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When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

eyeondesign.aiga.org

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Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#31

Post by raverbashing »

Clewza313 wrote: post #21

Interestingly, in Australia, major supermarket chain Woolworths used to have two parallel home brands: the bargain-basement Homebrand in stark black & white packaging, and the slightly better but still "designed in the DDR in the 1970s" Essentials. They had to ditch Homebrand, because it looked too cheap and was driving people to discount grocer Aldi, where you could get similar goods in packaging you wouldn't be ash…

Homebrand really looks like someone went the extra-mile to make it look cheap and cost less.

It's the kind of design you would expect at a government facility lowest bid kinda thing.

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#32

Post by Semaphor »

One of our largest chains here in Germany (REWE) has 4 house brands with many overlapping products in each.

"ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items.

The designs of "Beste Wahl" and "Bio" look about equal, "ja!" clearly looks cheap and "Feine Welt" looks fancy: https://i.imgur.com/YA9VTyZ.png

edit: And before REWE bought them, we had a chain called SKY. When they introduced a new, very cheap, house brand the internal name was "Aldinative Produkte", a portmanteau of our discounter "Aldi" and "alternative" ;)

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#33

Post by raverbashing »

dimes wrote: post #9
htnsao wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny realizing how people have been so trained to purchase processed products instead of dry beans etc.

Is it training, or is it convenience? Personally, I don't like soaking beans 24 hours before cooking. In fact, any additional time is too much for me, as bad as that may be. A article in the NYT called The Tyranny of Convenience really crystalized this for me: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-co...

The pre-soaking is supposed to help with digestability (I can't find the exact name of the substance it removes) a pressure cooker of course cooks it faster but it is not very convenient (also you can cook them without a pressure cooker - pre-soaking helps with this as well)

But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones

"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#34

Post by distances »

nilsbunger wrote: post #14

Trader Joe’s is fascinating. Their own products are unique and you develop a craving for them. That creates serious retention. And over time they’ve designed out more and more third party stuff, replacing it with their own (instead of selling both alongside each other). I’ve never read a business case about them but it seems like a killer strategy

Trader Joe's is Aldi's chain, right? Do you have Aldi too in addition?

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#35

Post by donw »

Semaphor wrote: post #32

One of our largest chains here in Germany (REWE) has 4 house brands with many overlapping products in each. "ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items. The designs of "…

I honestly love the “ja!” brand, though. It looks basic, but not shameful, and with the bonus that I can go to REWE and buy myself a liter and a half of “YES!” (with or without bubbles!)

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#36

Post by anilakar »

4ggr0 wrote: post #26
nexthash wrote: post #18

Website is broken on Firefox: I was stuck on a blinking eye icon and could not advance to the article.

It's because you have an ad blocker.

A red herring. Reloading the page fixes it, which is what happens anyway after your disable the ad blocker. The next reload breaks it again.

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#37

Post by Majestic121 »

lurquer wrote: post #6
flukus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, it was embarrassing to have a cart full of that stuff as everyone would know you were poor. I don't mean this to pick on you personally, but this sentence sums up so many problems with consumerism, advertising and it's ability to make us overpay. You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Esp…

I don’t know what the odds are, but this generic-food thing has come up before on HN. I made a comment and, if I recall, was downvoted... but, I’m going to say it again. ; Namely, when I was a kid, my sister and I were terrified to go into that aisle because our mother told us that food was for albinos... that’s why the labels lacked color. It truly scared the crap out of me. Haha! Anyway, I will now sit back and wai…

To give you some feedback (and I'm not an albino) :

- Mentioning downvotes is a sure way to get them, and there's even a mention in the guidelines[1] saying to avoid to do that : "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "

- Other than this, I don't know about the last time, but here your comment feels like a fun anecdote more than an actual discussion point. While this kind of comment goes well in a lot of communities (typically very well with Reddit), it tends to get less traction on HN, as HN is very much directed towards discussion and argumentation

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#38

Post by Semaphor »

donw wrote: post #35
Semaphor wrote: post #32

One of our largest chains here in Germany (REWE) has 4 house brands with many overlapping products in each. "ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items. The designs of "…

I honestly love the “ja!” brand, though. It looks basic, but not shameful, and with the bonus that I can go to REWE and buy myself a liter and a half of “YES!” (with or without bubbles!)

I pretty much mix and match ;) For example the ja! cream cheese and "Beste Wahl" soy sauce are the products with the lowest sugar & carb count of their type.

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#39

Post by maest »

theamk wrote: post #16

Unrelated to actual content: if you visit the site with ad-blocker on, it does not load. Instead, you just have this icon of the eye looking at you and blinking. And the eye will just blink until you turn ad-blocker off. I know the site is called "eye on design", but the associations of user tracking via ads and this blinking eye were amusing to me. Imagine having a blinking eye in the corner of each website for each…

Is that what's going on?

Regardless of your stance on ad blockers, simply showing a mysterious eye without telling you you should stop your ad blocker sounds like awful design.

Re: When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

#40

Post by saithound »

distances wrote: post #34
nilsbunger wrote: post #14

Trader Joe’s is fascinating. Their own products are unique and you develop a craving for them. That creates serious retention. And over time they’ve designed out more and more third party stuff, replacing it with their own (instead of selling both alongside each other). I’ve never read a business case about them but it seems like a killer strategy

Trader Joe's is Aldi's chain, right? Do you have Aldi too in addition?

Aldi was split into two groups in 1960, along geographical lines (Nord and Süd, serving resp. the North and the South of West Germany). Aldi Nord operates as Trader Joe's in the U.S., while Aldi Süd operates as Aldi.
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