Trendy and undeniably pricey L.A. favorite Erewhon is expanding, and the upscale supermarket is officially opening its 11th location in 2025 in Glendale.
According to the L.A. Times, the grocery company—perhaps best known for its celeb-endorsed $20 smoothies—bought the former Virgil’s Hardware Home Center at 520 North Glendale Avenue back in March of this year for $12.4 million.
Here’s what else we know so far: Although the building—located just south of the 134—offers 24,000-square-feet of space, Erewhon will only use about 18,000 square feet. It will then offer potential tenants the chance to lease the remaining square footage, similar to the setup of the company’s recent Pasadena location, which boasts a daycare inside. The L.A. Times also reports that the Glendale location will have an on-site cafe and outdoor seating.
Erewhon has earned a bit of a cult-like status in recent years; it’s a more-financially-exclusive-than-Whole-Foods status symbol for locals and a near-mythological place to out-of-towners thanks to its parody in the Netflix series You. And it’s a pretty notable get for Glendale, which more than a decade ago—just a few years after the arrival of the Americana at Brand—was still thought of as “the boring city between Burbank and Pasadena with nothing to do.”
Angelenos are likely already familiar with the uber-popular concept, but just in case here’s a refresher: The upscale supermarket was founded in Boston back in 1966 by Japanese immigrants Michio and Aveline Kushi. The origin of the chain’s name tells you a bit more about its ethos: In the Samuel Butler 1872 satirical novel Erewhon, Erewhon (which is an anagram of the word “nowhere”) is an ideal society where people are expected to take care of their own health and might actually get prosecuted if and when getting sick.
The real-world shopping mecca, which currently boasts 10 supermarkets in L.A., is filled with the sorts of organic and healthy products that the citizens of Erewhon would probably flock to—and deep-pocketed Angelenos certainly do.