Store/Off brands better than the name brand

[Vouksh89]

I stock shelves and help manage inventory at Wal-Mart, and I can tell you why.

1. Bread.

Bread is usually subsidized from a local company. The store I work at buys bread from one of the local bakeries, Nickels Bakery. All the Great Value brand bread is actually Nickels' bread in a GV package. And it's about $0.15-$0.20 cheaper per loaf. And it always rotated by the vendor every day.

2. Cheese. Quite simply. As long as it's the same kind, I don't taste a difference at all.

Low-end cheese is basically all the same. Most of it isn't even real cheese, but cheese "byproduct"... whatever that means.

3. Zebra cakes. These kind, the Little Debbie kind. I just had a Wal-Mart brand version. Same taste, and the consistency of the different layers makes it easier for me to eat it in the weird ways I eat snack cakes.

Great Value snacks actually are Hostess brand, just repackaged and subsidized to make it cheaper.

Most Great Value brand food products are simply subsidized and repackaged products from name brands, packaged in a factory that doesn't have a union.

[Yunru]

Here is a good example from my place:
Good...
http://dobavi.si/images/detailed/3/U...apefruit-2.jpg
0,93€
HORIBLE....
http://trndmonitor.com/wp-content/up...rcatorfull.jpg
0.89€

They are the same company. However the lower one tastes so bad....ugh....
The taste is almost the same tho.

Generaly i avoid store brands like plague.
The interesting part is that the company who made a brand will NEVER place their eitikete of their product on it.
Kinda because they dislike losing the costumers.

The only good thing this brands are for tastless food. Food that you mix up with other food.
http://www.najcena.si/images/product...lbele_400g.jpg
For example.

Am i advertising?

[Dezerte]

I wouldn't say anyone is better that I know, as there are more factors than just taste (contents, company ethics, working ethics, health, etc?), maybe if I spent more time on the subject I could get a better idea. But of course I tend to go for the more tasty brands.

[Deleted]

pretty much everything i buy is supermarket versions of brand items - much cheaper and i honestly cant tell the difference.

[Pull My Finger]

The only brand product I buy is beer, because I can't make myself drink any of the gnat's piss cheapo beers. For everything else, I'm going the store brand/budget route.

[PACOX]

Some store brands are identical to the brand they are stocked next to. A store would either lease part of a factories production line or a supplier will sell to the brand named company and the story. In these cases you're buying the fancy the label and the name behind the brand.

Sometimes in store brands you get items that just didn't pass a certain quality check. Hypothetically, a box of Oreos (ironically Oreos started as an off brand) might only allow 1-2 broken cookies in a box where the identical store brand could have 6. Or lets say its orange juice, the brand get the top half of a batch of orange juice from a supplier and the store gets the bottom half.

This doesn't apply to all cases but its not uncommon.

[Spectral]

Everything from Wegman's.

[Ciddy]

The only brand product I buy is beer, because I can't make myself drink any of the gnat's piss cheapo beers. For everything else, I'm going the store brand/budget route.

Pretty much this. For almost everything else, you could give me a blindfolded taste test between the name brand and the store brand, and I wouldn't be able to tell any difference. Only difference is that the store brand is usually like half the price. A 2-dollar price difference on a bag of potato chips probably doesn't seem like much, but that adds up when you have a cart loaded with groceries.

There are a few exceptions. If there's some significant taste difference between the store brand and name brand, I'll go for the name brand. But otherwise, I'm not going to spend an extra $2 just because the name brand stuff is in a prettier box.

[Mihalik]

Cleaning products and medicine are really the only off-brand stuff I buy. Chemicals are chemicals however they brand them.

On the other hand, consumer goods, food, personal care products and clothing I never ever go off-brand. I go around trying a lot of different brands looking for the ones that I like (and I always try new brands and products) but I tend to stick to something that I like once I found it. With consumer goods, personal care products and clothing subtle things like scent, coloring, cut, quality count a lot for me. The same goes for food, subtle differences in texture, flavor etc. make or break something for me. I prefer to stay away from bland or mediocre.

[Gheld]

As some Walmart guy said. The store brands are manufactured by name brand companies and relabeled. The store's procurement people will call up say, ketchup manufacturers and say "We need X amount of ketchup." and then the manufacturers bid on the contract.

So depending on who wins the procurement bid the store brand ketchup might be Heinz, it might be Huntz, but any difference you perceive between it and the brand name which filled the order is purely psychological.

[s_bushido]

Publix used to have ice cream sandwiches that were better than any of the name-brand ones I tried. But naturally, as with all good things, they had to change the recipe of the cake part and ruin them.

[Saphyron]

If refering to food I go for cheapest.
If refering to shitting paper I go for quality.
If refering to transport I go for cheapest.
If refering to computer parts I go for quality.

[Deleted]

Good bakery bread can`t come anywhere close to store bought /drool

Prefer brown bread & the local superstore stuff is same as pricier stuff I think.
Ice cream not a lot of difference in the local stuff, so £5 for a pot when can pay £2 is silly.
One huuuuuuge difference, cheap jelly beans are always better then pricier ones.
Morrisons Sushi is very good (other superstores sushi isn`t nearly as good) compared to pricier/brand versions.

[Spraxle]

Cereal... At a local grocery store I can buy a massive bag of 'off brand' cereal for $3. The same thing for maybe a 1/4th the size is just as much in the name brand stuff.

[Djuntas]

Lets see...

Most chips brands the lesser valued once are just fine. Same goes for Cola (Coca Cola is around twice the price or more than lesser brands atleast inn Denmark).

Clothes. Aslong as it fits me, and I like it, I never look at labels. Not that I know cloth labels anyway lamo..One exspection is Bjorn Borg underwear...Its just......so much better. Last for years, the elastics dosen't get loss, and fits me perfect. Best cloth ever :&

Most food products like pasta, rice...Well anything really. I will say however few food products I will go for the name brand...The biggest one is the originale name brand Nutella. I have tried the cheap shit, medium price etc...It just aint better than originale..Not that I ever buy Nutella anyway >.<

[Keile]

I work in a Grocery store (I will not list the name, for privacy reasons). But needless to say this is a huge chain...one of the largest in the US.

Most of our "store brand" products are actually made by the big name brand companies. We simply pay them to use our label instead of theirs, and this also allows us to set the price. This is especially true for cereals (most of the ones in our store are made by General Mills. This is why they taste nearly identical to the "name brand" version). But it applies to nearly all products.

The same holds true for other grocery chains, and many of their products.

As for bread....we have an in-store bakery. Our fresh bread beats the off-the-shelf stuff any day. I usually tell customers "They call it Wonder Bread because you wonder just what they put in it to make it last so long on the shelf..."

[Keile]

I am so sorry bakeries were you live are that awful Then again I grew up in Greece and if we do something well, that's food.

I feel like I should send that guy a loaf of bread....I work in the Bakery of my store. It's what I do! Nothing beats a fresh loaf of handmade bread.

Which is why I get so sad when customers come in and complain about every little detail and act like they know the product better than I do.

"SERIOUSLY, sir? You think you know what sort of dough that bread is made out of...better than ME the person who MADE THE DOUGH YOU ARE ARGUING ABOUT?!" UGH!

[Deleted]

I am so sorry bakeries were you live are that awful Then again I grew up in Greece and if we do something well, that's food.

Don't sell yourselves short. You guys excel at poverty, too.

[Bolson13]

I don't know about better than but in my experience most store brands tend to be as good as the expensive brands. only exceptions tend to be superglue, batteries, coffee and electrical appliances.

To my understanding, there is only a small difference between branded and unbranded batteries (comparing alkaline with alkaline of course). And the difference is offset by the cost per battery. So in the end it doesn't matter too much which ones you buy but Duracell and Energizer tend to be a bit more expensive but you don't have to change them as often basically. But also not by a huge margin. Does that make sense???

[Bolson13]

My sister runs a small supermarket chain so she constantly has me try nonbrand alternatives and PLs (private labels). I am still surprised how much better some of the offbrand products are (while being at half-price).
One thing that just made me mad was the difference in chips. The Lay's bag was ofc half empty and the chips barely had any flavor sprayed on them (seriously, you had to pick and choose those paprika flavored cheaps since it was damn obvious where there was any flavor at all). The offbrand had far less air in a similar bag and the cheaps were almost entirely covered in flavour and were 40% off.

Yeah, the potato chips I noticed too! Cheaper stuff is so much better and often the flavour is a little different but better too.