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Bayley & Sage, Wimbledon’s upmarket grocer, is famous for its £8.50 baskets of French strawberries and aromatic cheeses, but its best-sellers during the tournament fortnight are the more straightforward ones. The city’s tennis players come to buy chicken breasts, orange juice, pasta and natural yoghurt. Rafael Nadal was a regular customer.
The fact that the shop is a 15-minute walk from the All England Club and feels so welcoming helps draw visitors in. Baskets of Spanish peaches, racks of Bayley & Sage sandwiches and display cases of cold-pressed juices and wines entice visitors to splurge. “We’re expensive – I’m not going to pretend otherwise,” says founder and owner Jennie Allen.
The same goes for another grocery store 5,400 miles away in Los Angeles. Erewhon, the chain that grew out of a health food stand in the 1960s, has become a food cult. Influencers and Gen Z celebrities flock to its 10 L.A. locations and cafes for $23 smoothies and organic buffalo cauliflower. “We’re more than a grocery store. We’re a community,” it says.
As supermarkets battle the growth of discount chains like Aldi and Lidl, delis for the well-heeled are the new go-to places. “It’s like a cross between Whole Foods and Studio 54.” [the former New York celebrity disco]“an Erewhon investor recently told me.
These new emporiums are united by three qualities, aside from their wealthy clientele and rapid growth. One is health and wellness: Vegan and macrobiotic foods, once considered fads, are now mainstream. When Erewhon mixes up a $9.50 vegan “germ warfare shot” containing colloidal silver, reishi powder, astragalus extract and other potions, no one bats an eye.
Erewhon’s UK counterparts, from Bayley & Sage to the Daylesford Organic farm shop chain founded by Carole Bamford, are more mainstream and less LA-influenced, but they also focus on natural and organic foods and work with small producers. The more traceable and healthy the products, the less likely shoppers are to question how much they are being asked to pay.
The second quality is local appeal: stores choose their locations carefully, not just to attract the right shoppers but to form the heart of a community, whether Wimbledon or Venice in Los Angeles. Bayley & Sage started in the former and now has 13 grocery stores across London, in districts such as Parsons Green and Chelsea that Allen defines as “affluent, but with a village feel.”
Its latest store opened two years ago in Marylebone, which challenges the definition of a village, given that it is one of the wealthiest and most international districts in central London. But Marylebone has a busy high street and already accounts for 20 per cent of Bayley & Sage’s sales. Daylesford Organic also has a store there, one of a group of fine dining establishments.
Finally, its fame is disproportionate to its size. Young Londoners using TikTok know about Erewhon and have opinions about its celebrity milkshakes, even if they’ve never been near Los Angeles. The expensive food and exotic liquid concoctions are fodder for memes and jokes. The more expensive and absurd a supermarket sounds, the more it can become a cult.
Stores that combine these qualities can perform surprisingly well, even if their prices are high. In a recent McKinsey survey of the activities that American consumers intend to indulge in, grocery shopping ranked second, after eating out. Both Erewhon and Daylesford have cafes attached to their stores to turn grocery shopping into a social experience for those who want to make the most of it.
Erewhon now wants to expand its network to New York, while Bayley & Sage’s revenues rose 29 percent last year. There is plenty of room for these chains to grow, as they only have a small share of domestic markets. Erewhon was founded in Boston and it’s easy to imagine it fitting seamlessly into Brooklyn, along with thriving areas in other US cities and beyond.
Unfortunately, the end result of food products is often less exciting than the end result, even at the top end. Daylesford Organic Lost £3.6 million Last year, amid high inflation, Bayley & Sage relied on Bamford’s financial backing. Bayley & Sage made a net profit on sales of just 1 percent and is constantly battling waste, as most of its food is fresh. “Grocery is a low-margin business, no matter what you do,” Allen says.
There is also a history of grocery stores and supermarkets for the wealthy that enjoyed a period of glamour before going bust. Upmarket food chain Dean & DeLuca was saddled with debt in 2019 after expanding globally. Fairway, a big-box supermarket I used to shop at in New York, went under. It’s hard to translate a niche retailer into mass-market success.
These new supermarket chains may want to enjoy the good times while they last. There is a time when an up-and-coming chain is big enough to be a celebrity hangout and the subject of social media memes, but small enough to remain exclusive and desirable. A strawberry frosting milkshake may be trendy, but fads change, too.