Before I begin this isn’t meant to defame or diss the brands, this is for educational purposes only.

Where does the 19$ Strawberry come from?

So like many people on social media, I kept seeing “Viral $19 strawberry” posts about a certain strawberry being sold in Erewon, LA. A store that sells a lot of luxury grocery items. While I’ve been to LA a few times I don’t think I’ve ever been to the supermarket and probably will never end up going, at least while I’m still living in Japan. However, I became really curious about this strawberry and its buzz marketing, particularly since I never heard of Elly Amai Kyoto before.

While it is very common for luxury strawberries to be sold in Japan for high prices this marketing technique is usually not for common purposes – as luxury fruits are usually given as gifts or special occasions rather than for regular consumption.
The strawberry is sold by Elly Amai, a business that currently sells strawberries and musk melons from Japan. They have Kyoto in their name but I haven’t heard of this brand in Kyoto (I’ve been living in the city for almost 3 years now), but if I were to guess the owner of the brand likes Kyoto rather than them actually being based there. Funnily enough, the brand name has caused some confusion amongst Japanese bloggers, as they think the viral strawberries are from Kyoto – they are not as I will explain. 

Elly Amai – the distributor but not the source.

I saw someone on Reddit share the flyer/brand explainer that’s being used to promote the strawberry.

What caught my eye were two aspects of this flyer
1. The flag not actually being where Kyoto is in Japan
2. The claim that “organic strawberries are rare accounting for only 0.002% of Japan’s total strawberry harvest”

The second claim seemed suspicious to me, there are many organic fruit farms in Japan and you can easily find an organic strawberry farm to pick strawberries from, especially during the popular strawberry-picking season from late winter to early spring.
This site lists 153 organic strawberry farms in Japan

So I decided to search that claim word for word and came across another site that has it.

Anhay Ichigo – The real strawberry source

This site, Anhay Ichigo, a certified organic strawberry farm based in Tochigi also shares that claim word for word. Coincidence? Nope, read on.

At first, the site felt a bit suspicious since a number of the links didn’t work on my web browser. On mobile, some of the links worked but didn’t link correctly to their business sites for example their Instagram page linked to some architecture firm in Nagoya. This made me more suspicious, however after searching for the direct company information, I found legitimate information about their company as well as their real Instagram page. 

On their Instagram page, I saw a post of “individual strawberries”  which looked similar to those that are sold at Erewhon.
Then in their LA stories highlight you could see that those reposts of people buying the strawberries at Erewhon tagging Elly Amai, bringing everything to a circle.

I also found a Today piece that specifies that Elly Amai does get the strawberries from Tochigi but does not name the farm (which isn’t quite fair in my opinion).

From Anhay Ichigo’s website, we can see that they sell packs of strawberries for 3000 yen (20 USD).

It isn’t disclosed how many are in a pack but it’s likely more than one, based on how they sell it at Japanese farmers markets.

I do not know who Elly Amai is or whether it is the same person or people behind Anhay Ichigo but one thing can be said for sure is that Elly Amai imports strawberries from Anhay Ichigo’s farm in Tochigi.

I do hope that Anhay Ichigo improves its online website and e-commerce site so that it is less suspicious and that people interested in the strawberries can directly buy from them, rather than letting other companies take a certain % of earnings. The farm is owned by a mixed Japanese female entrepreneur Juliza Suzuki, so if you want to support a woman-owned business in Japan be sure to contact her and buy from her farm!

As for whether it is a ripoff, as the previously mentioned Today’s article mentions the cost of express delivery of fresh fruit is rather expensive. It isn’t disclosed how much of the earnings go back to the farm but I hope it’s a fair amount. One thing for sure is that this avenue of influencer marketing is one to watch, where a common commodity in Japan becomes a luxury item overseas. This definitely isn’t the first product to do this (we can see it similarly with the matcha craze) and won’t be the last.