Erewhon: The Curation Economy

The $20 Smoothie That Broke the Internet

In June 2022, a pink smoothie appeared on a menu in Los Angeles.

The Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie cost $20. It contained organic strawberries, almond milk, dates, avocado, sea moss gel, hyaluronic acid drops, and vanilla collagen peptides. The celebrity attached to it—Hailey Bieber—posted about it on Instagram.[1]

Within weeks, lines stretched out the door. TikTok exploded with 450 million views of #Erewhon content. Young women flew in from San Francisco just to photograph themselves holding the pink cup outside the Beverly Hills location.[2]

Erewhon was selling 40,000 of these smoothies every month. At $20 each, that's $800,000 monthly from a single menu item—with zero advertising spend.[3]

But here's what most people miss: the smoothie wasn't a marketing stunt. It was the logical output of a system that had been deliberately designed over a decade earlier.

This is the story of how a bankrupt Boston health food store became the most profitable grocery chain in America—not by selling more products, but by selling something far more valuable: the elimination of doubt.

Before: The Cognitive Load of Clean Eating

In April 2011, Tony and Josephine Antoci walked into a gloomy store on Beverly Boulevard.

Erewhon had been limping along for decades. Founded in 1966 by Japanese immigrants Michio and Aveline Kushi in a 10-by-14-foot Boston basement, the original store was America's first natural foods market. The Kushis believed in macrobiotics—the idea that food shapes consciousness, that what we eat determines who we become.[4]

They named their store after Samuel Butler's 1872 satirical novel Erewhon—an anagram for "nowhere"—which imagined a society where illness was a punishable crime and individuals bore complete responsibility for their own health.[5] It was philosophy disguised as commerce.

The LA location opened in 1969. Bankruptcy followed in 1979. Employee Tom DeSilva bought what remained. When DeSilva died, his widow inherited a single store averaging $180,000 in weekly sales—respectable, but nothing special.[6]

Tony Antoci had just sold his food distribution company to Sysco. He was looking for what he called a "swan song." He found a diamond in the rough.

"Not to say anything negative about hairdressers," Tony later said of the previous owner, "but a hairdresser does not understand the retail grocery business."[7]

The deal closed April 1, 2011. The Antocis owned Erewhon.

What they bought wasn't just inventory and real estate. They bought a problem that most people didn't know they had.

By 2011, "healthy eating" had become exhausting. Every grocery store carried products labeled "natural" and "organic"—terms with increasingly diluted meaning. Ingredient lists had grown longer and more cryptic. Even educated consumers faced paralysis: Is canola oil healthy or poison? What about "natural flavors"? Why does this granola bar contain maltodextrin?

The health-conscious shopper had two choices: spend hours researching every product, or give up and hope for the best. Neither option felt good.

Whole Foods had expanded aggressively, but in doing so had compromised on standards. When Amazon acquired them in 2017, the quality slide accelerated. As one Erewhon employee would later observe: "Whole Foods is copying us now."

The problem wasn't access to healthy food. The problem was the cognitive load required to verify it.

The Insight: Curation as Product

Tony ran the business operations. Josephine transformed the shelves.

Her approach was radically simple: if it was on the shelf, it had to be unquestionably good. No exceptions. No compromises. No fine print.

Josephine personally reviewed every product that wanted shelf space at Erewhon. Not the category managers. Not a committee. Her.[8]

The standards were uncompromising: no processed sugar, no bleached flour, no canola oil, no yeast extracts, no artificial colors or flavors, no preservatives, no refined ingredients, no MSG, no corn syrup. Products had to be organic, ethically sourced, non-GMO. Even the natural flavors had to have their sources disclosed and approved.[9]

Thousands of brands applied every year. Most were rejected.

"You don't really have to read the ingredients," Josephine explained. "We do all that for you."

That single sentence was the entire value proposition.

Erewhon wasn't selling groceries. They were selling the end of ingredient-list anxiety. The store's slogan made the promise explicit: "If it's here, it's good for you."[10]

This was curation elevated to philosophy. In a world drowning in choices, Erewhon offered radical simplicity: trust us, and stop worrying.

The Kushis would have recognized the approach. Butler's fictional Erewhon was a society where health was personal responsibility. The real Erewhon inverted this—health became Josephine's responsibility, and customers paid handsomely for the transfer of that burden.

The Erewhon Operating System

What the Antocis built wasn't just a grocery store. It was a complete system—designed to deliver trust at every touchpoint.

1. The Curation Filter

Every product that enters Erewhon passes through Josephine's methodical review process.

Vendors begin with an online submission form that sets expectations immediately: "Source local, organic, non-GMO, sustainable, biodynamic and/or regenerative-farmed ingredients that cater to multiple dietary preferences."[11]

This isn't a suggestion. It's a filter.

For emerging wellness brands, getting onto Erewhon's shelves became the ultimate validation. The store functions as a launchpad—a credibility stamp that says: if Erewhon approved it, the product is legitimate.

This creates a powerful flywheel: the best brands want Erewhon exposure, which gives Erewhon leverage to demand better terms, which attracts more brands. Erewhon doesn't chase trends. Trends come to them.

2. The Experience Architecture

Walk into an Erewhon and you'll notice immediately: this doesn't look like a grocery store. It looks like a designer boutique.

Every element is considered. The lighting is perfect. The produce displays are Instagram-ready. The layout is minimalist and clean. Cedar beams, terrazzo countertops, and sculptured metal panels create warmth without clutter.[12]

This is deliberate. The Antocis understood that in Los Angeles, wellness is a status symbol. Shopping at Erewhon isn't just functional—it's performative. The store is designed to be filmed, photographed, and shared.

At the Pasadena location opening, the first customer in line—who waited four and a half hours—was asked why she devoted so much time to entering a grocery store.

Her answer: "Great question. Content."[13]

3. The Celebrity Smoothie Engine

In 2021, Erewhon launched its first influencer smoothie collaboration with a TikToker named Tinx. It was an experiment.[14]

When Hailey Bieber's Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie launched in June 2022—timed perfectly with her Rhode skincare brand—the experiment became a phenomenon.

The system is elegantly designed:

For celebrities: A smoothie collaboration promotes their brand to a devoted audience of wellness enthusiasts. Bieber's smoothie launched alongside Rhode Skin, generating priceless unpaid publicity.

For ingredient brands: Each celebrity smoothie features up to five brands that pay to be included in the recipe.[15] Cowboy Colostrum, Vital Proteins, KOS spirulina—they're all fighting for placement.

For Erewhon: The smoothies drive traffic, generate viral content, and cost zero marketing dollars. Celebrity partners bring their own audiences. The store becomes a destination, not just a retailer.

Sofia Richie, Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Emma Chamberlain—the collaborations keep coming. Each one follows the same pattern: limited-time availability, premium ingredients, perfect aesthetics, social media explosion.

"We see them filming," CEO Tony Antoci said of the content creators constantly documenting their Erewhon visits. He was completely unbothered.[16]

4. The Community Premium

Erewhon's membership program charges up to $200 per year for perks that include a free branded drink each month. About 60,000 people pay for this access.[17]

But the real community isn't the membership program—it's the store itself. Erewhon has become, in the words of one analysis, "a country club under the hood."

The outdoor patios are packed. The tonic bar lines stretch 20-deep. Celebrity sightings are routine: Andrew Garfield, Dakota Johnson, Miley Cyrus, A$AP Rocky, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lily-Rose Depp.[18]

Shopping at Erewhon is a social act. You go to see and be seen. You go because the person you want to become shops there.

The Results: Trust at $1,800 Per Square Foot

The numbers are staggering.

When the Antocis acquired Erewhon, the single store averaged $180,000 in weekly sales.

Today, their stores average $900,000 weekly—a 5x increase.[19]

Erewhon generates approximately $1,800 in revenue per square foot. The average American grocery store earns about $14 million annually. Erewhon's Pasadena flagship alone—at 45,000 square feet—projects $81 million per year.[20]

From one store to eleven locations across Los Angeles County. From bankruptcy survivor to B Corp certification. From health food obscurity to cultural phenomenon.

And they did it with zero advertising budget.

"We didn't build our business by being the most expensive or catering to celebrities," Josephine Antoci said. "It grew very organically, which is nice."

Her son Alec interjected: "No pun intended."[21]

The Lesson: Designing Trust Into the System

In 1872, Samuel Butler imagined Erewhon as a place where individuals bore complete responsibility for their own health. Get sick, go to prison. Personal accountability, taken to absurdity.

The grocery store that borrowed his name discovered something Butler didn't anticipate: people will pay extraordinary premiums to outsource that responsibility.

Not because they're lazy. Because they're overwhelmed.

The modern food system has made healthy eating cognitively expensive. Reading ingredient labels. Researching additives. Distinguishing marketing claims from actual quality. Understanding the difference between "natural" and "organic" and "non-GMO" and "regenerative."

This is exhausting work. Most people don't want to become nutrition experts. They want to feed their families well and get on with their lives.

Erewhon solved this by designing a system where the hard work happens once—in Josephine's product reviews—and the trust transfers to every customer, every visit, every purchase.

"If it's here, it's good for you."

That's not just a slogan. It's an operating principle that shapes every decision: which products make the cut, how the stores are designed, why celebrity smoothies drive millions in revenue without a dollar of advertising.

The Antocis understood something profound: in a world of infinite choice and eroded trust, curation itself becomes the product.

Whole Foods tried to be everything to everyone and became nothing special.

Erewhon decided to be one thing—uncompromisingly clean—and became irreplaceable.