{"id":354085,"date":"2026-09-23T00:30:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354085\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T00:30:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:30:31","slug":"rye-by-martin-auers-60-loaf-of-bread-goes-viral-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354085\/","title":{"rendered":"RYE by Martin Auer’s $60 loaf of bread goes viral in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — Have you heard about the new shop in downtown Manhattan that only sells one type of bread? It\u2019s been written up by Grub Street<\/a>, The Infatuation<\/a>, the New York Post<\/a>, Fox News<\/a> and more. It\u2019s all over Instagram<\/a> and TikTok<\/a>. And if you know one thing about the product, you\u2019ll know this: At RYE by Martin Auer, the bread costs $60 per loaf.<\/p>\n

Is it special? Eh. It tastes like rye bread. New York City has many bakeries that serve up perfectly good bread; this is one of them. If you bite into this loaf expecting an experience commensurate with the price, you will be disappointed. <\/p>\n

That goes double for locals. If you\u2019re a New Yorker and you\u2019ve lived in the city for a while, it won\u2019t be hard for you to find better bread. (You know a spot, I\u2019m sure.) The RYE loaf\u2019s crust isn\u2019t particularly crusty, the crumb can be a bit gummy, and the sourdough tang can be subtle to the point of undetectability. Still, it\u2019s better than supermarket bread \u2014 a notch above the $10 sourdough loaf at Wegman\u2019s, up the street, which is not exactly cheap.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not a New Yorker \u2014 if all you know of the town is what you\u2019ve been seeing on social media \u2014 then it\u2019s easy to see why you might want to try this bread. There\u2019s no shortage of stores here that get by fine on tourists alone, and Auer\u2019s bakery has been catnip to influencers, who, on the two times I visited, made up the majority of the customers in store. <\/p>\n

Auer attracted those content creators in an elegantly simple way, just by charging a ridiculous price for his product. (See also: Meadow Lane<\/a>, the absurdly expensive Tribeca grocery store with a strikingly similar interior design philosophy that opened to similar viral hype last year.) It wasn\u2019t enough for his bread to be merely expensive; New Yorkers are used to paying double digits for a loaf, and the days of artisanal bakers taking pride in affordability are definitively over. The first-rate rye loaf from Danish chain Ole & Steen will run you about $12, which is more or less the same price that Auer\u2019s sourdough rye costs in his hometown of Graz, Austria. <\/p>\n

Ironically, one of the bakers still taking pride in affordability is Auer himself, back in Austria: He has a store on Mariahilferstrasse in Graz that sells yesterday\u2019s bread<\/a> at half price and gives all the proceeds to charity. Since the rye lasts for a week or more, that\u2019s a very effective way to feed the price-conscious and to honor the tradition of the Martin Auer bakery, which dates back to when his grandfather, Martin Auer IV, set up the business in 1936. Today there are 43 locations, mostly in and around Graz, including a 70,000-square-foot custom-built headquarters featuring not only a massive bakery but also a grain mill, coffee roaster, office and employee academy. <\/p>\n

When planning his New York outpost, Auer decided to charge far, far more than Austrian prices \u2014 enough so that the price has become the loaf\u2019s defining feature. In conversation, it\u2019s always \u201cthe $60 loaf of bread\u201d rather than \u201cMartin Auer\u2019s sourdough rye\u201d or anything else. <\/p>\n

The theory behind his gambit dates back at least as far as 1899, when Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class and posited the existence of a class of goods for which demand rises as the price goes up. A Ferrari Testarossa or a crocodile Birkin is desirable because it\u2019s expensive: To have one is to communicate to people that you have the wherewithal to spend lots of money.<\/p>\n

Can a loaf of bread play that role? It\u2019s a bit of a stretch, but it\u2019s not impossible. Auer\u2019s rye loaf has an idiosyncratic crust: It looks a bit like a massively upsized sugar cookie. If you have one sitting out on your waterfall kitchen island<\/a>, there\u2019s a decent chance your guests will recognize it. Alternatively, if you\u2019re just buying the bread for your own personal consumption, $60 is almost a reasonable amount to pay for the frisson of splurging on something \u2014 roughly the price of a blowout, or a high-end glass of Champagne. To knowingly overspend can counterintuitively provide catharsis when times are tough. And for the many very rich denizens of downtown, including those who inhabit the $18 million<\/a> apartments in the same building as the bakery, $60 is something they\u2019d barely notice. <\/p>\n

If you look at this loaf of bread as a loaf of bread, you\u2019re making a category error. The thing that people are spending their $60 on doesn\u2019t belong under goods, it belongs under services. You\u2019re here for the experience, not the rye, which remains unavailable on DoorDash or Grubhub. <\/p>\n

The Martin Auer experience is undeniably high-end, with space and light reminiscent of a $3,000 Aman hotel room. At Wegman\u2019s, you have to hunt for an unsliced loaf and then check yourself out at a machine. At Ole & Steen, you\u2019ll stand in a line and get rung up by a bored shop assistant. At RYE by Martin Auer, you\u2019ll enter an ethereal world of luxury greige and be greeted by an assistant who will give you the whole spiel \u2014 where the flour comes from, how much time it takes to bake a single loaf, how many years (57) the same sourdough starter has been going. If you order a half loaf or a quarter loaf it will be cut on the counter in front of you, with a Martin Auer branded bread knife, on a Martin Auer branded bread board. It will be wrapped in lovely paper and sealed with a white-on-white Martin Auer sticker. It will be placed in a gorgeously designed heavyweight brown paper bag. It will be reverently transported to the checkout, where you will be rung up after you decide whether you\u2019d also like to order a glass of Austrian wine, or maybe some kombucha on tap. <\/p>\n

The problem is that the model doesn\u2019t really lend itself to repeat business. Lots of influencers come once, thanks to the bakery\u2019s demonstrated ability to drive content views. Few, however, are likely to come twice: they\u2019ve already got what they came for. As for the bread-curious, after they\u2019ve tried it once, they\u2019re unlikely to become devoted. ($60 per loaf makes for an expensive habit.) Besides, everyone seems to be cutting back on carbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the sourdough rye itself just isn\u2019t special enough to become some kind of international phenomenon. Auer told Grub Street that he came to New York because his grandmother had always dreamed of immigrating here; that may prove to be an insufficient basis for a successful business model.<\/p>\n

Outside the store is a set of stanchions holding up the Martin Auer version of a velvet rope \u2014 this one\u2019s roughly-hewn, made from raw hemp. The idea is that no one wants the store to get overcrowded, so it\u2019s better for would-be patrons to wait in line<\/a>. So far, however, that hasn\u2019t been a problem. The stanchions remain purely aspirational. <\/p>\n

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n