It wasn’t even 8:30 on a recent morning when a shopper emptied his basket of dinner ingredients onto the counter of the Farm & Forage Market in Southampton: two king crab legs, two bags of frozen dumplings, two packages of ramen noodles and a bag of dried sea kelp.
The cash register rang up an already eye-popping tally before the customer realized he had forgotten the caviar. He tossed a jar of it onto the counter. The grand total was $1,860.
“I’ll put that on your tab, right?” asked Jonathan Bernard, owner of the tiny, tidy store. The shopper, a private chef who works in a home nearby, nodded and noted he would be back later for truffles.
In New York City, Zohran Mamdani just won the Democratic nomination for mayor after running on a platform that included city-run grocery stores to help struggling residents. Yet a $1,195 helicopter ride-away in the Hamptons, signs of extreme affluence have long been celebrated, at the Pilates studio where exercisers in designer athleisure compete for spots in $50 classes, on the beach where $20 smoothies can be delivered to sunbathers, on restaurant menus with $100 salads — and now at the grocery store.
This summer, an arms race among gourmet groceries has emerged with new specialty stores opening and longtime favorites expanding or adding new items — along with new, higher prices — to their shelves. Some of the big-ticket items top even the Hamptons’ much maligned $100-a-pound lobster salad, that debuted several years ago.
A top competitor is the specialty musk melon on offer at Farm & Forage. Imported from Japan, it is sprung from tenderly cared-for vines. It sells for as much as $400. (To the undiscerning eye, it looks identical to a regular, grocery store cantaloupe.)
“It is super delicate,” said Mr. Bernard, the store owner, gently lifting a single beige orb from its customized box. “Instead of five or six melons on a vine, they’ll cut off flowers and just grow one. All the sweetness and energy go into that item.”
Social media influencers have taken notice of not just the pricey melons but also the clamor for specialty items generally, creating new demand as customers as well as private chefs (armed with nondisclosure agreements keeping them from identifying their clients) flock to the grocery stores.
Bethenny Frankel, the former reality TV star and entrepreneur, dropped into Farm & Forage recently and sampled the fancy fare, posting on Instagram that “we have a situation going on in the Hamptons — savage gourmet market wars.”
“This eggplant caponata makes me want to do naughty things in my own home,” she said in another post as she held a fork-full of the $15 dish to her mouth.
The video is titled “Round Swamp Who?” — a reference to a different gourmet grocery, Round Swamp Farm, whose outlet in Bridgehampton during lunchtime last week was swarmed by shoppers digging into the grab-and-go bonanza of prepared meals stacked six-deep in large store coolers. Popular items were $17.50 containers of curry chicken salad; $30.21 Mexican street corn sprout salad and $22 chicken fingers with $15 chipotle mayonnaise dip.
At the Loaves & Fishes Foodstore in Sagaponack, home of the $100-a-pound lobster salad, the shelves are lined with chunky halibut fish salad, perfect deviled eggs, 36 different sauces, glistening plum tarts, cappuccino crunch cold brew coffee with homemade salted toffee and hot fudge ice cream, mousses, jams, marmalades and jars of specialty veal baby food.
Almost nothing is marked with a price tag.
“We don’t do little signs,” said Karina Forrest, manager of the store, which is owned by her mother, Sybille van Kempen.
The store, which locals have nicknamed “Thieves and Fishes” for its high prices that inched up even further this year because of new organic ingredients, was built on a European model based on “facilitating a relationship between the customer and the counter person,” Ms. Forrest said.
“They’re the person you ask, what are the ingredients and how much does it cost,” she said. “The food speaks for itself in so many ways.”
Just down the street, the Sagaponack General Store is making a splash after its long-awaited reopening in May following a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renovation.
Mindy Gray, wife of Jonathan Gray, the billionaire president of the investment firm Blackstone, said she bought the store, which got its start selling sundries to farmers in the late 1800s, when it came up for sale during the Covid pandemic.
“This store really has had a sentimental place in our family’s life,” she said. “It was the first place my kids could walk alone and bike alone. The idea if it didn’t exist really started haunting me.”
She moved the store and, after securing federal permission, its adjoining post office 15 feet back from the street to make room for a replica of the front porch that existed in 1878. She searched the country for 1,500 old bronze post office boxes, restored and installed them to replace the P.O. boxes that had been at the site.
“You could spend your whole life doing this,” one frustrated postal customer hollered as he leaned on his cane and fiddled with the old-fashioned combination dial. Other visitors were more enthusiastic.
“Merch!” one young woman squealed when she entered the General Store and saw stacks of clothing with its rooster logo including $159 hoodies and tote bags ranging from $65 to $142, all of which have become popular among a certain Hamptons set.
Shoppers lounged on the front porch, dogs perched at their feet; others perused the $16.95 cartons of pale pink oyster mushrooms and the $8 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Some sat on benches in the backyard near a parking lot lined with beige and white gravel so clean it looked like each nugget had been hand wiped.
“I’m very impressed with what she’s done, but she has a lot of resources and can put out a very fancy neighborhood-like product,” said Tony Schlesinger, a retired lawyer from Brooklyn who spends much of the summer in the Hamptons.
Mr. Schlesinger said his wife had stopped by earlier in the morning for a latte but the parking lot looked too jammed to enter.
His wife had counted 27 cars in a back parking lot, plus a dozen more out front. But, he noted, “I’m a slave to Round Swamp. Their prices are insane but it’s still cheaper than going out.”
Matthew Maitland was dropping off $7.99 cartons of his cashew, date, coconut oil and hempseed blend of plant-based milk called Wholy M!lk to be stocked on the shelves. He bartered with the staff for a free rotisserie chicken that he picked at with his fingers as he sat out back.
“I was going to buy a hoodie,” he said, “but I’m on a free-rotisserie-chicken budget.”
Mr. Maitland has been visiting the area since childhood and said he was not shocked by the proliferation of fancy food stores. “Everyone was driving their Range Rovers, staying in $100,000 rentals and eating cold cuts,” he said. “It just felt like a matter of time.”
Owners of the gourmet groceries acknowledge a bit of rivalry among the group but each say they serve their own niche. For example, nearly everything on the shelves of Amber Waves Farms, known for its summer rolls coated in edible flowers, is grown in the fields behind its store in Amagansett or nearby, a vestige of the area’s rich farming past.
Katie Baldwin, co-founder of the nonprofit operation, which includes children’s education programs as well as farmer training and food pantry programs, said Hamptons visitors like to gasp at the sticker shock of groceries instead of thinking about what goes into making quality food.
“We can talk about labor and what it’s like to run a business on the East End of Long Island and how expensive that is,” she said. “I wish we can get that message out on social media to rise above the snippety, ‘I can’t believe your lobster salad is $99’ stuff.”
Not everyone in the Hamptons shops at gourmet food stores.
Three local surf instructors waiting on a Bridgehampton beach for young surfers who were no-shows for surf camp said the only time they shopped at fancy grocery stores was when their clients were picking up the tab.
“It’s like nobody out here cooks,” said James McMahon, one of the instructors. “They have either chefs or they eat at all these nice places. These are the richest people in the world.”
Dionne Searcey is a Times reporter who writes about wealth and power in New York and beyond.
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