Erewhon: Masterclass in Business Innovation
[Image Credits L-R: @mirandakerr, Erewhon, Gaia Herbs, Bobby Escobedo]
What you might know about Erewhon is that it’s a smoothie factory inside of a grocery store for influencers. While that’s all true, I want to offer another layer of perspective, because this company is a masterclass in business innovation. Erewhon isn’t successful because they charge us $20 for a Hailey Bieber smoothie. They’re successful because they’re always saying yes to experimentation and then doubling down on what works.
Whatever people say about them, every brand would kill to have what they have.
This is what the store looks like now (see below), but Erewhon used to look incredibly different.
Erewhon was founded in 1966 on the other side of the country in Boston, by Michio and Eveline Kushi. They wanted to change the world through food and were incredibly passionate about the macrobiotic diet, so they started selling natural, organic foods out of a 10x20 stall.
In 1968, they moved to LA and opened a store on Beverly Boulevard. Ownership changed hands a few times, and then the DeSilva family bought it out of bankruptcy in 1979. The business continued to flail and Erewhon as many of us know and love it today almost never was.
The Antoci family, today’s owners of Erewhon, had built and sold a different food business to Sysco. In 2011, Tony Antoci was looking for a retirement project. A friend took him to Erewhon (in all of its humble glory at the time), and he decided to buy it on the spot (The Hollywood Reporter).
Since then, Erewhon has expanded to 10 LA locations and obviously has taken social media by storm. When you walk into any of the stores, it feels pretty obvious that it’s a well-oiled machine with high expectations, highly trained employees, and the willingness to try things.
Experimentation Anecdotes
In 2018, I was interviewing a CBD beverage founder who actually said that Erewhon was the first retailer to take a chance on him, despite no traction, and put him on the shelves.
In 2021, we saw the first smoothie collaboration with Tinx. The story goes that Erewhon wanted to thank Tinx for all of her TikTok content about Erewhon during the pandemic, and they said yes to her request for a namesake menu item. Sounds simple, but most businesses wouldn’t think to say yes at that level to their fans. And it worked, so they doubled down. Now the biggest celebrities in the world, including Gisele and Olivia Rodrigo, NEVER pass up their chance at an Erewhon smoothie collab. That is a crazy level of power.
In 2023, Erewhon partnered with Balenciaga on a line of merch and branded juice. I don’t think this made crazy waves for Erewhon, but it was positive PR for Balenciaga (who really needs it right now), and the point is that they go out there and try things.
This has always been part of their ethos. On the Pursuit of Wellness podcast, Erewhon VP Jason Widener said that in his early days working at the store, he had written a business plan for a juice bar. The Antocis basically told him that he should just open the juice bar at Erewhon, so he did - and that was the seedling for Erewhon’s smoothie claim to TikTok fame, al these years later.
So whether you love Erewhon or think it’s ridiculous, the business is successful because they’re always saying yes and doing stuff kind of out of left field.
