Do they have food scientists just guessing and checking with taste testers? Or do they know the exact recipe somehow and just tweak it to avoid lawsuits? Or do big box stores require name brands to hand over their recipes as part of a contract to shelf their brand along with their own store brand? Do the name brands try to keep it a secret but they keep getting bested? I have no idea how this works.
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I actually did this work for several years in my career. It ends up being one of three situations.
1. It’s literally the same stuff as name brand, just with a different label
2. It’s made using the same formulation as name brand, but uses lower cost ingredients, or ingredients with a looser quality spec range. The name brand may require the best 1% of flour, but the generic version can use the best 25% of flour. Also possible here is using a name brand formulation where the specs fall just outside range.
3. It’s made by a different company that reverse engineered the label to determine the formulation. Due to the regulations surrounding nutrition labels, there is a little wiggle room in the exact formulation. This leads to quite a bit of trial and error. Getting the flavor profile down correct is also challenging.
Generally speaking, store brands do well because the less than absolutely perfect quality is more than made up for by the cost savings.
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