Not long ago, supermarket house brand foods were easily detected by their lame packaging, if not the groans they elicited from kids forced to eat the cheap knock-off goods. Times have changed.
Store-brand hot dogs, orange juice, canned chicken soup, and other foods have scored well in blind taste tests when matched up against big-name national brands, and because the generic stuff costs much less, switching to off-brand merchandise has become an obvious way to save at the supermarket since the economy turned south.
(RealSimple.com: Inexpensive Ideas for Holiday Party Food)
Realizing that store brand purchases are surging, and that sales growth could rise even further, grocery stores are putting serious money and effort into developing and marketing “no-name” items. Something of a generic-food renaissance is taking place, and the hope is that the combination of newly cost-conscious consumers and vastly improved quality of foods will bring store brands even broader appeal.
A new BusinessWeek story highlights the store-brand push at supermarkets such as Safeway and Kroger. At Safeway, for instance, sales growth of store brands is outpacing national brands by a ratio of 3 to 1.
(MORE: And the Nation’s Favorite Low-Cost Grocery Store Is …)
What’s particularly interesting—and what demonstrates a new era in which consumers aren’t choosing store brands strictly because of price—is that supermarket house brands don’t have to be cheap to sell well:
Kroger introduced the “Private Selection” line of oval-shaped, thin-crust pies. The pizzas, topped with mozzarella, grape tomatoes, and aged parmesan, are $5.99, the same as Nestlé’s DiGiorno pies—a testament to the store brand’s cachet. Now 60 percent more of Kroger’s higher-end shoppers buy the pizza.
(GALLERY: 12 Things We Buy in a Bad Economy: Generic Drugs)
In 2003, 23% of Kroger’s sales came from store brands; today, that figure is up to 28%. Consumers have come to expect better quality from store brands. They’re finding more quantity of store-brand items in grocer aisles as well: Of the 14,000 new foods and beverages introduced in 2011, nearly one-third (31.4%) have been generic supermarket house brands.
Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
