Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. My peeve today is about store brands.
I regularly shop at two grocery stores, Safeway and Whole Foods Market. These stores have always carried store brands, which are similar to national brand products, but less expensive. However, I prefer to buy brand name products. Maybe it’s all in my head, but that’s just how I am.
Safeway’s store brand for as long as I can remember is “Lucerne.” It recently also started offering products under the “Signature Select” brand. Whole Foods Market’s store brand is labeled “365.” Up until recently, these store brands made up about 20-25% of what was stocked on shelves, in the refrigerated compartments and in freezers.
But I’ve noticed that over the past year, at both Safeway and Whole Foods, these store brand items have been getting much more room on the shelves, the refrigerated compartments, and the freezers. Depending upon the product, in some cases, 50% or more of the products available are such store brands.
And that means that these stores stock fewer and fewer of the brand name products that I’ve been buying for years. In some instances at both Safeway and Whole Foods, if you don’t want to buy a store brand, you’re shit outta luck.
And that pisses me off.
This, That, and the Other 
You can’t always get what you want, especially in these pandemic days.
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True, but I don’t have to be happy about it!
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well damn! Thats not good! I mean store brands are cheaper, but some people, me included dont use store brands, name brands are just better quality items!
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That’s what I think, too.
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✨✨🥰🥰😁
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Grrrr! Signature Select is also at Vons, but for cream cheese I’m with you and always get Philly. Maybe I couldn’t tell the diff in a taste test, but I’ve never NOT bought Philly!
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My wife once sent me to the store for cream cheese for a cheesecake she was making for dinner guests. I came home with the store brand and she was pissed and made me go back and get Philly brand.
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I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding the dry cat food my cats eat. Changing cat food can be disastrous for their digestive systems. I got down to a couple of cups of food left and had to break down and buy the store brand. Haven’t had to feed it to them yet, but I’m nervous about it. Most things I will choose store brand but not for my fur babies!
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If your in the US, try Chewy.com
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you’re
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That’s where we get our canned cat food.
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If they have free shipping, I”ll check them out!
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Great
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Thanks for the heads up!
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I know. A vet once suggested a different cat food to combat his scratching and our cat decided he would rather die of starvation than eat that cat food, so we went back to his regular food and put up with his scratching.
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Store brands can be very good. Target has a lot of products made for them that are very good. There are some off-brand crackers that look like Triscuits but are not good, though, at Whole Foods (while many items for the Whole Foods [365] brand are good). I always stay on brand with milk; there are about three brands that I like (two are pretty specific to my area, one of which is in glass returnable bottles and one of which comes in plastic gallon jugs, while the other is sold in thin carton board and is, I think, distributed nationwide).
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Signature Select… I thought Kroger had/s a brand like that.., oh… I paused and looked it up… Private Selection is Krogers brand (my husband does the shopping)
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They must stock what sells best, so perhaps the store brand sells better and that is why they stock more instead of the other way around. Playing Devil’s advocate. Sorry.
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Yeah, that may be the case. Or, the profit the store makes on its store brands is much higher.
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Combination of factors, but the palette wants what the palette wants.
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Oops..meant to say palate, but palette sorta works as a pun as well, i.e. shipping palette????
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You know, I missed that. But you’re right, palate or palette. Both work! 😂
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Exactly!
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To be honest, I almost always do taste tests. I get both brands, try them out, and see if there is a difference. For some things it really matters. For others, not so much.
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Hmm. Since I lost my sense of taste, maybe I should be more tolerant of the store brands. 😂
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Maybe
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This happens here too and it has predated the pandemic. Of course, some of the store brands are fine. They are often made by major manufacturers and rebranded for the store. The point is that by stocking more of their products and less of others they are taking away our freedom of choice. It may save money but if the store brand is an imported product and the brand name ones are made in Australia, I might want to buy the locally made one or there might be a brand I especially like and I don’t want a replacement. Store brand Tim Tams don’t taste the same as real ones.
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I am with you on the supermarket owned brands being bought in from overseas and forcing local manufacturers out of business creating unemployment especially in regional towns whose unemployment is high anyway. I support local Farmers Markets and get great produce but not everything can be bought there.
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When I lived in the Huon Valley I’d always buy my apples either from roadside stalls or the local IGA who sold fruit from local growers. They tasted better, were cheaper and I knew the money would go to the people who grew the fruit.
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It’s the same everywhere.
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I always buy store brand. I can’t see the point in spending more when it’s exactly the same product. It’s paracetamol that really gets me. Name brand – 500gm paracetamol, Panadol – 500gm paracetamol. Seriously 🤨
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In my experience, it isn’t always the exact same product. Sometimes yes. Probably more often than not. But always? No.
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It’s normally quite good in Australia. 🙂
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It makes you wonder if it’s just a supply chain problem or if they are just monopolizing and making money with their own product. Somehow though I thought all store brands were made the same factories as brand names. Who knows anymore?
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Exactly. Who knows? That’s why I tend to stick with brand names.
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I think it varies by product. Some things are ok in the store brand and others I can’t stand. But I do agree that there seems to be more of them sneaking on to the shelves everyday.
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