He said it was overpriced but bought it again from a different Erewhon so I assumed he liked it (Canadian understatement).
There's apparently a quality gap between locations. The pre-Waymo one was from Erewhon Grove and was freshly blended. Erewhon Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive premade a bunch of them and left them lying around for a while before selling.
My brother's theory is that Erewhon Grove customers are people who legitimately wanted a smoothie and Erewhon Beverly Hills customers just want photos with the smoothie since it was very popular on Instagram at the time.
Most surprising fact was despite being a licensed product, it was better than the best non-licensed smoothie (coconut cloud).
Licensing deals should make the product worse because the royalties cut into the product margin. The company cuts costs or doesn't take creative risks as a result. But somehow Erewhon resisted these pressures when designing the Hailey Bieber smoothie. We had a discussion about why that was the case but couldn't come up with an answer.