I should probably elaborate. Alas, it’s look late to edit my post.
Those Presidents Choice cookies are the ones I used to buy from Harris Teeter. The Sam’s Choice ones from Wal-Mart had their own Wal-Mart branding (and no use of the word “decadent” or similar, they were just branded as chocolate chip cookies), but they tasted identical. So if they weren’t the same cookies they were a very good imitation.
Thank you for the correction! Costco does indeed have two plants making thier hotdogs so they can control the cost. I did not know that.
Prior to that they were made by Hebrew National.
Great Value and Kirkland products often test very highly in Consumer Report comparisons.
In Canada, President’s Choice is known for a few outstanding products. As mentioned, their reasonably priced chocolate chip cookies are made with butter and are at the top of the list. They have a few Black Label goods which are pricey. but higher quality than most brands.
I’ve found Safeway Select food items to be superior to competitors’ products.
President’s Choice has its well-deserved reputation from the days when Dave Nichol was the CEO. A true gourmand, he traveled the world in search of interesting foods and most famously inspired the President’s Choice brand of international sauces. But President’s Choice (or “PC” for short) became an iconic brand for many other food products renowned for their superiority. Nichol once said that there was no PC product that he would not be proud to have in his own home.
Nichol left the company in 1985 but the legend lives on, and I still regard many PC products as superior to national brands (my favourite fish & chips. for example, is PC beer-battered haddock with PC tartar sauce – and “No Name” malt vinegar – the lower grade – but there is no PC malt vinegar because it makes no difference, so I’m fine with it.).
I can’t really comment about Walmart as I rarely shop there, but I’ve heard second-hand that some of their store-brand food products are surprisingly good.
Jewel (a Chicago-area grocery chain) had President’s Choice as their store brand for several years in the 1990s; a lot of their products were really good.
When Jewel was bought by Albertson’s in 1999, they stopped offering PC products, as I remember it.
Another Great Value item: their mustard is excellent. It’s at least as good as any of the name brands I’ve tried.
How could I forget: Walmart’s “Marketside” pizzas are fantastic. 95% as good as pizza parlor ‘za.
Heck, I’m wolfing down Great Value Fudge Graham Cookies as we speak. They fab.
Years back, I noticed Great Value beef jerky was exactly the same as Jack Links. The only difference is the Great Value bag had smaller pieces of jerky in it.
Mentioning Albertson’s, when I worked there in the 80s, we were told that anything labeled as “Albertson’s” should be considered similar to top tier brands, because they didn’t want to put their name on anything that was substandard. They did have a store brand (I forget the name, maybe Jennie or Janet something?) that was what would be commonly considered a generic or store brand, with low price being the driving feature.
As for the item that was better, their baked in store chocolate chip cookies were excellent.
Target is an interesting one, in that they have dozens of store brands. Cat & Jack (kids’ clothes) and All in Motion (sportswear) were both popular with my kid, and seem to be just as durable and well made as department store clothes from national brands.
That may often be true but is false as a broad generalization – see my post here about Dave Nichol, and there are other examples where stores strive to exceed the quality of national brands. You’re probably right about the consistency of mass-market national brands, but consistent mediocrity is not a virtue!
Like @burpo_the_wonder_mutt We enjoy lots of Great Value brand items.
My personal favorite is their yogurts. The plain yogurt is as consistent as you can get with such a item.
I like ‘em.
It has been over a dozen years since I needed to buy disposal diapers, but we found the Safeway store brand diapers superior to any Pampers or Huggies or such. After a while I got curious and weighed them. Yup, the store brand was measurably heavier.
Most grocery stores, at least in Canada, carry seven times as many products as they did just thirty years ago.
This reflects a growing love of far flung ethnic foods, different diets, a willingness to try exotic vegetables and flavours, a more multicultural society and popular brands offering many variations. It’s pretty sweet you can go to the cottage and still cook, say, Thai or African food.
But in Canada, Nichol’s Insider Report had to be responsible for people trying many new items - from chocolate cola to Japanese cheesecakes. He really did scour the world for awesome and unusual items - and could make anything sound intriguing.
They are not NECESSARILY made to the same specifications.
I knew for a fact that the ingredients for the store brand of certain products did not include the same proportion of the most costly ingredient (e.g. white meat chicken) as the National brand. Even though they are coming off the same line, they are not coming from the same batch. The pasta may not be made using the same grade of flour. Store brand bread flour may have lower protein content than the name brand. Even if they are being processed and packaged in the same facility.
There is a huge, competitive market for contract manufacturing of packaged food. The same “packer” will offer all kinds of specs, for the recipe (ingredients), the processing method (e.g. temperature and length of processing) and various characteristics of the packaging. Do you have a plastic bag inside the box or not. How thick is the card paper of the box, how is it sealed.
Winn-Dixie may get their brand of canned soup from the same physical line as Whole Foods. They may not be the same. They may be on different “runs” and everything might be thoroughly emptied and cleaned between runs. Or might not be. They may run the same ingredients and recipes for seven different store brands, and different ones for three others.
Same manufacturer does not mean same product. It can be, but doesn’t have to be.
And I don’t think that today “most store brands are made by the major companies” if by major company you mean the brand that the store brand is set next to on the shelf. Typically the leading National brand in the category. Like Kellogg’s, Heinz, Campbell’s, Hershey, etc.
Back in the heyday of Dave Nichol the globe-trotting gourmand, the Insider Report was a goldmine of both product tips and cooking tips. It was a masterstroke of marketing and undoubtedly helped make Loblaws the grocery superpower it is today.
There are smaller independent grocery stores and delis that I favour for many great things that you can’t hope to get at big chain supermarkets, but because of the Nichol tradition and PC product line, the Loblaws family of supermarkets will always be in my shopping rotation.
Like a comment I made somewhere earlier about Campell’s New England style clam chowder comparing unfavourably with wallpaper paste. Whereas the clam chowder from the hot soup stand of a local independent grocery store, when available, is absolutely delicious!
You realize hot food vendors use large cans of soups and the like probably from Grocery Wholesalers, probably their own brand.
You’re paying for the convenience not the product at that point.
No, not in this case. You cannot can soup of this quality, which is why their clam chowder is freshly made and isn’t even offered in a refrigerated form as many of their other soups are. And all of those others are refrigerated, not canned.
Some things you cannot just plonk in a can and hope to have anything even close to its proper flavour and texture, This is why we have good restaurants! And good delis!
Look out back for the pile of #10 cans.
I kid. You’re probably right. You have a lucky find if you get the difficult to make(and tastes good)clam chowder.
It was also a great source of humour, with the cartoons done by Jim Phillips. All related to the products being showcased, of course. Even if you couldn’t cook (like me), it was a fun read.
ETA: This was not the Jim Phillips who did surf and skateboard designs. This is the one I mean: