The juice is loose, and it’s likely headed for NoHo.
Sources say Erewhon — the cult Los Angeles grocery store known for its Hailey Bieber strawberry slurpies and eye-popping price tags for simple field greens — is opening imminently on Bleecker and Broadway.
The location will take over the PlantShed cafe and florist at 644 Broadway, which is tucked inside a Kith women’s boutique that sells $1,500 jackets to the city’s most stylish.
“I stopped in my tracks,” said Chandler Forsythe, director of operations and community at the NoHo Business Improvement District, who spotted an Erewhon canvas awning at the store on Thursday. “That’s huge.”
As part of his job at the community non-profit, Forsythe takes daily walks across the district, which includes Mercer St., Broadway, Lafayette, Houston and Astor Place. “I was surprised and excited,” he said. “Knowing the cultural cachet that Erewhon has, from a community perspective, it’s really huge for us.”
Forsythe said he’s heard from district property mavens that the shop will be an Erewhon smoothie pop-up and cafe on a long-term lease, “with plans to be there permanently.” (Neither Kith nor Erewhon responded to The Post’s inquiries for comment at the time of publication.)
The move mirrors Erewhon’s baby step into New York last September, when it opened a smoothie bar inside Kith Ivy, a private member’s club with a $36,000 buy-in. The new address, sources say, will make Erewhon a public NYC hotspot for the first time.
Forsythe told The Post that Erewhon seems to be chomping at its organic vegan bit.
“Kith flipped the space immediately when PlantShed closed last month, and they started doing construction immediately after it closed. You knew something was going on” — but not what was going on, he said, because the windows were quickly blocked out.
Forsythe told The Post that there’s already chatter among NoHo residents — where the median apartment is $3.2 million — about serpentine (and super-loud) lines invading the neighborhood once the alleged Erewhon opens.
“It has to be insane, right?” he asked, laughing. “The popularity level of Erewhon smoothies are insane. We’re no strangers to lines, but this will be another level. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the initial few weeks or even months, the wait for a smoothie would be an hour.”
“To be fair, Kith does a wonderful job respecting their neighbors, and they make a real effort to manage and keep lines under control,” he added. “But I know people are wary of more lines coming. It’s just a part of downtown culture now.”
But not necessarily a public part. After getting “caught” on social media yesterday, Erewhon appears to have swiftly rolled up its awnings today. When a Post photographer visited the site this morning, there wasn’t a trace of the trendy grocery store.
“Oops,” Forsythe joked of his big smoothie scoop. “I guess we all know it’s coming now.”
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