It's definitely a tong-type thing. You squeeze the sides together and the circle at the bottom widens.
I would have removed hard boiled eggs from the water with it but it's not kitchen-related.
You use it with food but not in a kitchen or store so I think it must be a utensil of some kind. If you hold it upside down, you could use it to hold an ice cream cone so your hands don't get dirty but that would be silly and a cotton candy cone holder would be incredibly specific for an item that one doesn't eat often.
If it's not a utensil, it might be used to pick fruit so, in keeping with our major theme, I'll go with cherry-picker.