Prestige grocery may have found its cultural epicenter in Los Angeles through Erewhon, but Miami could be the concept’s next frontier.
Opened in the affluent neighborhood of Brickell in early May, Nude Miami is positioning itself as South Florida’s answer to the celebrity-favored organic grocer, pairing premium groceries, prepared foods and smoothies with a tight assortment of beauty and wellness products targeted at well-heeled shoppers. Dubbing itself “the healthiest grocery store in America,” the roughly 4,700-square-foot store opening immediately generated buzz with videos of queues outside the store and a suited bouncer managing the entrance circulating across Instagram and TikTok.
Nude Miami is the brainchild of co-founders Charles Amine, Harry Miller and Sebastian Lezcano, who envisioned a one-stop shop where health-conscious consumers could get everything from regenerative beef and organic produce to protein powders, skincare and body care. The trio plan to expand the concept, initially with additional locations across South Florida before entering other markets.
Nude Miami is the latest iteration of the luxury grocery phenomenon, which has spread from Los Angeles to the East Coast with concepts like Happier Grocer and Meadow Lane. The The Wall Street Journal describes these luxury grocers experiential destinations, drawing gen Z and millennial shoppers with a mix of premium food, wellness and social media appeal. They’ve become modern “third places” that blur the lines between grocery shopping, dining and socializing.
Nude Miami is opening as grocers increasingly expand beyond legacy personal care, creating greater opportunities for emerging brands in the grocery channel. The trend extends beyond natural food retailers like Erewhon, Whole Foods and Sprouts. Earlier this year, Kroger announced it’s rolling out redesigned beauty departments with trending brands such as Beauty of Joseon.
While comparisons to Erewhon are inevitable for Nude Miami—smoothies at both grocers are typically priced around $20, for example—the new grocer is charting its own course, especially within beauty and wellness, where Ezti Fricano, Nude Miami’s director of brand partnerships, brings firsthand experience after previously serving as category manager for health and beauty at Erewhon. Rather than replicating the Los Angeles grocer’s playbook, Fricano is building Nude Miami’s beauty and wellness assortment tailored to Miami’s customer base, climate and evolving wellness scene.
Currently, the grocer stocks about 200 beauty and wellness products from about 40 brands, including Code, Frtil, Sera & Mattina, Food Over Drugs, Anima Mundi, Agent Nateur, Clearstem and Flamingo Estate. “We have a much smaller department, so it’s much more curated,” says Fricano. She continues that customers “can get their groceries, their meal, a smoothie after their workout, then stock up on their supplements, skincare and haircare and have confidence that anything on our shelves has been specifically curated with their health in mind.”
Nude Miami applies stricter merchandising standards than many of its prestige grocery peers, including Erewhon. Across much of its assortment, it excludes ingredients such as seed oils, stevia, monk fruit, gums, artificial ingredients and natural flavors.
Rather than filling its shelves with nationally distributed labels broadly available elsewhere, Nude Miami is intentionally spotlighting emerging brands with limited retail distribution, particularly those headquartered in South Florida. Current examples include Miami-based performance nutrition brand Code and tallow-based haircare brand Vita Prima.
Nude Miami’s smaller footprint makes it a favorable environment for emerging brands to test retail. The grocer frequently discovers brands through farmers markets, social media and Miami’s entrepreneurial community. Today, its beauty and wellness assortment is split roughly evenly between established and emerging brands, though Fricano’s long-term ambition is for emerging brands to account for about 80% of it.
“We definitely are emphasizing or making an effort to make it an incubator for these new and emerging brands as much as we can,” she says. “We try really hard not to carry the brands that you can get anywhere.”
Roughly two-thirds of Nude Miami’s beauty and wellness department is devoted to supplements, including protein powders, collagen, minerals, immunity products and trending functional ingredients. The remaining third is dedicated to skincare and body care. Fricano says the merchandising gives the category outsized visibility within the store. Positioned adjacent to the grocer’s popular hot bar, the department features illuminated wooden shelving to create a premium shopping experience.
For now, beauty primarily functions as a basket-building category at Nude Miami rather than a primary traffic driver. Fricano says, “They’re coming in for their smoothie or to try the hot bar, but then they come across all of these cool CPG brands…they’ve already been using and didn’t know that they can buy here,”
That role could shift as Nude Miami gathers customer data on preferences. Products geared toward active lifestyles like supplements packaged in convenient single-serve sachets have demonstrated early momentum. Fricano names Code as one of the beauty and wellness department’s strongest-performing brands so far thanks to its honey-based pre-workout products and creatine. She expects proteins, collagen and workout-oriented nutrition to remain strong sellers due to Miami’s fitness-focused consumer base.
Beauty has significant room to grow at Nude Miami. Fricano points to the rapid rise of body care within premium grocery. At Erewhon, beauty has grown from roughly 20% of the health and wellness department five years ago to about 32% today, with body care driving much of the growth. Fricano envisions beauty becoming a far larger contributor to Nude Miami’s overall business, with the goal for the department to eventually fuel at least 10% of company sales.
