Can Help You Save
“How Store-Brand Groceries Can Help You Save”
Private-label products are often less expensive but just as good as highly marketed name brands. Here’s how to find the best.
Angel Micarelli can’t get enough of Trader Joe’s Organic Raw Almonds. “I buy them religiously,” says the Hingham, Mass., writer. Not only is it hard to find them in other stores, but at Trader Joe’s, she says, they are at least 25 percent cheaper.
Karen Iseminger of Coatesville, Pa., prefers Giant Foods’ store-brand fudge-striped shortbread cookies to Keebler’s version at twice the price. “Something about the chocolate they use and the shortbread,” she enthuses on Consumer Reports’ Consumer 101 Facebook page.
Mike Arnold of Portland, Ore., also on Consumer 101, says Costco’s Kirkland Signature Super Premium Vanilla Ice Cream is “excellent . . . and it’s the typical Costco price!” Translation: very reasonable.
Store-brand groceries are having a moment.
Once viewed as cheap knock-offs of name-brand products, store brands—aka “private label” brands—have improved in quality and diversity. And while grocery prices in general have risen faster than the overall inflation rate in the past five years, private-label products ease that pain by selling at prices typically 25 to 30 percent lower than their name-brand counterparts.
Dollar sales of private-label groceries rose 3.3 percent in 2025, compared with a 1.2 percent increase for national brands over the same period, according to research by marketing consultant Circana for the Private Label Manufacturers Association. As of March 2026, 24 percent of all grocery purchases in the U.S. were private label, up from 17.7 percent at the end of 2021.
Store brands dominate some food categories. In 2025, they accounted for about two-thirds of the eggs and frozen vegetables sold in the U.S., according to the PLMA. At least half of all sales of fresh meat, cheese, dairy milk, and sugar or sugar alternatives were private label, too. When you’re planning a picnic, you’re more than likely choosing store-brand cups and plates, throwaway utensils, and candles.
More Information at:
https://www.consumerreports.org/money/store-private-label-brands/how-store-brand-groceries-can-help-you-save-a4379816935/
