The email’s subject line was “Save $200 on caviar.” This, the email informed me, brought the price of a 125-gram tin of Petrossian Imperial Ossetra down to a bargain $399 — or more than I’d ever spent on a week’s worth of groceries for my family of four, probably ever.
Later, as I flipped on the new season of “The White Lotus” for some wealth voyeurism, I thought about that email again. We all know prices of, well, pretty much everything, are up — insert your own joke about ridiculously expensive eggs here — and I wondered what the market was like for luxury foods outside of restaurants.
Are people in Denver really buying $400 tins of caviar?
To find out, I went to the source. Literally, as in Pete Marczyk’s Marczyk Fine Foods, which is where the caviar email originated.
“We have seen a shift,” he said of luxury item sales over the past year. “We have seen volume pick up on our higher priced items.” (For the record, Marczyk said the caviar sale was an attempt to unload leftover units from the holidays.)
Economists call it the lipstick effect. When we’re nervous about the economy and spending, we cut back on big purchases and instead splurge on little luxuries. While we may not be able to afford restaurant-level prices right now, we can try to recreate that fine dining experience at home for less. Plus, you don’t have to tip or pay any kitchen surcharge fees.
Not everyone has $1,000 to spend on dinner, the rationale goes, but we might have $100.
“People still celebrate, and they want to do something special. They can have the world-class experience, at a price that they could never touch at a restaurant. Wouldn’t even come close,” Marczyk said.
At my local Wally’s Quality Meats butcher shop in Westminster, where I once bought a tomahawk steak for around $75 (it was for a cookbook photoshoot, and I was reimbursed) and my husband bought us nearly $50 worth of steaks (not reimbursed, and so I swiftly switched to store-brand cheese to nullify his splurge), sales are also up year over year.
Wally’s owner Justin Herd, who also owns Park Hill’s The Local Butcher, said they haven’t seen as big of a post-holiday dropoff as they typically experience this time of year. For specialty grocers, December is the bang-up month, when people go big on king crab legs and filet mignon for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In January, we tighten our belts, with many of us restricting both our spending and our calories. But this year, Herd said, they haven’t seen that large of a decline.
“I think itap still cheaper to eat at home than eat at a restaurant. People still want to eat good food and not spend $90-plus on a steak that you can get at the shop for $30,” Herd said.
This seems to track globally. A Deloitte survey in 2024 found that 34 percent of consumers who’d made a splurge purchase in the past month chose to treat themselves to a fancy food or beverage. And sure, while indulging ourselves with a $400 tin of caviar isn’t exactly akin to buying a tube of lipstick for most of us, the sentiment is valid. Even I go back to Tillamook cheddar and Philadelphia cream cheese sometimes.
For its second location, Leven Deli Co. opened Leven Supply in January, a hybrid restaurant-grocery-wine-shop. There, it sells house-made breads, sauces and sides, as well as specialty goods like pistachio butter, tinned fish and black truffle oil in addition to a roster of sandwiches and pizza. Becky Fairchild, director of marketing for Leven Brands, said that they predicted the shift in sales from solely restaurant-based to incorporating more retail, and that sales for those grocery items have been even better than they anticipated.
“Retail as a whole has surpassed our expectations, especially with the accessible wine price point and in-house Leven-made items,” she said. “We’ve seen guests happily spend $300-$400 just on retail, proving the demand for specialty, local grocery items is high.”
Independent, higher-end markets and butcher shops are prime spots for these sorts of splurges. But even at Marczyk’s Fine Foods, a store not exactly known for bargain shopping, the super big-ticket items aren’t their focus. In fact, Marczyk said they’ve scaled down the number of luxury items they regularly stock since opening the store in 2002, operating mostly on special orders for those high-end items. Their focus is on carrying the best stuff at good prices, he said, not necessarily stuffing Denverites on truffles, dry-aged beef and, yes, caviar.
“You want a piece of fish, you want a gorgeous steak, a nice roast — you’re going to have a good experience with our food. It will cost you a lot less (than at a restaurant). We’re not perceived as a low-cost provider of anything, but itap still a pretty good value,” Marczyk said.
As for those $399 tins of caviar in that email?
“Yeah, we sold them,” he said.
