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In the 1970s, I worked for Truitt Brothers Cannery in Salem, OR. We canned beans, pears, and plums during the late summer/early fall. It was all the same fruit, all the same syrup for several different labels like Fred Meyer, Safeway, Sure Fine, etc.
Nowadays, we do buy the store brands as they are the same quality as national brands, but cheaper. At Kroger, it is Private Label; at Safeway, it is Signature. And Target has their own brand too.
First, there are many companies that can various fruits and vegetables. However, even within a brand, there are varying levels of quality. When I was responsible for purchasing various food products for a state agency, we used to do a lot of can cuttings. Can cuttings is a process where you get 8-10 different brands of a particular product, open the can, and evaluate the quality of the product and the compliance with the product specifications stated in the request for proposal. There are major differences between certain brands.
Even in the consumer market, there are higher quality and lower quality canned goods. It is NOT as simple as private label = name brands because often, they are not identical, depending on the specifications required by the retailer. For example, the private label french fries that I purchased yesterday at the dollar store is a lower quality product that is produced by a manufacturer known for a high quality French fry line.
Krogers has MULTIPLE private labels as they generally have a "good better, best" strategy at a number of different price points - Kroger, Private Selection and Simple Truth (organic). They also have a very generic brand - Psst! that attempts to match the prices at Aldi.
Not sure if we had this topic here, but I just read this article and thought perhaps we could have a thread about products that are the same under different name but much cheaper, and make our own consolidate list:
BTW: does anyone knows about the quality comparison? Are those (or some) off-brand (private labels) products somehow inferior to the brand names - like some products made specifically for outlets?
Perhaps we could indentify those products on our list?
There may be cheaper copy cats but they might not perform just as well as the brand. So in making your list. yes, you will have to identify their efficiency. In my own experience knock-offs are made from cheap poorer quality materials so beware.
Brand names have formulas or recipes that are R&D'd and QC'd,patented and trade marked.
The same ingredients may go into the cheaper product yet the recipe is not identical to the brand name mix so you get different results from copy cats. Sometimes they work just as well but often they don't deliver the expected results.
BTW: does anyone knows about the quality comparison?
I think that comes down to the store/chain doing the private labeling.
eg it used to be safe to go to Sears and buy any Kenmore appliance
with a high degree of confidence that the quality issue was sorted out by them.
I have a few products I'll buy 'name brand' but fewer and fewer every year.
I think that comes down to the store/chain doing the private labeling.
eg it used to be safe to go to Sears and buy any Kenmore appliance
with a high degree of confidence that the quality issue was sorted out by them.
I have a few products I'll buy 'name brand' but fewer and fewer every year.
For years, Kenmore appliances were manufactured for Sears by Whirlpool Corporation.
I believe they still are.
You might note that many of Sears' private label brands generated such value (because of their reputations for quality and durability) that other companies have bought the names as Sears has continued its slide into oblivion.
The Stanley Tool Works now owns the Craftsman brand name. I forget which company now owns the DieHard car battery trademark. This means that you should be able to find both products on the shelves of stores not named Sears or Kmart.
Another Sears brand that's been independent for some time now is Allstate. That was the brand under which Sears originally sold car batteries and other car parts, and they branched out into insurance under the same name. Allstate Insurance Companies got spun off sometime back in the 1960s.
If you're trying to eat 'clean', we've been happy with a lot of the Whole Foods 365 products we've tried. Yes, about 10% of our grocery spending goes to Whole Foods, but almost all of that is sale items, Whole Foods 365 products or both. There are a few things I can't find elsewhere and a few things like the 365 coconut water (yeah, I know woo, but it fends off migraines when I spend a lot of time outside in Florida summers)
For years, Kenmore appliances were manufactured for Sears by Whirlpool Corporation.
I believe they still are.
Most of the Kenmore appliances are made by LG in Korea. I believe that Whirlpool probably did not want to extend credit to a company that was likely to go belly up.
The store brand of flour at Acme (owned by Albertson's) is made by Pillsbury. We figured that out when Pillsbury had a recall of one type of flour, and the recall notice on their website listed the Acme house brand as one of the brands of flour with a recall notice.
Walmart's Special Kitty cat food is most likely made by the same company that makes 9 Lives. Cans are the same, flavors are the same, and the plastic wrap around the 4-packs of cans is the same as 9 Lives.
My father learned this in the 1960s when he took a tour of a canning plant. Green Giant, Shurfine, and the white label generic all came from the same building.
Three generations of my family, including myself, have worked in a Del Monte cannery, and they have for years packaged many private label products off the exact same production lines as their own label.
Most of the Kenmore appliances are made by LG in Korea. I believe that Whirlpool probably did not want to extend credit to a company that was likely to go belly up.
Whirlpool makes many of IKEA's branded appliances, and this is openly advertised.
Products may come off the same productions lines out of the same plants, but that does not mean the quality is the same. A bean is not a bean. You get different quality even out of the same field depending on how mature the bean is when picked for example.
One thing I've noticed when comparing store brands vs name brands is the ratio of product to water in the can. For the particular products I buy I've found Kroger store brand has more water and less product vs the name brands.
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