The Bizarre, One-Sided Feud Between Bethenny Frankel and a Family-Owned Hamptons Farmstand
“I thought I was the Beatles going there,” she says. In reality, she was more like Joy Villa.
Over the weekend, a video amassing over 2M views as of this writing started circulating on Twitter featuring former Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel having what appears like a meltdown after not being recognized by the owners of a family-owned country market in Bridgehampton.
“I don’t know if the doorman is going to know me, but we’ll find out,” Frankel says in the video, shot from multiple angles, as she storms the venue, telling the camera that she has high expectations for this trip. “I want a big reaction,” she declares. Then: “I’m looking for a reaction. I’ve moved tens of thousands of dollars of food here,” she records into her phone, camera 1. Then, further clarifying: “I want a big reaction,” this time to camera 2. The whole thing felt like a scene out of HBO’s The Comeback.
She steps inside, waves and smiles, then immediately turns to the camera disappointed. “Nothing,” she huffs. She mills about the store with her phone recording non-consensual video of employees restocking the shelves of the busy store. “Nobody cares…” the text overlaid on screen reads, intended to be read as self-deprecating.
Outraged, she steps outside to let off steam.
“I swear, I’m so defeated. I wish I was making it up. I can’t believe it. I think we have to cancel Round Swamp chicken salad. I’m actually in shock. I thought I would go in there and someone would, like, say ‘Hi.’ I can’t believe it!”
She then turns to random strangers nearby:
“Did you see that? You guys saw? I walked in there, every person at the store was talking to me and they’re like, ‘I’m buying this ‘cause of you.’ The people that work here… what’s wrong with me?”
Frankel then begins talking to a stranger who is inaudible.
“She said, ‘They don’t care.’ Say it out loud for the people in the back. They don’t care?”
The woman is suddenly audible, suggesting that perhaps they don’t know who Frankel is. “They know exactly who I am,” Frankel counters.
In a follow-up video, Frankel claims “about 20 people” stopped her to let her know they were there making purchases thanks to her recommendation (not one of them are shown in her video). “It was so shocking because I’ve easily moved thousands of product for them… easily,” she asserts once again.
“I thought I was the Beatles going there and it really did bum me out.”
Surely, this was parody. But, in fact, it was nothing of the sort.
The whole event was giving me flashbacks to Reese Witherspoon’s 2013 arrest video:
“Do you know my name?”
How did it begin? “It’s official, Round Swamp Farm has the best chicken salad in the Hamptons,” Frankel declared last summer on her wildly popular and profitable TikTok channel where she regularly offers her 2.1M+ followers cautionary tales, marketing classes and celebrity gossip, as well as as doling out advice (“if you don’t wear your hair in a microfiber turban after washing it to prevent unnecessary frizziness, you’re an animal,” she recently proclaimed) and giving viewers a window into her day, which can include everything from the mundane (making coffee) to the bizarre (doing skin care and eating a seafood boil out of a plastic bag on the floor of her hotel room).
She smeared the salad on some pumpernickel toast with cherry peppers and had what could be construed as an orgasm while chowing down. She posted several subsequent videos of her indulging in the chicken salad, which she repeatedly called “psychotically overpriced,” and before long she was crediting herself with making the country market “internationally famous,” calling herself the “Justin Bieber of Round Swamp Farm,” whatever that means, and saying she should have brought security with her while suggesting that she wanted access to “the back entrance” (there is no back entrance).
(For what it’s worth, Round Swamp Farm has been a Hamptons staple since it first opened to the public 50+ years ago, is a New York State Agricultural Society-recognized Bicentennial Farm and has been name-dropped for years by the likes of Martha Stewart and Ina Garten. But it’s not just them. “In-the-know Hamptons regulars have been stocking their kitchens here for years,” wrote Condé Nast Traveler in their review.)
On a recent episode of her podcast, Just B, Frankel continued her one-woman self-congratulations tour:
“I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, and I can’t believe I’m ever gonna say this, but I have made this one establishment in the Hamptons viral, to say the least.”
She offered a similar perspective back in June when she asserted that “everyone hates me in the Hamptons because I last year talked about certain items at Round Swamp and then the lines were even worse than they normally are.” I go to Round Swamp several times a week throughout the summer and have been for years. And while the lines have, indeed, gotten worse year to year, I would credit this more to the COVID boom than Bethenny Frankel’s TikTok. Plus, her claims are incredibly exaggerated. The “$30, $40” guacamole is, in reality, $15. Expensive, yes. Psychotically overpriced, hardly.
Her videos about Round Swamp have no doubt inspired folks to check out the place and perhaps purchase the chicken salad. Is there quantifiable data proving she’s moved tens of thousands in product? Of course not. It’s all her word against… well, no one, as Round Swamp hasn’t and likely wouldn’t comment on the subject due to the fact that they’re probably too busy operating their three locations. There’s also the reality that nobody who works there asked Frankel to put the place on blast. To expect a thank you for what was never a favor to begin with is a thankless pursuit.
Is Frankel delusional? Sure. She’s also proven, time and time again, that when she talks, people listen. “I wasn’t successful by any definition, and was broke and bouncing checks well into my late 30s,” she told the crowd while accepting MTV's 2022 Reality Royalty Award. Now in her 50s, Frankel has sold a company for a reported $100 million, is a multi-time New York Times-bestselling author, has been at the center of five reality shows and just last year, her first full year of embracing the status of "influencer," Frankel reportedly earned $3.2 million in endorsement deals, proof positive that she’s not shouting into the void.
“It just speaks to the level she has sunk to in terms of grasping for relevancy and engagement farming,” observes Yolanda Fister, a beloved Twitter presence who first migrated the Frankel video to Twitter (where I originally saw it).
“I think she has made the (somewhat correct) assessment that being publicly shameless is the path to online engagement, but it’s such low hanging fruit. The Bethenny we knew 10 years ago would have cringed watching that video, never mind actually doing it herself.”
I’ll always love Bethenny. I’ve always been endeared by her ability to be the Greek chorus-like commentator, who’s also down to clown. She called out the bullshit without acting like she was above it. In fact, she included herself in it. “What happened to us?” Frankel joked during a a Season 10 episode of RHONY in reference to the women’s outfits at a holiday party.
“We went through the Midtown tunnel and all took acid. Carole, what the fuck are you wearing? Luann, what the fuck are you wearing? Ramona, what the fuck are you wearing? Bethenny, what the fuck am I wearing?”
It’s this Bethenny, the one who never takes herself too seriously, that’s allowed her to thrive as an “everywoman” on social media with her DIY, no-make-up, minimalist editing style that fends off the appearance of a traditional influencer aesthetic. She regularly endorses drug store products and derides expensive things (like Round Swamp) despite the fact that she is a multi-millionaire. She’s regularly blasted for being out of touch (recently she declared that the Hamptons is “not only rich people… there are all kinds of people”) but her Trump-esque resilience and IDGAF attitude make her presence pervasive in a “can’t look away from a crash” way for some, while others have a genuine regard for her unfiltered, tell-it-like-it-is nature first groomed on Housewives.
She, along with Nene Leakes, is one of the Housewives that built Bravo to what it is today. She is my all-time favorite Housewife, insufferability be damned. I was an avid Skinnygirl drinker and find her shamelessness genuinely endearing in a landscape where so many people seek likeability. And she is, in many instances, unafraid to speak truth to power. Is she the everywoman that she purports to be? No. But that’s branding, baby. And she’s an expert on that, whether you like her or not. But it’s shenanigans like this that spotlight her Achilles Heel, AKA her lack of self-awareness. There’s no humor. No self-deprecation. You expect this video to end with a Newhart finale-like reveal, but it doesn’t. Instead, you’re left with a rich celebrity boldly lashing out at a family-owned and operated small business because they aren’t kissing her multi-million-dollar ring. It’s the kind of delusional behavior you wish RHONY was capturing so that you could cut to a talking head of Dorinda Medley or Carole Radziwill calling out such lunacy.
And for what it’s worth: I wouldn’t put the Round Swamp chicken salad (which is very good) on even my top 20 items from there. Chicken tenders, salsa, campfire cookies, detox salad, cinnamon rolls and truly the best blueberries I’ve ever tasted are just a few of my faves. It’s ridiculously expensive; it’s also ridiculously good and worth every indulgent penny. Maybe one of you reading this can tag me next time you go so that I can make a video claiming that I popularized this place and can have a meltdown in their parking lot when I go and they don’t bow at my feet. Kidding, of course. I’m not that delusional.