Iconic LA market Erewhon is making its New York debut inside Kith Ivy, a $43,000-a-year private padel and wellness club in the West Village.
The smooth, sea-moss-tinted veneer of Los Angeles’ wellness culture is about to hit Manhattan — but only for those who can afford it. Erewhon Market, long the poster child for aspirational living in California, will open its first East Coast outpost not as a traditional grocery store, but as a tonic bar hidden inside Kith Ivy, a new private padel and wellness club rising on Leroy Street in the West Village. To sip its celebrity-endorsed smoothies in person, the initiation fee is $36,000, followed by $7,000 in annual fees. That’s one pricey smoothie.
For Erewhon, known for $23 drinks and strawberries that can run close to $20 a carton, the move feels like an evolution. It transforms the brand from a grocer into a kind of cultural badge — membership conferring not just access to supplements and adaptogenic tonics but to a rarefied lifestyle that blends sport, fashion, and social cachet. Deliveries will trickle out through Uber Eats and Postmates, but the club setting reinforces that this Erewhon is more about signaling than shopping.
Kith Ivy: wellness culture or cultural theater
Ronnie Fieg, founder of streetwear label Kith, filed plans in May 2024 for what was initially envisioned as a rooftop-and-ninth-floor club complete with spa, restaurant, padel courts, and Erewhon’s debut bar. His partners included the Cayre family’s Midtown Equities and the Café Mogador team. Together they represent a deep bench of hospitality insiders; the Cayres own the building leased to Soho House in the Meatpacking District, maintain a 30 percent stake in Casa Cipriani, and helped build Chez Margaux with Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
The aesthetic is intended to read as total immersion. Hypebeast notes the amenities span hammam, sauna, steam room, cold plunge, IV drips, jacuzzis, and a gym, designed to rival the kind of hospitality services once reserved for five-star hotels. As Fieg himself put it: “Kith Ivy signifies two very important moments for the brand. Firstly, the Kith Ivy club in New York is our most holistic entry into hospitality, expanding outside of dining into true lifestyle services, sport and wellness, and product.” He went on to emphasize that padel, the buzzy racquet sport embraced by Europe’s elite, would be the “centerpiece” of the experience.
That Erewhon would become part of this tableau was almost inevitable. CEO Tony Antoci had teased the expansion years ago: “We are looking at New York City; it’s definitely on the plate.” The tonic bar marks that ambition realized, if only for those with the bank balance to match.
The price of exclusivity
The $43,000 membership fee sits at the core of the narrative. Erewhon’s New York opening is much more than just another store launch; it is a reframing of food as cultural currency. Membership doesn’t just allow one to buy a smoothie; it buys association with a lifestyle that merges the aesthetics of fashion, fitness, and wellness.
This strategy follows a larger trend. Across New York and other major global cities, luxury wellness has been migrating from spas and gyms into hybrid spaces that resemble private clubs. Casa Cipriani, Fasano Fifth Avenue, and the revamped Soho House have established a model where the fee itself becomes part of the allure. Erewhon’s entry into that ecosystem raises the stakes: the market that once sold organic produce in Los Angeles is now situating itself alongside padel courts designed by Armani and dining curated by Mogador.
Not everyone was charmed by the proposal, though. West Village residents fought fiercely against the original rooftop club concept. Objections centered on noise, traffic, and what was described as “stadium lighting.” Manhattan Community Board 2 voted 33 to one against granting a liquor license, prompting state legislators to intervene.
By March 2025, $7 million had already been invested and construction was halfway complete. Yet the team scaled back: no rooftop venue, no DJ programming, no background music. The compromise highlighted the tensions between preserving neighborhood character and attracting big-ticket developments. Erewhon, however, survived the cuts, cementing its arrival within the revised plan.
Erewhon’s symbolism
The significance of this move extends far beyond one market. Erewhon’s arrival inside Kith Ivy underscores how wellness, once a democratized ideal, has increasingly become privatized and monetized as luxury. What began in the 1960s as a countercultural health food shop has, in New York, become an elite accessory.
In Los Angeles, Erewhon has thrived by turning smoothies into fashion statements — Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner, and most recently, Heidi Klum, have all fronted limited-edition blends. Lines outside its Beverly Hills and Venice locations resemble fashion week queues. The brand has grown to eleven stores in California, with three more expected in 2025, even before opening in New York. Its cult status has been amplified by TikTok, where influencers routinely post unboxings of Erewhon hauls as if they were designer handbags.
That cultural heat now merges with Fieg’s streetwear credibility and the Cayres’ hospitality portfolio, creating a hybrid that straddles multiple forms of luxury. To belong at Kith Ivy — and to drink Erewhon within it — is to participate in a kind of contemporary ritual where wellness is consumed as performance.
The new luxury economy
This development sits within a broader realignment of consumer spending. The global luxury market is expected to surpass $1.6 trillion in 2024, with “experiential luxury” outpacing goods. Categories like wellness tourism, boutique fitness, and health food have been pulled into the luxury orbit, where exclusivity is the new currency.
In that sense, Erewhon’s New York experiment is less about smoothies than it is about belonging. The West Village outpost is a kind of laboratory for testing how far consumers will go to make wellness part of their luxury identity. Whether through padel, IV therapy, or adaptogenic blends, the language of health is increasingly indistinguishable from the language of fashion.
The West Village, already a canvas of gentrification, now becomes the stage for this latest battle. For Erewhon, the stakes are clear: to establish itself not just as a California cult brand but as a global marker of wellness culture capital. For the city, the stakes are more complex: whether the future of wellness will be shared or sequestered.
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