Fun fact about me: I hate grocery stores. In fact after lockdown was imposed I hardly ever went in one again…until I moved to California and experienced Erewhon. Yes, the grocery store of choice for celebrities; so help me, it’s actually a great place. Everything in there is good for you (seriously, any time I eat the food Erewhon stocks I feel full more easily and I digest it better; put me on the stuff for a few days at a stretch and I feel low-key good all the time instead of sick), so much of the food is tasty and it all tends to be very fresh, and when you go in there it’s a visually stimulating environment that’s totally non-threatening, full of beautiful customers and nice, kind, and helpful employees. People love to make fun of the place, but from the bakery and the hot bar to the grocery stock, it’s all uniformly high quality food…and the prices are actually not unreasonable.
Yes, it is the most expensive grocery store in the United States and perhaps the entire world (I’ve heard maybe a couple places in London and/or Paris could beat it…and that’s about it)…but it’s not the most expensive by a wide margin. I’ve shopped the premium organic section at Publix grocery stores in small towns in the southeastern United States I’d never send a dog into, let alone a human…and the prices at Erewhon run about 10% higher for the same items. Yes, it’s more, but for a far more pleasant shopping experience and the peace of mind of knowing everything in there is tasty, nutritious, and easy to digest, 10% is worth it if you can pay it.
Frankly the only item in Erewhon that is ridiculous is the smoothies, which at $20 is priced as a novelty item…which frankly is what they are (or did you think the “Hailey Bieber skin care smoothie with hyaluronic acid” is some serious basic grocery item?). Even so, when you consider that they’re made out of high-quality ingredients and that you actually do get a large portion of smoothie, $20 is not totally insane. Steep, yes, but compared to the cost it takes to make it the infamous Coca-Colas of Disney World are far worse offenders on the “let’s price-gouge a captive audience” scale. In any case I’m not much of a smoothie person (surprise, surprise), so I confine my indulgence to the $6 croissants. So help me…
But I do find that when I see fit to go to Erewhon to eat for the day (their stuff is not laced with preservatives, which makes it better for you, but the rub is it also tends to degrade faster, so I’ve always made a habit of buying groceries just for today when I shop at Erewhon), I tend to spend $20. Sometimes I can push $30, but not any more than that, because I’m economizing at this stage in my life and it’s sufficient. Sometimes I economize and spend less than $20. Their tortilla chips are $8 a bag, which sounds high but while Tostitos offers bigger bags they’re mostly empty whereas Erewhon stuffs theirs with actual chips…and even with Tostitos you’re only saving $2 per bag. For chips that aren’t even baked fresh like Erewhon’s are. And probably have a lot more stuff in them that’s bad for you (it’s not just abstract: the lower-quality food lesser grocery stores stock makes you feel worse at a physiological level).
Where I’m going with all this is even on a day when I get tortilla chips and sparkling water, the absolute floor tends to bottom out at around $13. And I’m just one person. Multiply that by 30 days in a month and you get $390 per month. But $13 is a diet of corn chips and water, which frankly isn’t very nutritious or tasty. Rotate various items in, even cheaper examples, and you get your $20 a day figure. So really, I spend $600 per month on feeding myself. Which sounds high, but there really isn’t anything you could eat out of these grocery stores that’s actually cheaper. Unless you compromise on quality of your food, i.e. accept more empty calories, more components that are harder to digest and make you sick and feel worse, worse-tasting items, et cetera.
And even then, the savings are shockingly limited. Consider that the US Department of Agriculture estimates that a “low-cost” meal plan comes to $70 per person per week. Which amounts to $10 per day. Not much below the $13 I spend for corn chips and water…and consider that what the USDA deems acceptable, especially for lower-class people, is some shockingly low-quality food. So my experience that basic but good, healthy, and tasty meals come to $20 per person per day out of the grocery store is…realistic? Consider especially that I’d estimate you can get Erewhon-quality food at other places for 10% less, so take $20 and subtract it by 10% and you’re looking at $18 per day. There is a real tax that is incurred by shopping in less pleasant environs that are more psychologically hostile than a welcoming beautiful place full of helpful people; the former are going to deplete your willpower and mental bandwidth…and quite possibly your abilities to budget, work, and earn income, and manage savings and investments. But fine, let’s discount it by 10% and say you’re looking at $18 per person per day to feed yourself. That still comes to $540 per month; a grocery cart at that level for a week’s supply would come to $135. For one person.
That’s the realistic floor, unless you’re degrading your body and mind by eating lower-quality food. Side effects: brain fog, feeling sick, bad, and nasty all the time, as well as empty calories leading to you never feeling actually full or satisfied and hence you overeat and become obese (and quite possibly buy so much extra food out of necessity that you obliterate the amount you “saved”…oops (sounds like coastal liberal elite woo, but I in fact do notice higher-quality food from Erewhon or even Whole Foods (downmarket though it is compared to its roots in yesteryear or Erewhon today) makes me feel full more easily).
Now, what does all this have to do with a $520 grocery cart? Well, at Erewhon in Calabasas the other day, I saw the woman ahead of me at the checkout wheel a cart of groceries out that was three quarters up to the top…and the screen read $520…which elicited a first reaction of “bonkers!” from me. But then I started to do the math based on what I eat, which is among the most basic goods Erewhon offers (and, keep in mind, these foods are maybe 10% more expensive than same-quality items you’ll find in less-prestigious stories), and for a family of four people (a couple plus two kids) eating the same diet I do sustained over a week, $520 is about right. Specifically, take my $20 a day figure, or $140 per week, and multiply by four people, and you’re already up at $560.
Frankly it’s scarily easy to crest the $1000 mark. Imagine you have a family of five, and then imagine that you’re loading up on steaks from Erewhon, which look really yummy in the case but will easily increase your spending to $30 per day per person if you incorporate a steak dinner every other night or so. At $30 per person, and for a family of five, a week’s supply would then cost you $1050. Yikes.
And keep in mind, Erewhon’s prices are not gougy. You can save by going to a less prestigious and less curated store, but the savings are limited (again, roughly 10% is my observation). For an even modestly-sized family who likes to eat remotely well, $1000 a week is no longer extraordinary, it’s expected. I’m old enough to remember when earning $800 a week of total income was considered “good money”. And the horrifying part is that the wage that $800 a week corresponds to if you’re working full-time, i.e. $20 an hour, is a fairly average wage in the US today. In Los Angeles it’s approaching the statutory minimum wage ($17.81), but plenty of people here are earning only that much. Many a poor person even in 2026 aspire to earn $20 an hour. Money goes fast…even if you do the “responsible” thing and cook at home.
Which might not even be the “no-brainer” that nigh-all personal finance advice assumes it is.
Consider that in my experience Longhorn Steakhouse or even Outback Steakhouse uses high-quality ingredients; it’s certainly tasty and it agrees with me as well as Erewhon’s groceries do. The bone-in ribeye (“Outlaw Ribeye”) is 20 ounces at Longhorn, and in Los Angeles will cost you $40 or so. Add in drinks, sides, and tips and you can budget $60 for one steak dinner. Consider, though, that you can eat that as your only meal of the day, and it can more or less feed two people, not just one. So you can, if you plan it right, eat at Longhorn Steakhouse for $30 per person per day. Sound familiar? It’s about the same number you’re going to hit if you buy Erewhon groceries with generous helpings of steak and other goodies.
Admittedly splitting a steak dinner with someone else every day and not getting any other food is a lean meal in terms of calorie content, but the fact that you even could do this and have it come to parity with grocery store prices is absolutely crazy…until you consider that even a typical McDonald’s meal for one person is easily pushing $20 nowadays at the drive-thru window. Admittedly McDonald’s is (bizarrely) overpriced for what you get; you can eat for cheaper at Chili’s (a real sit-down restaurant, no less)…but if you look at the menu and order corn chips and a drink at Chili’s you’ll still basically hit that $13 a day or so bare minimum floor I mentioned earlier.
People marvel at how Americans eat out for more and more meals with each passing year, surmising that people are wasting money on extravagances…well, personal finance “experts”, there’s a simple reason people use restaurants more: it’s because they’re becoming less and less expensive compared to getting comparable food at the grocery store. Yes, for the same food you generally are going to pay more at a restaurant…just not nearly as much as you’d expect, considering you get someone else to cook it for you and serve you, along with a venue for ambiance. You can look at pictures of grocery shelves and Outback Steakhouse’s menu from 30 years ago versus the same venues today — the plain fact is Outback’s prices have inflated by much less than the go-to “cheap” goods at grocery stores have in that same amount of time.
There are reasons for this, primary among them being that restaurants’ supply chains are stronger and they enjoy economy of scale, which was shown during the pandemic, where steakhouse prices barely increased while groceries skyrocketed. Accumulated over decades, we reach this bizarre fork in the road in the mid 2020s where a mid-range casual steakhouse has reached parity with an expensive grocery store for the same sort of diet.
It gets even worse — consider that, famously, dining out saves time compared to buying groceries and cooking your meals at home. If you have an hourly job and can work only one hour of overtime per day on average, then at $20 per hour (about what the average entry-level-type job pays nowadays…), that overtime has covered the entire difference between $20 worth of Erewhon groceries per person per day and the $30 per person per day Longhorn Steakhouse would cost you (with $10 to spare!). Can you save an hour of grocery shopping and cooking time by dining out every day? Very likely, yes. So why not enjoy the ambiance and service of a restaurant, and save money?
Yes, we have now reached a point where there are plausible, albeit specific scenarios, where cooking at home instead of literally dining out at a sit-down steak house every single day will cause you to lose money. Even if you’re not rich (like the proverbial scenario where Bill Gates would be better served by concentrating on his work than by taking the time to pick a $100 bill off the floor…now such bizarre economics apply to people earning average wages…sometimes even below-average wages).
Now, like I say, this scenario only works if you split a meal. In my case I indulge myself when I go out to eat, and I’m just one person, so I spend the full $60 (so help me that bone-in ribeye is really good…). But even in my case I notice that the hit to my wallet compared to using a grocery store of comparable quality is just not that punishing. And eating at Erewhon is just not that punishing compared to a more “normal” grocery store. We’ve seen a real compression of the price structure: the mid-range to expensive options have held the line, but the go-to “cheap” foods have inflated to the point the poor have been ground into the dust.
So why bother with trying to cook at home with the cheapest food you can find? It was always a trap, but at this point, with even the financial savings largely being a mirage from the time you purchase it, it’s truly a food’s errand, unless, like apparently our “personal finance experts”, you came out of a time warp from 30 years ago and have never bothered visiting a grocery store or a restaurant and seeing how much anything actually costs in the year 2026.
Don’t sweat the steak dinners and the Erewhon memberships: it’s those who are unwilling (or unable…) to eat like this who are losing in the game of life. What becomes of them, in the fullness of time? What, indeed…
I leave you with that thought, but the real takeaway: don’t believe all the conventional wisdom about the “responsible” way to budget you read online; take the data, do the math, and reason from first principles, and, be it for better or for worse, you might be surprised at what you discover…