I have been indulging in Great Value Fudge Tracks ice cream for about 6 months. I have it for my dessert every evening. It is the most delicious ice cream. The ice cream is a rich, dark chocolate with huge, thick ribbons of soft fudge running through it and small chunks of peanut butter cups tossed in for good measure. It’s under $3.00 for a 48 oz tub. When I went grocery shopping last week, the shelf was bare! I instead purchased Kemps Double Fudge Moose Tracks. No peanut butter cups, but otherwise the description and picture were essentially the same as those for Great Value. Last night I opened up the new carton of Kemps (FYI, Kemps is a prominent regional brand). I was disappointed as soon as I removed the lid. The chocolate ice cream was pale - like the color of a chocolate malt, and it went downhill from there. There was barely any chocolate flavor in the ice cream; the fudge was tasteless and not soft and melt-in-your-mouth like GV. Instead of peanut butter cups, there are fudge-filled cups, which have an odd flavor. So disappointing!
We’ve probably covered this numerous times, but I’ll ask anyway: Does anyone else have a store brand item that is much better than the name brand?
from what I understand, most store brands are made by the major companies, so essentially the same product under different name. I, of course, can have erroneous information
Signature Select Breakfast Blend whole bean coffee is our regular because it is the lightest roast whole bean coffee to be found anywhere in the coffee aisle.
It’s not a store brand exactly, but the TopCare brand version of Nyquil-like medications seems to work better than Nyquil. TopCare is sold at a lot of drug and grocery stores.
Kirkland Signature at CostCo. While they’re generally the name brand in different packaging or made under contract, the price difference makes them better.
No, your info is correct; the real question is how the Walmart brand is better than the comparable name-brand.
Great Value (Walmart) potato skins are light years better than the “Friday’s” brand. Their instant potatoes are outstanding (especially considering they’re powdered and microwaveable).
As mentioned, store brands usually made by another company (co-packer?) that may already be making a name brand. However the store brand may change manufacturers due to cost and other factors.
I found this out in buying store brand (Hy-Vee) chili beans. We liked the taste and eat a lot of chili in the winter so we buy whole flats of cans when they on sale. This last flat the beans/sauce were a different color (much darker) and not as finely ground chili powder. Don’t like it at all so we have been giving it away during canned food drives.
I haven’t had them in ages so I don’t know if they even still make them, but I used to buy Sam’s Choice chocolate chip cookies and they were way better than any name brand cookie I’ve tried. IIRC they were the same as the President’s Choice cookies Harris Teeter (and some other stores?) carried as their store brand.
I’m not sure if Trader Joe’s should count for this thread since the majority of what they sell is their store brand, but Trader Joe’s tangerine juice is about the only bottled fruit juice I actually like.
I don’t know if I’d say that Aldi’s Millville Toaster Tarts are absolutely better than PopTarts, but they are thicker and tastier (and cheaper) than Pop Tarts. Just my opinion.
Added bonus info: I typed out the above sentences and then noticed that there was not a single “l” in them. Turns out there was a fingernail clipping stuck under my “l” key. Problem now fixed.
Do you ever make those cinnamon rolls from a pop-open tube? The Pillsbury variety is essentially some sweet dough with chunks of cinnamon on top. The big local grocer around here is HyVee, and their tubed cinnamon rolls are actually spiral-shaped rolls, like a jelly roll, as they should be. All of the larger “Grand” style rolls are spiral, but sometimes they’re too big to eat.
Career manufacturing engineer here. I was in electronics and not food but the principles are the same and this is kinda true but erroneous. No one wants to believe this for some reason but I’ll try again.
When you are buying a brand name, I don’t care if it’s food, TVs or gasoline, you are paying for consistency. In a brand name the ingredients or components are sorted to a narrow band. The generics or lesser brands take what’s left but still acceptable. Often you’ll get a great batch of incoming material and the generic will be effectively identical but you can’t count on that. So it can be made on the exact same equipment but it will vary week to week.
I am sure that there are legions of situations where you’ve never experienced a difference in perceptible quality. Good for you. I know how it works behind the curtain.
These? President’s Choice is the upscale house brand of Loblaw’s various grocery chains in Canada, and the chocolate chip cookies in particular have a significant following. It wouldn’t shock me if they exported them to interested US parties.
I’ve like everything from Kirkland except for their “Kirkland Signature Light Beer”. During the summer I like a lighter “lawn mowing” beer, and a lot of brands work for me (Coors, Rainier, PBR, etc). The Kirkland version came in a pallet sized box and was cheap so I thought to myself, Kirkland can’t seem to do wrong so why not give it a shot. OMG! It was HORRIBLE! It was so bad, it almost made malt liquors taste good in comparison.
You are correct. Costco owns no manufacturing plants, Kirkland toilet paper and paper towels are Georgia Pacific (where I am), their product may have different specifications, embossing patterns etc. I have a spare room still full of Kirkland, Angel Soft, Brawny, stuff from when my wife worked there. May be made by a different paper company in a different part of the country.
When I worked at a plant making organic fertilizers and we had an order for 1000 units of a particular name brand the machines were never even turned off, different name brand bags were just added to the packaging machine.
This could simply be a case of the Great Value brand using food dyes, while the Kemps didn’t.
A lot of cases where the store brand seems better is simply because different people prefer different mixes of ingredients: you prefer the hot/spicy food–while I don’t like that at all.
I’m pretty sure Costco operates it’s own hot dog and chicken processing plants. I don’t know if you consider those ‘manufacturing plants’ or not, though.
