these famous areas and the landmarks within them. Tourists flock to these areas and daydream about the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. But anyone who really knows Los Angeles knows that this is just a facade. Yes, there’s plenty of wealth to behold–but there’s also plenty of inequality, and that certainly translates to food. It’s easy for influencers and jetsetters both to find sustainable food and to afford it.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case for many Angelenos who live a more ordinary lifestyle away from the cameras. Los Angeles County is one of the most food insecure counties in the United States. In the 12 months ending in July 2022, 24% of Los Angeles County households experienced food insecurity, which is defined as a disruption in regular eating because of limited money or other resources. That figure had peaked as high as 34% during the initial 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, a time during which Erewhon was a favorite haunt for the glitterati. That’s over three times as high as the national average for food insecurity.

Erewhon proudly promotes itself as one of America’s few grocery stores with a B Corp designation. Its stated mission is to make “healthy, pure, nutrient-rich foods and products available to all.” Take a look at those last three words again: available to all. With such staggering rates of food insecurity in Erewhon’s backyard, perhaps it’s a bit rich for the grocer to claim that its products are available to all. And, underlying the whole concept of a B Corp at its core is sustainability. B Corps are supposed to operate in a way that can be, you know, sustained indefinitely. You might say they have an unspoken responsibility to consciously or subtly promote true sustainability to their customers.

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Erewhon’s Clientele Are Not Exactly Stewards Of Sustainability

In order to maintain that precious brand image, Erewhon needs to make a lot of money. As of 2019, Erewhon generated $2,500 of annual revenue per square foot of floor space. At the time, that was over four times above the national average. Perhaps you can credit some of that exceptional business performance to some special sauce. But when you consider how long grocery stores have been around and how hard it is for one brand to distinguish itself by various attributes, it’s clear that Erewhon’s success comes down to one factor above all else: high prices.

And if you’re wondering how Erewhon markets itself, look no further than the details of its annual membership program, which costs $200. Among other benefits, members get a complimentary monthly beverage at the tonic bar and access to a “lifestyle collective” with discounts on high-ticket items: a stay at a fancy resort in Maui, a portable cold tub, semi-private air travel, and full body vibration training among many others.

In case the target demographic isn’t clear, Erewhon has partnered with celebrities such as Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid, and Kourtney Kardashian to promote Erewhon with branded products. Erewhon’s active social media presence, which often promotes those products, includes an Instagram account with over 250,000 followers full of upscale, aspirational imagery that starkly differs from a typical grocery store experience. And Erewhon vice president of Jason Widener specifically highlighted intentional efforts to create a celeb-friendly environment during COVID-19 lockdowns that encouraged its rich and famous customers to “see and be seen” as they say in Tinseltown.

Those rich and famous customers are ostensibly drawn to Erewhon in large part to maintain some sort of self-image of sustainability. But by and large, wealthy people have a disproportionately high impact on the climate crisis. In Erewhon’s backyard of Los Angeles, before this winter’s above-average precipitation alleviated a longstanding drought, many celebrities were issued official “notices of exceedance” reflecting excess water use above statewide conservation targets. As the Hollywood Reporter detailed:

“According to June 2022 records…Kourtney Kardashian’s 1.86-acre property in Calabasas exceeded its June budget by about 101,000 gallons; a 26-acre Calabasas property deeded in (Kevin) Hart’s name exceeded its budget by 117,000 gallons; an $18-million, 2.26-acre Hidden Hills property owned by (Sylvester) Stallone used 230,000 excess gallons.”

For context, an Olympic-sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons of water. That means some celebrities have used more than a third of an Olympic-sized swimming pool - which is almost 100,000 cubic feet - of water in just one month above what they’re already budgeted to use.

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Erewhon Enables Greenwashing Among The Elites

There’s a good chance that a customer goes to Erewhon in a giant SUV–maybe a G-Class or a Range Rover–that guzzles gas and is far more dangerous than other modes of transportation. That SUV might spend over 95% of its time parked on a driveway leading up to a huge mansion on a far bigger lot than needed. That mansion is almost certainly engulfed by a carefully manicured and irrigated lawn that churns through water, pesticides, and other critical resources in one of the world’s most drought-prone and water-scarce regions. Inside the mansion, you’ll find a cavernous closet full of ludicrously expensive and unsustainably produced clothing that its owner(s) might wear once or a handful of times before never wearing again.

And when this customer needs a fix of external validation that can’t be satiated by a visit to their favorite grocery store, they might buy a first-class ticket (or even charter a private jet) to some faraway destination where they and their friends can gain likes and followers as they post about getting in touch with themselves and the Earth and trying to find some bigger purpose.

Watch an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians or look at the Kardashian clan’s social media presence to see this lifestyle in action.

In the end, Erewhon and its clientele should ask themselves if they are making any sort of authentic effort to be sustainable. The ugly truth is that in far too many cases, brands like Erewhon are simply a veneer that allow wealthy, privileged customers–an exclusive sliver of society–to feel good about themselves as they exacerbate existing inequities and fail to address the inconsistency between the polished image they project and the unsustainable lifestyle they actually maintain.

Whole Foods Can Be The Tesla Alternative

If any big name is positioned to do for food what Tesla did for cars, it’s Whole Foods. Amazon famously acquired Whole Foods in 2017, a move that threatened to violently disrupt the food industry. It was an ideal pairing in the sense that Whole Foods had a leading market position catering to higher income customers while Amazon had grown into a giant company by cutting costs and improving efficiency in various segments, from books to clothes to electronics. None of Whole Foods’ competitors are owned by a company that generates more than $500 billion in annual revenue and has decades of experience applying its logistical acumen to reduce costs in various industries.

Time will tell whether Amazon can make its name in the grocery business. Up until now, the conglomerate has seemingly used Whole Foods primarily as a way to entice more customers to buy Amazon Prime. But Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods was likely motivated by another factor: the opportunity to learn about the grocery business and use that knowledge to launch its own grocery chain.

In that sense, the Whole Foods acquisition might be bearing fruit as new Amazon Fresh stores pop up. These stores are much smaller than a typical Whole Foods location, and the food is more affordable. More to the point, Amazon Fresh stores might allow the company to bring its model of fast delivery, perhaps even same-day, to a corner of online shopping that has long evaded that pressure of grocery shopping. Pre-COVID, about two or three percent of grocery shopping was done online. That figure now hovers above 10% and it might grow.

Amazon’s three different physical store options–big Whole Foods stores, smaller Amazon Fresh stores, and cashierless Amazon Go locations–that are about the size of a typical convenience store and leverage different technologies to automate the customer experience, show that there is a path for Amazon to do for food what Tesla did for cars. The retail behemoth could dominate online grocery shopping, which itself might be the key to giving customers sustainable and affordable food that’s also accessible to them no matter where they live.

Whether or not the automation of grocery stores will align with broader sustainability goals is an open question. Automation can help reduce food waste and stock shelves faster. But if buying food is as easy as clicking a button, will customers buy more food than they need? Furthermore, customers who aren’t as comfortable with a digital experience will be left out. Job loss is another concern; self-service checkout lanes don’t employ nearly as many people as conventional checkout lanes, for example.

When Tesla centered its entire business model on electric vehicles and proved itself as a profitable company, it forced the rest of the industry to adapt. If Amazon makes those sorts of moves in the grocery business, it will almost certainly force the food industry to adapt to a more sustainable future. Pretty soon, your local family-owned grocery stores or boutique chains or even your favorite supermarket might look and feel a whole lot different than it does today.

Consolidation, monopolization, and automation aren’t unique to the grocery store business. These trends are occurring across the global economy, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. You can, however, fight back against these trends by voting with your wallet. Shopping at locally-owned and/or independent stores can make a difference. Buy produce that’s in-season and, if possible, get it from a nearby farm. And when you’re buying food, consider how it’s made and who is profiting from your purchase.