I have Zero brand loyalty. Best ingredients for the lowest price gets the sale.
Keep in mind that most off-brand products are literally the same brand name product in a different container.
In Canada we have a few off brand labels like No Name and Compliments. Take ketchup for example. The off-brand ketchup is literally the same brand name Heinz or French’s it’s sitting beside, but for $1.50 cheaper. That’s because the off brand companies like Wal Mart and Loblaws pay for production cycle time at the main plants. So a run of Heinz ketchup will actually be a run of No Name ketchup. Heinz gets more money for the use of production time than they would selling that line of their own brand ketchup.
If you’re brand loyal to something, you’re just willing to pay more for a name, not the thing you want. Sour cream, mayo, toothpaste, even soap is all the exact same as the brand name stuff you’re buying.
Most of the time you can tell where it came from by the production stamp. All companies have their own number so the no name ketchup would have the same product number stamp as the brand name one because it came from the same facility.
The recipe is different for the store brand. I did this stuff in the dairy industry for a while. Its not production cycles in dairy, it’s vats. So store brand orders a few vats of product, with way lay less actual milk or doesnt specify as high a minimum quality milk products. More dyes and filler during finishing and no aging. All store brands are essentially flavored and colored mozzarella. They are lower quality.
I still buy them though. Mozzarella is good enough for most recipes.
For other products it’s similar. Lower tolerances on inputs and outputs to reduce cost. Still probably 80% as good as name brand.
I’ve worked in a few of these production lines and they’re literally just changing the packaging at the end of production. The packages could be different enough to change taste or texture but the product itself is identical.
I have loyalty to higher prices if they treat their employees right. I’m willing to shell out an extra dollar if it means the employees aren’t getting paid shit an hour
Sure, but most of the time in this capitalist hellscape your options are shit and slightly different colored shit.
Slightly different colored is a pretty big statement — you can get the same service from a company that pays the workers $45 an hour or one that pays them $22… That’s a life vs working under the thumb of a company. It’s a very large difference between the good and the bad. Capitalism is everything trending towards shit inevitably, but that does not mean that every individual business is shit. It just means someday they will become shit.
Capitalism cannibalising itself one brand at a time.
In a world where every product sucks due to years of cost cutting and shrinkflation, brands mean very little.
In foods especially, they have substituted corn syrup for sugar, steroid+antibiotic pumped milk and meat for “real” meat (typical market chicken is a travesty these past years), GMO crops sprayed with extreme weed killers and pesticides for simple sun and water grown food. They like to say our food bills are going down in real dollars, but they’re not, not if you buy organic GMO free - which is what most food used to be not so long ago.
corn syrup
The only reason they do this is because in the US, corn subsidies make it cheaper. HFCS is essentially exactly the same as sugar to the body. It’s not any more or less unhealthy.
GMO
Another overblown fear. Humans have been modifying organisms for millennia. GMO is not inherently harmful. The main harm comes when companies try and make it so farmers have to purchase seed from them for every crap. That’s not harmful to eat. That’s harmful for our food supply.
extreme weed killers and pesticides
These all easily wash off, and you need to be washing your fruit and veg because they are dirty.
It’s trivial to research this for yourself. Stop listening to idiots on youtube trying to sell you supplements and lying to you about these things.
There are problems and concerns, but these are not them.
People scared of genetically modified foods need to take a good look at vegetable and fruits. You think bananas and watermelons always looked like that? Hell, I’d say most have something going on to make them grow bigger and faster…
Hmmm, if only there was something those companies could do to retain customers. Something like lower prices without shrinking sizes?
I stopped buying products that went from chocolate to chocoly
I stopped buying Campbell’s or any of its subsidiary brands a few years ago when they both raised prices and reduced the size of the can.
They were underhanded about it too because they made the cans slightly taller so it wasn’t obvious that they had less volume.
Framing this as a customer loss is funny. Switching brands means it’s the brands that are losing, geniuses.
I find Aldi and Lidl have healthier variants of namebrand cereals.
We shop at Aldi a lot, but we also have Trader Joes and I fairly consistently prefer the Trader Joes’ products to the Aldi alternatives - Aldi seems to be aiming for the absolute lowest possible cost of delivery, and when that means rotting fruit in the produce section becasue they’re understaffed / undermanaged… combined with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar in most of the processed products, lines 12 customers deep at the one open checkout, etc. it gets to be a turn-off.
Trader Joe’s is also Aldi.
US Aldi stores are operated by Aldi Süd (South) and TJs are operated by Aldi Nord (North).
The one brand that I am seeing rise in price for me is Spindrift.
I was just thinking the other day that their business model has got to be a lot more supply chain and energy dependent than many of the “fizzy waters”.
For those who don’t know, its a low calorie soda because its simply real juice in small quantities as the flavoring.
So they must have to source fresh fruits, then extract them, then pasteurize everything, and only then make the soda.
I don’t drink a lot of it, but its about the only soda I am willing to give the kids.
I drink Waterloo. Just water and a little natural flavoring. No sugar, salt, or calories, and it’s much cheaper than Spindrift. I love the Peach best.
Yeah, its ok. I always wonder what is “natural flavoring?” that can mean nearly anything.
At least waterloo claims that they are extracts. Which is nice.
I really like that spindrift actually tastes like the flavoring because it is the flavoring. Its worth more to me.
Either way, my post was about how many ways they are going to be effected by rising costs.
Waterloo has a natural taste, whatever that means. It tastes real. I’ve tried others, and they often don’t taste right, usually a chemical taste. I haven’t tried Spindrift yet.
can mean nearly anything.
Yep. Extract of cat urine is 100% natural.
Which would be great if I was looking cat urine flavored fizzy water.
I abandoned many brands many years ago. They provide me nothing of value so I don’t give them my money.
Cereal prices killed me. I went to generics which were fine and then they got too expensive. So I learned to make my own, sugar smacks are really easy to make and taste WAY better. Plus you can tweak the recipe like I add toasted almonds in mine, local honey, etc.
Jerky was the other, bought a dehydrator and wait for skirt to be on sale. I have a clone of Wild Bills and I’m good to go.
And you can do so much more w/ a dehydrator. Veggie? You can make awesome fruit strips/etc