People are skipping restaurant dinners, delaying car purchases, and scouring for grocery deals. Amid tariff nervousness and broader stress over affordability, client confidence has dropped to levels not seen in over a decade, in accordance with The Convention Board, a enterprise assume tank. At this level, it’s wealthier consumers who’re powering the majority of spending within the U.S. financial system.
So what explains the success of Erewhon’s US$22 smoothie?
The Los Angeles grocery chain promoting these fancy concoctions is doing so nicely, it opened three new stores in 2025—its greatest enlargement since 2011. The chain reportedly generates $1,800 to $2,500 in gross sales per sq. foot, as much as 5 instances what a typical U.S. grocery store earns.
These aren’t extraordinary blended drinks; they embody components reminiscent of high-grade sea moss gel, adaptogenic mushrooms and collagen peptides. Usually they arrive with a celeb’s title hooked up.
It’s all a part of the broader increase within the U.S. specialty meals market, which has surpassed $219 billion—up almost 150% in a decade, in accordance with the Specialty Meals Affiliation. That far outpaces the roughly 47% growth seen in overall U.S. grocery sales over the identical interval.
Unbiased retail knowledge from the market analysis agency Circana additionally confirms this progress: At the same time as inflation-weary shoppers have traded right down to retailer manufacturers in lots of classes, premium and specialty products held up and even grew their greenback share of the market by means of 2025. On TikTok, creators who as soon as filmed designer-bag hauls now submit $12 tinned fish boards. Craft chocolate bars that value $8–$12 are being marketed as, with out irony, “self-care.”
So if shoppers are this anxious, why are they nonetheless splurging? In truth, these aren’t contradictions—they’re two expressions of the identical psychological response.
When individuals really feel life is uncontrolled, they attain for one thing small, costly, and signaling advantage. This is the real reason premium meals is booming whereas some conventional luxurious manufacturers battle, say client psychologists.
We’re professors of consumer behavior and marketing who examine how individuals make buying choices amid financial uncertainty, and ask what explains the hole between how shoppers really feel and the way they really spend. Our work factors to a constant discovering: When individuals really feel they’ve misplaced management over the massive issues, they search it within the small ones.
A fast detour by means of the make-up drawer
Economists have seen this earlier than.
In 2001, Estée Lauder Chairman Leonard Lauder coined the time period the “lipstick index” after he noticed that lipstick gross sales rose 11% following the Sept. 11 assaults. When large luxuries really feel out of attain, shoppers discover a small substitute. A $60 lipstick is extravagant for a beauty, however subsequent to the Hermès purse it psychologically replaces, it looks like a cut price.
Then, as now, individuals search company wherever they’ll discover it. Client psychologists name this “compensatory consumption”: shopping for issues to feel in control when life feels uncontrolled.
Whereas even beauty sales are softening, that impulse hasn’t disappeared. It has simply discovered higher hosts—reminiscent of meals.
In some ways, meals is a perfect product for this compensation. It’s experiential—one thing you style, odor and savor. It’s additionally emotional—carrying associations with consolation, care and residential. And it’s seen, as a result of if you happen to’re on social media, what you eat is now as public as what you put on. Premium meals isn’t simply eaten—it’s filmed, posted, and carried out.
Most significantly, it’s nonetheless comparatively accessible. Twenty-two {dollars} could also be an absurd value for a drink, but it surely’s low cost in contrast with a $400 wellness retreat.
Indulgence with a aspect of advantage
Here’s what separates this second from Lauder’s lipstick index. That example was purely about pleasure, as shoppers sought indulgence as comfort. At the moment’s premium meals purchases carry an extra layer: They’re coded as virtuous.
An Erewhon smoothie isn’t only a deal with. It’s natural, superfood-enriched, and wellness-aligned. By the identical logic, a $20 bottle of single-estate olive oil isn’t simply cooking fats; it’s a dedication to craft and well being. Premium tinned fish isn’t comfort meals; it’s sustainably sourced protein caught within the wild with packaging stunning sufficient to show.
This “advantage coding” does an important psychological work within the gross sales transaction: It transforms indulgence into self-investment. You’re not splurging throughout a downturn; you’re doing one thing on your well being. You’re not being frivolous; you’re supporting small producers. Analysis reveals that people need reasons to justify pleasurable purchases, particularly throughout monetary nervousness—and premium meals is highly effective as a result of the justification is constructed into the product. The natural label, the sustainability story, the wellness framing—all of them dissolve guilt earlier than it even kicks in.
Consumed within the kitchen and once more on the feed
There’s a purpose this pattern is accelerating now. Many premium meals purchases are consumed twice—as soon as bodily and as soon as digitally. The Erewhon smoothie buy isn’t actually concerning the drink; it may be as a lot concerning the content material because the drink. The tinned fish board is plated for Instagram earlier than anybody takes a chew.
Social media doesn’t simply amplify the pattern; it completes it. While you submit a photograph or video of the smoothie, you’re broadcasting that you just worth wellness, high quality and intentionality. In a cultural second when flaunting a designer bag feels tone-deaf, meals gives good cowl. It’s the most secure flex there may be. It’s no shock that one YouTube video of an Erewhon haul by meals creator @KarissaEats has drawn over 14 million views.
All of this raises a good query: Does the rising give attention to the “K-shaped economy” clarify this increase? As many economists see it, low- and middle-income customers are more and more pulling again, as they face an affordability squeeze from well being care to housing and training. However wealthier shoppers are choosing up the slack after which some, splurging on luxurious and powering gross home product progress.
On this situation, premium meals thrives as a result of it’s nonetheless inexpensive for the people who find themselves doing high quality, whilst everybody else cuts again. That’s partly true. However this rationalization doesn’t account for one more shift—why prosperous shoppers are foregoing splurges on objects like designer purses in favor of premium groceries.
That is why the advantage framing issues a lot. If the query was purely about having cash to spend, conventional luxurious could be booming as nicely. It isn’t. A living proof is LVMH, the conglomerate behind Louis Vuitton and Dior, which noticed its fashion division’s profits decline 13% throughout all of 2025.
Even shoppers who’re flush with disposable earnings want psychological permission to spend throughout anxious instances. The premium meals phenomenon is about why meals has develop into the factor they select—not about who can afford to splurge.
And when a smoothie turns into a standing image, it tells us one thing about financial safety extra broadly. Meals costs have climbed almost 30% since 2019, outpacing 23% for general client costs, in accordance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For a household stretching a decent grocery finances, $22 isn’t a smoothie. It’s dinner.
The need for control, the desire for identity, the comfort of virtue permission—these are common. A single mom working two jobs feels the identical yearning for company because the influencer filming her grocery haul. It’s simply that the purchases that fulfill these wants are more and more constrained by value. The justification solely works if you happen to can afford your indulgence.
What’s actually within the cart
The subsequent time you’re in a grocery retailer and also you attain for one thing a bit costlier than what you would possibly want, it is best to pause—to not put it again, however to consider what you’re really reaching for.
Likelihood is it isn’t actually concerning the product. It’s concerning the feeling of selecting one thing when the world feels out of hand.
A $22 smoothie isn’t only a smoothie. It’s what individuals search out once they want permission to really feel OK.
Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui is an assistant professor of marketing at Coastal Carolina University.
Patrick van Esch is an affiliate professor of promoting at Coastal Carolina University.
This text is republished from The Conversation below a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
