A New York City TikTok influencer’s critical video about a Tannersville supermarket has drawn millions of views and fierce backlash, opening a broader debate over food access in Greene County’s mountain towns.

Catherine Ebs, who has 1.6 million TikTok followers, posted the since-deleted video on Friday, July 3, documenting a trip to the Tops Friendly Market grocery store in the village while on vacation. Thousands of viewers accused her of being out of touch with the realities of grocery shopping in rural communities.

Ebs said in the video that she went to Tops after Sam’s Club canceled a grocery order she had placed in advance. 

“We are in this teeny, tiny, little town in the mountains and we’re going to try and hopefully get all of our groceries for the next four days,” she said from the parking lot.

Inside, Ebs expressed dissatisfaction with the selection. She said the store lacked 100% beef hot dogs and at one point said she didn’t “see any normal eggs.”

“Their fruit does not look good, like all their fruit looks bad,” Ebs said.

Ebs laughed throughout the video and twice said she felt as though she were in a “simulation.”

“Lowkey, we should just order out, because this is crazy,” she said.

The controversy has also drawn attention to a longstanding problem in the Catskills: limited access to affordable, healthy food, particularly for residents without cars. Feeding America estimates that 12.1% of Greene County residents, or 5,750 people, experience food insecurity.

The backlash quickly spread beyond Ebs’ original post. Hundreds of response videos followed, with some creators calling her tone-deaf and arguing the Tops resembled an ordinary grocery store. Others said her criticism reflected legitimate concerns about selection and food quality. 

One response video had more than 3 million views and nearly 500,000 likes on TikTok by Thursday, July 9, along with more than 200,000 likes on Instagram. It was posted by Jay, the founder of the Indian-inspired snack brand Daadi Snacks, who uses only his first name.

Jay has 1.8 million TikTok followers and 867,000 on Instagram, where he often critiques what he calls “influencer culture.”

In the video, he criticized Ebs for being “too good to shop somewhere she found organic celery and ribeye steak.” 

Jay said in an interview that he was surprised by the response.

“So many of the comments on my post are from people that talk about how they can barely afford buying groceries and how absurd it is to see something like that when she’s buying ribeye steak and organic produce, and complaining as if she’s being forced to shop at CVS or something for groceries,” he said. 

Ebs said in an email on Thursday that she never intended to offend local residents.

“When the video was posted, the focus was on the frustrations of a difficult travel day,” she said.

Ebs said her family had faced several setbacks, including three canceled grocery orders, before arriving at Tops. She nevertheless stood by her criticism of the store’s produce section, which she described as “sparse” and, “in some cases, poor in quality.”

“It is concerning that this is considered a normal selection for many,” she said. “From an advocacy standpoint, there is clearly a healthy food shortage in rural towns that needs to be addressed.”

Tops Friendly Markets joined the conversation Tuesday, July 7, with a playful series of Instagram posts documenting a foray into “the grocery store simulation.” The posts highlighted items sold by the chain, including “normal eggs,” fresh fruit, and beef hot dogs. 

The grocery chain, headquartered in Erie County, operates over 150 stores across New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. The Tannersville store is one of three Tops grocery stores in Greene County and one of two supermarkets in the village, the other being the Country-K Kosher Supermarket, also on Main Street.

Outside Tannersville, the only other supermarket in Greene County’s mountain towns is Jim’s Great American in Prattsville. Down the mountain, another option is Hannaford Supermarket in Cairo.

For many residents, reaching a full-service grocery store requires traveling miles through mountain communities with few public transportation options.

The village of Hunter and the hamlet of Elka Park are about 4 miles from the Tannersville Tops, while Lanesville is about 9 miles away and Platte Clove about 7 miles away.

The distances are greater in Windham. The town center is about 11 miles from Great American, more than 13 miles from Tops, and more than 16 miles from Hannaford.

Without a car, walking from central Windham to Great American, the nearest supermarket, would take nearly four hours along roads largely without sidewalks. In Hunter, a walk from the village to the Tops would take more than 90 minutes.

For Hunter-raised TikTok creator Iliana Torres, the problem is familiar. 

“One of my big things is I always talk about food deserts,” Torres said. “I had a neighbor who died of starvation. One of the most important things to me, growing up, is talking about that, especially in the Catskills area.”

Torres, who posts as Iliana Upstate on TikTok and Instagram, has nearly 30,000 followers across both platforms and focuses on issues impacting upstate communities. She grew up in public housing in the village of Hunter before moving to Tannersville, and now lives in the Albany area.

In a response video that had received more than a million views on TikTok by Thursday, Torres said that despite Ebs’ delivery, she largely agreed that Catskills grocery stores needed better-quality food and more options.

She said that she remembered having to go as far as Kingston for essentials as a child.

“We don’t go to Tops usually, unless it’s like a necessity or we’re getting something super basic because, for some reason, they just don’t really invest a lot of money into the Tops on the mountain,” Torres said. “I don’t know what the reason is for that. I don’t know where that comes from.”

She said she was glad Ebs’ video had brought wider attention to an issue she regularly discusses online.

“I’m glad that she said it, honestly,” she said. “I talk about it all the time on my page.” 

Several community programs in Hunter seek to address that need, including a food pantry at Kaaterskill United Methodist Church, and a community fridge in the village offering free food items 24 hours a day.

The fridge, operated by the local nonprofit Phoenix Web Collective, opened in 2022. On Wednesday afternoon, the self-serve space off Main Street was stocked with pantry staples, fresh vegetables, and baked goods, with signs in English, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

Mars Abrahamsen, executive director of the Phoenix Web Collective, said people travel from communities across the mountain towns to use it.

“Some of them come from Lexington,” she said. “Some people pick up and bring food to the fixed-income housing in Prattsville, some of them pick up for the apartments in Haines Falls and in Tannersville. A lot of people that use it are in the fixed-income housing buildings in Hunter that are across the street and on Maple Avenue. A lot of senior folks use it.”

The fridge is part of the larger Greene County Food Security Coalition, which connects food pantries around the county.

“When there’s an excess in one of the places, a patron will get the excess and bring it and distribute it to the places that can use it,” Abrahamsen said. 

Abrahamsen described free fridges and food pantries as small fixes to a much larger problem, linking food insecurity to limited transportation and gentrification.

“Maybe there will be more community fridges, that would be awesome,” Abrahamsen said when asked whether any good could come from Ebs’ viral video. “But the main issue is transportation. Everyone has tried to rally so many times over the years and the people with money don’t care. They are trying to turn this area just completely into a resort and push everyone who has long-term, year-round housing here out.”

Ebs, too, said the response had changed how she viewed the issue.

“We have always given back to our online community and our local town, especially during times where there is a food scarcity but this opened my eyes to how large it really is,” she said. “If anything, I learned that now, more than ever, we need to be advocating and helping families get the healthy foods they deserve.”

Connor Greco is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Windham, Hunter, and surrounding Greene County communities. Send correspondence to connor@theoverlooknews.com.