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When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

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

#91

Post by woobar »

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 owns Trader Joe's, but I wouldn't call them same chain. For instance, Kroger owns multiple chains with the store format, branding and products that differ a lot.

From my experience the US Aldi (which is part of an Aldi Sud) is a dimlit, bottom of the barrel discounter with a small selection of basics. Where Trader Joe's is a quirky "Hawaiian-themed" specialty grocer with a good selection of the unique-to-US products.

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

#92

Post by frettchen »

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…

Still the case in Kroger's in the US - there's a few home brands: Private Selection (higher-end) Simple Truth (organic and "natural" products) Kroger (main home brand) Pssst (discount/low-end brand)

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

#93

Post by anomaloustho »

gumby wrote: post #85
bkav wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I work, store brand gives us a huge margin, even at a low sale price. There’s not a single middleman trying to extract a profit.

So why is the store brand not in the prime spot rather than the bottom shelf. Is the major brand paying for placement?

Yes, it’s called a slotting fee.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee

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

#95

Post by CivBase »

Local supermarket chains reign supreme here in Iowa. There is nary a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to be found. The generic brands offered by our local stores usually offer a greater variety of fresher food at a lower price compared to name brands.

I also tend to like our supermarkets' generic packaging better. They use quality, color packaging, but the designs are usually understated and no-nonsense. It's like they're trying to say "this is a quality product, but we didn't overspend on flashy marketing and cartoon mascots". Even if it's not true, some of the Good&Gather packaging in the article makes me feel like I could have saved a little more if they didn't spend extra on cartoon animals. But maybe I'm just biased towards the things I grew up with.

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

#96

Post by sct202 »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #67
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63

I'm fairly sure (not an economist or insider etc) that the generic / own brand products actually have the highest profit margins for the shop, because there's not a big external brand like Unilever that wants their share of things.

I have heard the opposite: that the higher price of name brand goods means more profit for everyone. It would be good to know what the truth is.

I think it's 2 conflicting things going on. An owned brand/private label has higher % gross profit, but a name brand will often have a higher $ gross profit per unit. There's a balance for total profit between the whole set of products, because some people are brand loyal and others will switch depending on the price difference and options.

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

#97

Post by lacker »

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...

"Convenience" is such a funny way to put it. As if the time spent making food is worthless, and saving hours of labor is only useful because it provides this abstract property of "convenience".

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

#98

Post by ThinkingGuy »

kradeelav wrote: post #74
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…

That's odd.. may I ask which ad-blocker you were using? I visited it with both Privacy Badger & uBlock Origin running (on FF) and it loaded for me.

I'm using only Privacy Badger. I also got just the blinking eye.

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

#99

Post by beart »

ogre_codes wrote: post #88

This article puts quite a bit of focus on packaging, but I think there is a much bigger picture here. We started using store brand products more and more when the store brand products got better . Not long ago, most store brand foods were very mediocre. It’s only when companies like Costco started creating their own good house brands that my wife and I started going with store brand stuff. With true “generic” product…

The in-store brands are just repackaged name brand products at a reduce price. "Kirkland" is a brand, but they don't really produce anything as far as I know. Most of the time, the actual name brand product is on the same shelf as the in-store branded product, so you can directly compare the ingredients and nutrition labels to see they are identical.

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

#100

Post by SilasX »

maest wrote: post #39
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.

Especially since it breaks alt-left-arrow for "back".
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