Why everyone is flexing a grocery store: Erewhon, status, and what the price tag is really selling

So lock in, because this one starts with a receipt. Erewhon, the famously expensive Los Angeles grocery chain, sells a 24-pack of its own spring water for $80. Not one bottle. A case. The number sounds wild until you check it, and then it gets more interesting, because the flex survives the fact-check. People still buy it, still film it, still post it. That tells you everything about what is actually for sale.

What Erewhon actually sells

Erewhon is a grocery store the way a front-row seat is a chair. Yes, it sells food. It also sells smoothies built with celebrities: Hailey Bieber's Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie, which debuted in 2022 and runs about $20, Sabrina Carpenter's Short N' Sweet at $23, Lisa's Thai Up The World, a Barbie birthday smoothie at $21. A single imported Japanese strawberry went viral at $19. A store tote costs $143. A cup of Sacred Water, a Jolie collaboration sold at the tonic bar, costs $12 for 12 ounces.

The store itself is part of the product. More than ten locations across Los Angeles, lines at the tonic bar, celebrity sightings treated as normal, and a membership that costs up to $200 a year with around 60,000 people paying for it. The New York Times called it the unofficial hangout for the young, beautiful, and bored. The haul video is main character energy and the receipt at the same time: here is what I bought, here is where I belong.

And the business works. The Hailey Bieber smoothie alone reportedly sold around 40,000 units a month at its peak, and the chain reportedly made $171.4 million in profit in 2023. This is not a store people shop at by accident.

The psychology, in plain terms

An economist named Thorstein Veblen gave this a name in 1899: conspicuous consumption. His point was simple. People buy visible, expensive things to broadcast where they stand. The price tag is part of the message. A cheaper version would do the same job, and that is exactly why the expensive one gets picked. The waste is the signal.

Modern research sharpened that idea. A 2011 study by Sundie and colleagues, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, tested conspicuous consumption as a signaling system. Showy spending, they found, sends a message other people read accurately. Observers pick up the signal fast, and the signal changes how the spender is judged. Other work fills out the picture: brands become part of how people describe themselves (Belk, 1988), spending spikes after a status threat as a way to recover standing (Rucker and Galinsky, 2008), and the clothes or labels someone wears can shift how they carry themselves (Adam and Galinsky, 2012).

Social media added a second stage to the performance. A study of conspicuous signaling online found that posting luxury goods on social media raised the poster's self-esteem, and likes and comments on those posts raised it further. The flex used to need a room full of witnesses. Now the room is the feed, and the feed answers back in numbers.

So why does anyone pay $20 for a smoothie? Three reasons, and they stack.

First, membership. The cup is giving you belong here, and the group is the point. Second, virtue. At Erewhon the signal is not just wealth, it is discipline: organic, biodynamic, sea moss, collagen, the whole wellness vocabulary. The purchase says you take care of yourself, and you take it seriously. Third, content. The smoothie photographs well, the cup has a name on it, and the post proves you were there. Each reason alone might not close the sale. Together, they sell a $20 drink by the tens of thousands.

The funniest proof that the signal beats the substance came from Jimmy Kimmel Live. The show filled an Erewhon cup with plain hose water, told passersby it was the $12 Sacred Water, and watched people describe it in detail. One person called it the freshest water they had ever tasted. Another tasted honey and hibiscus. Nobody could tell. The cup did the talking, not the water.

The same flex, in the treatment room

Now check it out in beauty, because it is the same psychology wearing a different outfit. The expensive injector is a flex. The routine post is a flex. The LED mask that shows up in every GRWM is, as one beauty writer put it, part skincare and part status flex. And the newest version is quieter: Vogue Business called undetectable, natural-looking enhancement the new luxury flex, where the goal is looking rested, not looking done. The signal changed from obvious to invisible, but it is still a signal. Healthy, well-kept skin reads as discipline and intention, and the glow up era's skin-first turn made that reading mainstream.

This is where it gets useful for you. A high price in beauty can mean three different things, and only one of them is worth paying for. It can mean real skill: verified credentials, a named medical director, sealed product, follow-up terms in writing. It can mean real cost: a better product, more time, a careful plan. Or it can mean the story: the famous name, the beautiful room, the post you get to make afterward. The flex is not evil. It is just not evidence. A provider who charges the most is not automatically the best, and a provider who charges less is not automatically cutting corners. The price tells you what the market will bear. The credentials tell you what you are buying.

So lock in to the questions that split those three apart. Who holds the license, and can you verify it yourself? What product is being used, and does it come sealed? What does the total price include, and what does follow-up cost if something needs adjusting? A provider who answers all of that plainly is selling care. A provider who answers with a celebrity name is selling a story, and you already know what that story costs at Erewhon.

Verified Aesthetics exists to make that split visible. Price transparency is not about finding the cheapest option. It is about knowing what every dollar is for, so you can decide whether you are paying for skill or paying for the signal. Both are your choice. Only one should be an accident.

This post is general information only, not medical advice. Talk to a qualified provider about your own skin, health history, and goals before any treatment decision.