{"id":42222,"date":"2026-04-08T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=42222"},"modified":"2026-04-08T08:32:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:32:53","slug":"why-americans-are-buying-22-smoothies-despite-feeling-terrible-about-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-americans-are-buying-22-smoothies-despite-feeling-terrible-about-the-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Americans are buying $22 smoothies despite feeling terrible about the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui<\/a>, Coastal Carolina University<\/a><\/em> and Patrick van Esch<\/a>, Coastal Carolina University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Americans are skipping restaurant dinners<\/a>, delaying car purchases<\/a> and scouring for grocery deals<\/a>. Amid tariff anxiety and broader stress over affordability, consumer confidence has dropped to levels<\/a> not seen in over a decade, according to The Conference Board, a business think tank. At this point, it\u2019s wealthier consumers<\/a> who are powering the bulk of spending in the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what explains the success of Erewhon\u2019s US$22 smoothie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Los Angeles grocery chain selling these fancy concoctions is doing so well, it opened three new stores<\/a> in 2025 \u2013 its biggest expansion since 2011. The chain reportedly generates $1,800 to $2,500 in sales per square foot, up to five times what a typical U.S. supermarket earns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These aren\u2019t ordinary blended drinks; they include ingredients such as high-grade sea moss gel, adaptogenic mushrooms and collagen peptides. Often they come with a celebrity\u2019s name attached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all part of the broader boom in the U.S. specialty food market, which has surpassed $219 billion<\/a> \u2013 up nearly 150% in a decade, according to the Specialty Food Association. That far outpaces the roughly 47% growth seen in overall U.S. grocery sales<\/a> over the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Independent retail data from the market research firm Circana also confirms this growth: Even as inflation-weary consumers have traded down to store brands in many categories, premium and specialty products held up<\/a> and even grew their dollar share of the market through 2025. On TikTok, creators who once filmed designer-bag hauls now post $12 tinned fish boards<\/a>. Craft chocolate bars that cost $8\u2013$12 are being marketed as, without irony, \u201cself-care<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if consumers are this anxious, why are they still splurging? In fact, these aren\u2019t contradictions \u2013 they\u2019re two expressions of the same psychological reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people feel life is out of control, they reach for something small, expensive and signaling virtue. This is the real reason<\/a> premium food is booming while some traditional luxury brands struggle, say consumer psychologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are professors of consumer behavior and marketing<\/a> who study how people make purchasing decisions amid economic uncertainty, and ask what explains the gap between how consumers feel and how they actually spend. Our work<\/a> points to a consistent finding: When people feel they\u2019ve lost control over the big things, they seek it in the small ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Dr. Paul\u2019s Raw Animal-Based Smoothie, photographed outside Erewhon in Culver City, Calif., on July 17, 2024. Dania Maxwell\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A quick detour through the makeup drawer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Economists have seen this before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2001, Est\u00e9e Lauder Chairman Leonard Lauder coined the term the \u201clipstick index<\/a>\u201d after he saw that lipstick sales rose 11% following the Sept. 11 attacks. When big luxuries feel out of reach, consumers find a small substitute. A $60 lipstick is extravagant for a cosmetic, but next to the Herm\u00e8s handbag it psychologically replaces, it feels like a bargain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, as now, people seek agency wherever they can find it. Consumer psychologists call this \u201ccompensatory consumption\u201d: buying things to feel in control<\/a> when life feels out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While even beauty sales are softening<\/a>, that impulse hasn\u2019t disappeared. It has just found better hosts \u2013 such as food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, food is an ideal product for this compensation. It\u2019s experiential \u2013 something you taste, smell and savor. It\u2019s also emotional \u2013 carrying associations with comfort, care and home. And it\u2019s visible, because if you\u2019re on social media, what you eat is now as public as what you wear. Premium food isn\u2019t just eaten \u2013 it\u2019s filmed, posted and performed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, it\u2019s still relatively accessible. Twenty-two dollars may be an absurd price for a drink, but it\u2019s cheap compared with a $400 wellness retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shoppers
Shoppers enter and exit the high-end grocery store Erewhon during its Pasadena, Calif., opening on Sept. 13, 2023. Sarah Reingewirtz\/MediaNews Group\/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Indulgence with a side of virtue<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here is what separates this moment from Lauder\u2019s lipstick index. That example<\/a> was purely about pleasure, as consumers sought indulgence as consolation. Today\u2019s premium food purchases carry an additional layer: They are coded as virtuous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Erewhon smoothie isn\u2019t just a treat. It\u2019s organic, superfood-enriched and wellness-aligned. By the same logic, a $20 bottle of single-estate olive oil isn\u2019t just cooking fat; it\u2019s a commitment to craft and health. Premium tinned fish isn\u2019t convenience food; it\u2019s sustainably sourced protein caught in the wild with packaging beautiful enough to display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u201cvirtue coding\u201d does the most important psychological work in the sales transaction: It transforms indulgence into self-investment. You\u2019re not splurging during a downturn; you\u2019re doing something for your health. You\u2019re not being frivolous; you\u2019re supporting small producers. Research shows that people need reasons<\/a> to justify pleasurable purchases, especially during financial anxiety \u2013 and premium food is powerful because the justification is built into the product. The organic label, the sustainability story, the wellness framing \u2013 they all dissolve guilt before it even kicks in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumed in the kitchen and again on the feed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a reason this trend is accelerating now. Many premium food purchases are consumed twice \u2013 once physically and once digitally. The Erewhon smoothie purchase isn\u2019t really about the drink; it can be as much about the content as the drink. The tinned fish board is plated for Instagram before anyone takes a bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media doesn\u2019t just amplify the trend; it completes it. When you post a photo or video of the smoothie, you\u2019re broadcasting that you value wellness, quality and intentionality. In a cultural moment when flaunting a designer bag feels tone-deaf, food provides perfect cover. It\u2019s the safest flex there is. It\u2019s no surprise that one YouTube video<\/a> of an Erewhon haul by food creator @KarissaEats has drawn over 14 million views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this raises a fair question: Does the growing focus on the \u201cK-shaped economy<\/a>\u201d explain this boom? As many economists see it, low- and middle-income shoppers are increasingly pulling back, as they face an affordability squeeze from health care to housing and education. But wealthier consumers are picking up the slack and then some, splurging on luxury and powering gross domestic product growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this scenario, premium food thrives because it\u2019s still affordable for the people who are doing fine, even as everyone else cuts back. That\u2019s partly true. But this explanation doesn\u2019t account for another shift \u2013 why affluent consumers are foregoing splurges on items like designer handbags in favor of premium groceries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why the virtue framing matters so much. If the question was purely about having money to spend, traditional luxury would be booming as well. It isn\u2019t. A case in point is LVMH, the conglomerate behind Louis Vuitton and Dior, which saw its fashion division\u2019s profits decline<\/a> 13% across all of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even consumers who are flush with disposable income need psychological permission to spend during anxious times. The premium food phenomenon is about why food has become the thing they choose \u2013 not about who can afford to splurge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when a smoothie becomes a status symbol, it tells us something about economic security more broadly. Food prices have climbed nearly 30% since 2019, outpacing 23% for overall consumer prices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>. For a family stretching a tight grocery budget, $22 isn\u2019t a smoothie. It\u2019s dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need for control<\/a>, the desire for identity<\/a>, the comfort of virtue permission<\/a> \u2014 these are universal. A single mother working two jobs feels the same craving for agency as the influencer filming her grocery haul. It\u2019s just that the purchases that satisfy those needs are increasingly constrained by price. The justification only works if you can afford your indulgence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s really in the cart<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next time you\u2019re in a grocery store and you reach for something a little more expensive than what you might need, you should pause \u2013 not to put it back, but to think about what you\u2019re actually reaching for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chances are it isn\u2019t really about the product. It\u2019s about the feeling of choosing something when the world feels out of hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A $22 smoothie is never just a smoothie. It\u2019s what people seek out when they need permission to feel OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University<\/a><\/em> and Patrick van Esch<\/a>, Associate Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui, Coastal Carolina University and Patrick van Esch, Coastal Carolina University Americans are skipping restaurant dinners, delaying car purchases and scouring for grocery deals. Amid tariff anxiety and broader stress over affordability, consumer confidence has dropped to levels not seen in over a decade, according to The Conference Board, a business think tank. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":42223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[826,5,8025,15306,42,827,10,25,27,828],"tags":[832,3364,224,885,891,886,860,742,702],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42224,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42222\/revisions\/42224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}