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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It’s usually the same food made in the same factory with different packaging.
I worked in a pineapple cannery and the cans were all unlabeled until the order was received. The cans were taken out of the storage warehousr and one of 50 different labels were glued on the can. It’s all the same fruit.
Just to pile on with what everyone else has said. I used to work at Tones Spices (a major spice company in the US). I can’t tell you how many times the labels and sometimes bottles changed on a line, but it was all the same product coming out of the same 1 ton bags. There were some premium brands that had their own spices, but most of it was all in the same.
People sometimes try to sleuth out what name brands make specific store brands. Sometimes, there’s something like a recall where, for safety reasons, they have to just say it. A few years ago, I remember there was a recall on frozen taquitos or something like that, and it included Aldi store brands as well as major name brands, and maybe some supermarket store brands too. So you could infer that all these products, or at least some key ingredient in them, must have come from a common supplier, whether the product recipes are identical or just similar.
It’s usually the same food made in the same factory with different packaging.
I worked in a pineapple cannery and the cans were all unlabeled until the order was received. The cans were taken out of the storage warehousr and one of 50 different labels were glued on the can. It’s all the same fruit.
Just to pile on with what everyone else has said. I used to work at Tones Spices (a major spice company in the US). I can’t tell you how many times the labels and sometimes bottles changed on a line, but it was all the same product coming out of the same 1 ton bags. There were some premium brands that had their own spices, but most of it was all in the same.
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.
My dad worked in the industry, they are all the same for the most part. Labels are different. Same company produced several store brands and a couple of name brands with no difference. (He did not tell me what they were)
Also consider this. (It may have changed at this point) The beer Natural Light was a test beer for Bud Light attempting to refine the flavor but had leftover so started selling it. It’s all market research for the most part.
People sometimes try to sleuth out what name brands make specific store brands. Sometimes, there’s something like a recall where, for safety reasons, they have to just say it. A few years ago, I remember there was a recall on frozen taquitos or something like that, and it included Aldi store brands as well as major name brands, and maybe some supermarket store brands too. So you could infer that all these products, or at least some key ingredient in them, must have come from a common supplier, whether the product recipes are identical or just similar.
My dad worked in the industry, they are all the same for the most part. Labels are different. Same company produced several store brands and a couple of name brands with no difference. (He did not tell me what they were)
Also consider this. (It may have changed at this point) The beer Natural Light was a test beer for Bud Light attempting to refine the flavor but had leftover so started selling it. It’s all market research for the most part.
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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