A question: Given the choice at the supermarket between a name brand item and its store brand equivalent, which do you reach for?
I’m store brand, almost all the way. A quick look around my kitchen revealed the following store brand items (meaning America’s Choice, ShopRite or Trader Joe’s): frozen veggies, canned tomatoes, cereal, butter, bread crumbs, beans, raisins, oatmeal, pickles, jelly, and so on.
In fact, the only name brand item I spotted was a box of Barilla linguine. (If I don’t buy Trader Joe’s pasta, I buy Barilla, not exactly sure why.)
I’ve compared ingredients between name and store brand products — they’re usually either extremely similar, or completely identical. And the store brand is 30% cheaper. Seems like a no-brainer.
But obviously, many many people buy name brand, or else Del Monte, Hunt’s, Post and the like would be out of business.
Which are you — a name brander or a store brander? How come?
4 Comments
1 Ron wrote:
Sometimes I even go out of my way for the store brand — and I’m not talking Trader Joe’s!
Try ShopRite salsa sometime (you find it with the Goya stuff). You get a huge jar for much less than of the price of those tiny name brand ones and I used way too much salsa to worry about mangos and other fancy ingredients.
2 Ron wrote:
Oh, and ShopRite espresso, believe it or not. For the price of one barista-made, you get a couple week’s worth and it’s not bad!
3 Doug\ wrote:
ShopRite espresso — didn’t even know they sold that! It’s incredible how much cheaper the store brand stuff is. Especially when it comes to cereal and stuff you eat all the time. I’ll have to try that salsa.
4 Bard wrote:
It depends.
Name-brand peanut butter is distinctly better than store brand at my usual store — smoother and less separatey — so I get it. Pasta is the same to my family, so I get the cheaper ones.
Store-brand milk is just as good as other kinds, as far as I can tell. Store-brand lemon juice gets nasty after a while and name-brand doesn’t, so I get the name brand and don’t fret about the preservatives that must be in it.
And so on.