I do buy grocery brands often when it comes to certain items like sugar, pasta, salt, water, flour, veggies, rice cakes, bread crumbs, coconut milk, rice, nuts, coconut oil, spices, etc… at my regular grocery stores like Giant and Acme. Also, I look for sales on the brands I love, and stock up.

However, some of the stores I love specialize in their own brands, such as Aldi or Trader Joe’s. In fact, that’s what they’re all about. High quality, and good value… one kind of most everything (usually theirs). What a time saver to go into a store, and only have one choice of something. For example… Mayonnaise. Take ours, or leave it.

My kids are far more brand loyal than I am… so we very often have blind taste tests. One item I can verify is “best in brand” are the cups of Kraft Instant Mac and Cheese. NOTHING comes close! I am also a very loyal detergent buyer for laundry (Persil), dishwasher (Cascade), and dish (Dawn). My cats will complain if I don’t buy them Fancy Feast wet cat food, and they will pee and crap on my carpets if I don’t get them Tidy Cats clumping style litter.

(Taste tests can be fun)

Surprisingly, great off brand products are the chocolate covered mint cookies from Acme (think Girl Scouts), most graham crackers, eggs and marshmallows. Where as Hershey chocolate is distinct from any other chocolate bar (good or bad). Luckily, my favorite hazelnut creamer is the store brand from Giant (because I’m addicted).

Trader Joe’s chocolate bars (3 in a pack, at the checkout line), are always great, especially for the price! However, their regular bread loafs aren’t my favorite (I don’t really love their bakery items much, to be honest)… but their hand made tortillas are fantastic. I find their bakery items less than the freshest, and made with something that gives them a longer shelf life.

There are a lot of my favorite items at Trader Joe’s including: Coffee, olive oil, mango/peach yogurt 6 packs, most of their cheeses, dolmahs in a can, all jams and jellies, frozen veggies, frozen dumplings, frozen Indian food (like tikka masala), tortilla and pita chips, salsa, frozen scallops and shrimp, chia seeds, nuts, dried fruit, maple syrup, butter, sour cream… you know what, I really can go on and on.

Aldi (a store owned by the same company as Trader Joe’s) is a lower frill version of Trader Joe’s. However, the items are mostly just as good, and they even have “special finds” that come in all the time. Here is a great place to find organic choices, meat, fish, chicken, turkey etc… and some speciality deli items like sausages from Germany, and chocolate from Europe. A few aisles are dedicated to things they got a great deal on like bird feeders, pots and pans, sheets and blankets, aroma therapy oils, gloves, shoes, car seat warmers, massage wands, make up brush sets… you just never know till you go.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the great Dollar Tree store items that save me hundreds of dollars every year! Combine a dollar store item with a coupon if you’re lucky, and it’s almost free!

1. Helium Balloons. No one is better!
2. Batteries (Huge savings!)
3. Gift bags, boxes and paper
4. Art supplies like popsicle sticks, google eyes, sparkles, stickers, coloring books, paints
5. Toothpaste (brand names)
6. Plackers
7. Makeup remover cotton pads
8. Rubbing alcohol
9. Hydrogen peroxide
10. Sponges
11. Kitchen glasses (glass)
12. Baby wipes
13. Hand lotion and hand sanitizer
14. Flashlights
15. Holiday decorations
16. Plant and vegetable seeds (spring)
17. Gum, candy and lifesaver mints
18. Lighters
19. Teeth whitening gel
20. Liquid hand soap
21. Toys for bday party grab bags
22. Kitchen utensils
23. Scissors
24. Yard sale signs and price stickers
25. Duct tape
26. Reading glasses
27. Q tips
28. Plastic food containers
29. Aluminum trays and containers
30. Rubber gloves
31. Dish soap (name brand)
32. Pregnancy tests
33. Vases and decorative bowls (glass rocks)
34. Washcloths and dish towels
35. Storage containers
36. Plastic buckets
37. Coffee filters
38. Crackers, cookies and snacks
39. Notebooks, pens, pencils, rulers
40. Toys like colored chalk, bubbles, play dough, balls
41. Hair accessories, brushes and combs
42. Baking soda
43. Dishes and silverware (think college kids)
44. Scotch tape, and glue
45. Shrink wrap bags (you can make gift baskets with these Like a Pro! … just fill a basket with goodies, place in this bag, tie a ribbon tight around the top, and blow dry the bag! AMAZING!)

So head on over to your local dollar store, before it becomes the two dollar store… and get ready for the apocalypse without spending a fortune in batteries, flashlights, duct tape and Hand Sanitizer.

HAPPY SHOPPING!

https://www.dollartree.com/ (Dollar tree)

Quality Food. Everyday Low Prices. (Aldi)

Home - Online Grocery Delivery (Acme markets)

Welcome | Trader Joe's (Trader Joe’s)

Giant Food Stores - Wikipedia (Giant food stores)

https://nutritionhungry.com/blog/store-brand-vs-name-brand

I would have to say breakfast cereal.

There is an entire aisle designated for breakfast foods, with boxes and bags of cereal taking most of the shelves.

Take Cheerios as an example.

The original

Plus:

Honey Nut

Fruity Cheerios

Strawberry

Very Berry

Apple Cinnamon

Chocolate

Dark Chocolate Crunch

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Cheerios Protein

Cheerios Ancient Grains

Blueberry

Pumpkin Spice

Frosted Cheerios

Cheerios Oat Crunch

Honey Nut Medley Crunch

Maple

Peach

Multi-Grain Cheerios

Apple Cinnamon

Oat Cheerios with less sugar

Cinnamon Oat Crisp

Yogurt Burst

Toasted Coconut Cheerios

Banana Nut

No wonder I am standing in that aisle for so long!

Yeah, I do. I buy store brands. If you do it, you’ll find that store brands, like the nationally advertised brands have subtle differences. Some are better than national brands, some are worse, some are the exact same. It takes a little practice to find your favorites.

Shopper’s Value pasteurized process cheese food block (think Velveeta) is better than the name brand by a lot. It has a mild cheddar flavor that the national brand can’t match. The national brand is blander. SV’s peanut butter is oilier. That’s great if you’re making cookies. It works better. I used them for an example, because they’re the ‘store brand’ at a lot of stores. If you’re making a PBJ, it is worth buying the national brand. Aldi coffee is as good as or better than Folgers Classic Roast and better than Maxwell House. It’s way better than the value priced breakfast blend they both offer. Of the three, it is the least bitter. I go there specifically to buy that. It’s my favorite coffee for an every day product.

Soda is a big downfall for store brands. They tend to manufacture ones that taste like carbonated sugar water. Not only do they lack the complex flavor of national brands, they lack much of any flavor at all. Vess is the outlier in it, though. They make the best cream sodas, orange sodas and a pretty good root beer. If you’re a fan of Vess cream soda, you’ll find yourself going out of your way to buy it.

I did some service work for a wine critic a while back. She was fishing around online for a product to review. I talked her into reviewing Winking Owl wines from Aldi. She had already tried it and liked it. She said that the wines are a blend of end runs from small wineries. Sometimes those original products are really expensive, but when they have a quantity left that isn’t marketable because of its small size they wholesale it off. Those wines are the sources for Winking Owl. The makers then blend it until they have a predictable flavor, though the flavor may vary a bit from season to season just like regular better national brands. It’s reliably good. That turned into her article.

For some stores, the name of the store in on the product, like Wegmans, and may have a distinctive color like their ‘Classic Italian’ pasta and sauce products.

For other stores, the name of the product may be different from the store name but there are clues- like the store displays its store brand on end caps or aisle caps, or their literature ie: weekly circular or emails.

For instance, Whole Foods has ‘365’ as their major store brand. They have a few others.

Safeway has two “Signature” and “Lucerne”. Giant Food has a multicolor 3 item fan rising from an orange. Harris Teeter has ‘HT’ or ‘Harris Teeter’ on the product label.

Kroger has several private labels and several subsidiaries with their own private labels.

Walmart’s private label is ‘Great Value’.

Many times- although not always— the store will place lower prices on their own private label products— another way to ID the private label.

Well, here's a little known fact that I had the first-hand experience witnessing. I toured a major cannery and watched it awe as the cans zipped through the labeling machine. On this particular day they were labeling tuna fish. When I arrived they were labeling Bumblebee. The cans were fed from a giant hopper. After a period of time the machine stopped and the labels were replaced with Chicken of the sea. Then started labeling the exact same cans from the hopper. Most name brands are only different because of the label. The same cannerys that label major brands also label store brands. They are the same but generally cost less. So, yes, I often buy store brands.

Not grocery but:

Fairy Liquid, for hands that do dishes and 101 other jobs. You can even put it in cement mixes.

Persil non~bio for machine washes.

These I regard as life essentials. True groceries can be gone without for years.

Grocery :

UK.

Marmite. Only 1 maker.

Roses lime marmalade. Not a common fruit in the UK preserves industry.

Dundee Marmalade. Robertsons.

Bird's custard mix, best for trifles and keeps for years.

Tate & Lyle golden syrup. Only 1 maker.

Atora suet. Not aware of any other producer.

Spain.

There is chain called Mercadona so we get their own brand which are labelled Haciendado for bottled sauces and jams, garlic crispbread, jalapeno olives and large sweet biscuits called tartas.

Nestlé's Maxibon ice cream. Always a treat for the freezer.

McDonald’ s Caffè con helado. Coffee poured over soft ice-cream. None of their other desserts will do. Obviously not able to go in a store cupboard.

France.

Herta bacon, nothing else resembles real bacon.

Elle et Vire crème entier as other cream won't whip.

President camembert. Good taste, good value.

Sharwoods curry sauces. Blue Dragon Chinese sauces. Local brands don't have the flavour. Prices are not hugely inflated despite them having been imported.

Plantation coffee sachets for our Senseo coffee maker.

Croustipate pizza dough. Some of the others are too thin to roll out without breaking. Life is too short to make such dough.

It isn’t always easy. Some stores put their name on the label. Harris Teeter, for example, tends to put their name, or “HT Traders” on their store brands. Giant, in my area, uses their logo, but also offers a “Nature’s Promise” brand.

For Giant, I know the company is based in Landover and owned by Ahold. Their store brand labels generally have small print statement somewhere mentioning one of those things.

In other places, it’s a bit trickier. Shop for clothing in a Kohl’s, for example, and you might be surprised to find that they have about six or more “store brands” that they sell. Most of what it is in the store is a store brand.

The best way to find out is simply to ask the company. You can also check Wikipedia articles for the company in question, as those often mention known store brands.

I have worked for two companies both manufacturing “own brand” products for supermarkets and other outlets. One was a small local company in rural area known for generations for quality fruit (jam and juice) products under its own name and the other made toiletry and cleaning products - I never heard of them using their own name. The former was eventually bought out by a household name conglomerate, which subsequently lost the own brand contract to a rival company and the company I loved is no longer in existence. The latter is still in a prominent location in its town. Believe me, the store brands are generally at least as good as the brand names. With food products the staff, both admin and factory line, are asked to act as guinea pigs for new recipes and the comments tend to be very caustic - if a particular recipe doesn’t work, it never gets made. Of course taste is subjective - I love Marmite! - but before spending a lot of money on a branded name, try the own brand - you may be pleasantly surprised.

Unlike the appliance market, which has seen a reduction in manufacturers, food manufacturers maintain the integrity of their product lines. Progresso does not make soup for Kroger. Their flavors are proprietary. Taste three similar soups: Kroger's tomato, Campbell's tomato and Progresso tomato. I choose the one that tastes best to my family. If I am using it as an ingredient, I may use store brand (over Gold Medal). Or, the store brand has less of a questionable ingredient (e.g. Erythritol) than the national brand. My motto when shopping: good and tasty. My mom never skimmed the bean soup. Consequently, I hated the flavor until I tasted fresh in the kitchen, post-thanksgiving roasted Turkey and white Bean and wild Rice soup for the first time. I ate more that day, than I had choked down over the previous twenty years. Sorry, mom. Savings is a relative word. Waste is not; it is or it isn't. Cheap can be good and tasty, but they are not synonymous. I save, because I don't throw anything out. Garbage, the USA's gift to the world.

It usually depends on how good those name brands are, how good the store brands are, and what your tastes are like.

Sometimes, the name brands are better. Other times, the store brands are.

Then again, it might be all in your head and both are actually the same:

The FCS course at my school’s middle school holds a taste testing lab where you’d try name brands and store brands. During it, you are to note the differences in taste, texture, color, smell, anything you observe when trying a bit of each.

There was a girl who went home and told her mom about this. Her mom called the school and told them that her daughter couldn’t eat store brands or she’d gag, cough, and throw up. The FCS teacher insisted that the girl had to do the taste testing lab, for it was a grade.

On the day of the taste testing lab, the girl and her partner went to try some of the name brand and store brand peanut butter. Her partner, knowing she’d gag if she’d eat the store brand, purposely put the store brand peanut butter on both spoons.

The girl picked up one of the spoons and ate some of the peanut butter. She was perfectly fine and actually enjoyed it, even though it had the store brand peanut butter on it. When she went to eat the peanut butter on the other spoon, which had the same peanut butter on it, she started gagging violently and coughing like she was going to throw up.

Her partner told her she gave her the same peanut butter on both spoons after the lab. I’m not sure what happened after that.

There are some products for which I will not buy alternative brands. For example Hellmann's light mayonaisse is a no substitute item for me. Other things might have one substitute, like canada dry ginger ale instead of schweppes, but no others. Finally there are canned green beans, where some generics are ok some aren't.

We regularly shop in four supermarkets. I use the instacart app and the Harris Teeter app to check availability so I usually know whats where. I just shopped at HT, they were out of little gingerales so we'll get them our next Ingles trip.

Otherwise we have preferred stores for most frequent items either by price or where stocked. So all English Muffins and orange juice and lowfat sour cream us Aldi's only, the last for taste, all for price. English muffins are 3 or 4 bucks except at Aldi's where they are a dollar. Come on, that must be one high profit item!

Harris Teeter is the only place that has ht soymilk my husband likes (he hates Silk). It is the only place for canned carrots, better than all others.