The TRUTH about Off-Brand Products 

Years ago, I brought a school group to a local company that pressed and bottled apple juice. We watched the conveyor that filled and capped the bottles and applied the labels. At first the labels were for a supermarket store brand. Then the conveyor was stopped and the roll of labels was changed to that of a premium brand, and then the line resumed. The kids learned a valuable lesson that day.

If you’re ever curious to see who makes certain generic products, pay attention to food recalls. You’ll often see a name brand along with a few generics

as someone who works in a pharmacy the no-name/generic brand distrust can be crazy a pharmaceutical company will sometimes have a brand name product and a generic with practically identical packaging excluding the name (ie. brand on one and just generic drug name on the other) and people will pay extra for the original despite how much we try to explain it to them

My local grocery store has a "generic" line called "Culinary Circle". They had a Jamaican jerk sauce that was amazing. However, on the label, it said Culinary Circle Jerk Sauce. Unfortunately, they discontinued it. I wish that I had kept a bottle just because that's hilarious.

Here in Europe, store brands are often as good as, if not better than, big companies. Paying "extra" just for the brand name is literally throwing money out of the window. I'm only willing to pay that premium if I enjoy the taste of the product over its competitors or... If I'm buying it for a "social" event (if I'm having dinner with my in-laws, I'm probably not bringing no-name wine or chocolates for them 😅).

I once worked at Aldi's distribution centre, receiving the goods from suppliers. I can tell you for a fact that almost everything house branded is made by the name brands that command premium prices and shelf space. Everything from coffee to shampoo. There is no one single house brand factory that makes everything!

In the US there WAS a “No Name” brand, it was called “Plain Wrap”. Which was fairly well known. The packaging was plain white with a blue stripe across the middle of the package and a simple font. It also didn’t have pictures.

I work for one of the suppliers of hearing aids for the Kirkland brand.... I can 100%% attest to our premium name brand stuff and the stuff that gets the Kirkland brand... is EXACTLY the same. Hell, when there's a short on a specific type or color choice, we often dip into the supply of either one to meet the need, al that's needed is to carefully remove whichever label (using a laser) and print on the requested label.

ngl this speaks volumes about our parents of the &0s + 90s when they said that those “fancy name brands” are the same as the generic brands 😂 especially when we were in the supermarket and wanted the popular brands of breakfast cereal such as Apple Jacks but we had to buy “Apple Rings”

Another great one. I’d love to see another video on Patagonia, especially since they’ve declared that they are now donating all profits and Yvon has liquidated a majority of his assets. Feels like it would be a nice final part to the series in them.

I'm from Argentina. Many supermarkets have their own 'no-name brands' (in this case, they're Supermarket chain-branded), and most of them are really great products at a much better price.

There is a show in the UK on the BBC called “Eat Well For Less” that goes into a families home and hides the labels on the food they family buys and get them to try it over a week or so. They will also change some of the branded food the family buys for “own branded” or unbranded foods. Often the families can’t tell the difference or, thinking they have the branded item, actually prefer the own branded item, or will say their normal branded item has been changed and they don’t like it! Not always but most of the time. The results are displayed to the family at the end and they usually end up saving perhaps hundreds of pounds a month in shopping if they stuck with the changes.

I love no-name and PC brand. One thing I really love that no-name does is a line of "imperfect" fruit/veg for a pretty massive discount - frozen berries, avocados, peppers, etc. So great for meal-prep etc. The bell peppers for example - often the only "issue" is that the peppers are a mix of colours or an odd shape. I also really like that the PC brand is doing some interesting vegetarian/plant-based stuff. Also, in Australia they have (or had?) a no-name equivalent called "black and gold" - very similar branding/vibes

I learned something similar to this when I was trying to kick a certain water guzzling company out of my grocery shopping lineup and picked up a seemingly no branded condensed milk and latter found out it was the same bad guy company with a bland label

Three items where I cannot go "no name": mayonaise, ketchup and cola. Great video as usual!

I demand new episodes every day because this content is freaking amazing! it should be a crime to be deprived of this content

In Texas, we have a grocery store called HEB. Their house brand is called Hill Country Fare and many of those products are better than national brands at 1/4 the price. They're not all hits, but I'm willing to try them once just to see if I can better support my favorite store and spend less money.

"Violently yellow" As a fellow Canadian, I can confirm that's accurate. Also damn funny 😂 (Great vids - new subscriber🇨🇦)

As an exchange student (only able to work 20h a week and therefore not able to get enough money to pay for rent+food+cellphone+etc), No Name and No Frills were key to my financial stability there. The quality never disappointed and the prices was always fair. I lived off No Name Canned Tuna, mayo, eggs and Cherry Tomatoes for a whole year and so much more at a super affordable price because of No Frills and No Name.

I think one of the reasons that the name brands still sell so well is that they're still what you're going to get from independent retailers. You might know and trust Kirkland because you regularly go to Costco, but if you find yourself running into some random mom and pop convenience store you've never been to before to pick up tortilla chips on the way to a party, you're probably getting Tostitos. Even if Main Street 24-Hour Deli and Convenience had their own brand, you'd have no idea if it was any good.

In Poland, the vast majority of the supermarket brand products are actually made by the companies like Nestlé. When 15 years ago, you could buy exactly the same things like Lay's chips for 30% of the price. So there's no difference in sustainability department

The RU-vid algorithm doing it's job and recommending a great video which makes complete sense for me after hunting for ground coffee on Amazon last night and being so overcome with choice I ended up going with Starbucks' own brand. Also, the host is very easy on the eye. We love a double whammy!

7:04 HEB’s 1905 Vanilla Ice Cream. I spent my entire childhood looking for the flavor of ice cream I had at my grandparents house as a toddler. Only when I moved back to Texas and opted to shop at HEB did 16 years of searching finally come to an end. It was literally what I wanted all along. I tried every single national brand I could get my hands on growing up. Not only was it a distinctive flavor, the quality was better than the half thawed and refrozen/freezer burnt National brands haphazardly thrown into Walmart coolers.

Ok this is so interesting because here in the Philippines, the Korean version of this has been popping in shopping malls: No Brand. It also uses black text on a yellow background for its packaging 😮

I'm from Upstate New York where the Wegman's grocery stores are a regional icon of Upstate culture. In recent years, Wegmans has really pushed their Wegmans branded products, and due to the huge success and pride in Wegmans, people love buying the store brand products. Now they have basically a Wegmans alternative to every product you could think of. I don't shop there too much because it is still a quite expensive store, I'm more of an Aldi girl personally. I grew up shopping there during the Recession and am totally used to to things people find off-putting if they have never been to an Aldi (putting the quarter in your cart, no music, the things in boxes on crates, and bring your own bags and bagging yourself way before that was an ecological thing around the country).

I had a friend at university whose family had owned a regionally known veggie canning company for 76 years. He said that every incoming vegetable was graded as either reject, good, better, or best. The rejects were sold as hog feed. The rest were all canned using the same recipes and processes. The good were labeled as his family's economy brand. The better were labeled for a leading international name brand vegetable canner that you would know. The best were labeled as his family's black-label premium brand (which typically sold in stores for about the same price as the national name brand).

Please please make a video about all those certifications! We need to know what certifications actually mean that the brand is helping the planet, and what is labels are just slapped on to bump up the price in exchange for the feeling of moral superiority.

The problem I have with these brands is the monopolic practices and how it affects the smaller producers. I live in Costa Rica and Great Value & others are insanely competitive, impossible to compete with actually. Since walmart basically runs all supermarkets, theres no space for a small or local producer to compete and sell their products, and they are forced to twist their arms to the insanely low prices walmart (& others) ask for them to sell on their stores + still be competitive, or just abandon their products. While the quality in the products i’ve tried is actually great, I still feel very uncomfortable going for these and just turning my back to the rest of the market… Is this even a thing in North America?

One thing people often forget is that the packaging between an generic brand and name brand is different. Usually it's not a big issue, but sometimes the packaging is part of the experience using a product. Think Dish washer soap. Sure you can just use a jar to sell it in, but a bottle that dispenses a consistent amount every time over time has valuable benefits.

Matt Pat's Food Theory video on his "Diet Coke tournament" is a great example of this video here in action. One of the biggest falters of generic brands is not that it is trash or is always bad, it's more that it's harder to know what the end result will be. Food prep can be a complex process of steps and how certain ingredients interact with each other, and recipes are done with brand names typically because it's widely available and the person writing it knows what the end result will be. The Diet Coke episode was fun to watch because it showed that depending on who manufactured the product for the generic label you can get wildly different results. Of note my wife and I happened to have found that the Compliments red label caffeine free diet coke happened to taste almost identical to Coke Zero and was caffeine free (before caffeine free Coke Zero was available in our stores here of note). There are some hidden gems indeed but the ask from the generic brands is to get people to take the chance and give it a shot. Some may work out while others may not. But what it does ask is for the customer's time, energy, and ultimately money should it not pan out. Some are less willing to take any sort of risk, others prefer their tried and true methods, while others are more willing to give things a try and take risks. The risk may be relatively small in the grand scheme of things but it's a risk all the same.

Over here in Europe we have a long tradition of these generic or private brands. Since some years stores started to add their own generic organic brands for organic (and or fair trade) products. Which all comply with the European standard for organic products. These generic brands hit organic products into the big stores and made them available for a lot of people. Which is an interesting move. Those products are often cheaper than most organic brands. But often on the bare minimum standard of organic, however better than traditional produced products. They are a big pressure on the organic producers. For example generic vegan milk products from those private labels are now the cheapest milk like product to buy. Cheaper than milk. And way cheaper than big vegan milk brands.

Been subscribed since the Starbucks video. Such great content, yall never disappoint! Its cool to see you talk about things that I can relate more to, since I am also a fellow Canadian. Looking forward to seeing the video about all the different certifications, and if they ACTUALLY mean something lol

This is why it's important to be an informed consumer and do your research. I have looked at labels in grocery stores and seen that sometimes name brands will be less healthy than generic. Sometimes name brands will have more preservatives to increase shelf life while the generic brands won't

I am Asian-American. I loved no name brand products that are non-electronic. With tech/electronics/appliances, I tend to go with brand name. Fashion, I go no name for home wear/comfy wear. I go with name brand when I need to go somewhere fancy or to take pictures/videos.

Great video! I’m a big supporter of No Name. Most of their products are on par with name brands or OK by my standards, but the price is unbeatable! It’s almost a necessity in high-inflation times like now. Actually, I wish there were more No Frills stores near me, too, but…😭

A few years ago I worked at a manufacturing plant that provided GM with the lithium battery cells for their Chevy Volt cars, and was surprised to find out that any finished cells that weren't up to the quality standard GM required were instead sold to a Chinese car manufacturer. I therefore figured at least some of the store brand items were from batches that didn't pass the original manufacturer's quality standards, and sold at a discount to those big food retailers who packaged them under their own name.

In Europe, a lot of groceries stores have different lines of generic products. There's the very cheap no branding whatsoever bottom of the shelf product, the regular storebrand that's cheaper than big brands but still quality and sometimes a bio/green line that's still cheaper than name brands. I can buy bio fairtrade coffee, recycled toilet paper, eggs (free-range and all) etc. and even some cosmetic products straight from the store brand.

Yes, please! More info on legit certifications that aren’t just “greenwashing” or hiding cruelty. Also, how might we better support those certifying organizations and more like them in the future?

Levi, you and I both know the *real* reason you're not popping that Kirkland-brand Champagne is that Costco doesn't sell booze at the warehouses here in BC! Otherwise we'd be BATHING in the stuff! lol

"We all deserve Compliments" I'm not Canadian but that's some genius marketing😆

I don’t know why more people aren’t obsessed with your channel dude. Such great content!!!

I've noticed in my locale that lately many of the house-branded inventory is not in stock & we're left only with the more expensive national brands.

This same thing existed in the US. I remember in the 1980s, here in Florida we had a supermarket called Kash n' Karry, which had en entire aisle of nothing but yellow no named generic boxes. And Winn Dixie had various different generic brands like Lady Lee and Check Soda. Some of that still exists now. Check mostly.

I wasn't sure about Great Value products (Walmart) at first. But as I tried them, I realized that the quality was on par or better than the name brands most of the time. If I try a GV item and don't like it, I just never buy it again. But if I like it, I will save money every time I buy that product. I have also begun shopping at Aldi and have found that their store brand items often compare favorably with name brands.

I buy name and no name / store brand products. Cooking from scratch, there are minor differences. Quality is important, so often the grind, shred, etc. might cause me to choose a specific brand

Soooo is it just me or does Levi have some new diamonds in ears lol??? 😊

In the early 80s, here in the US we had Plain Label products. Black and white labels, and it was cheap…..and not very good. Most grocery stores here now have a “store brand” that vary in quality. Member’s Mark (Sam’s Club), Great Value (Walmart), and a few others are staples in my house.

Here in Italy we do have a few chains that have introduced a second in-house product line that is supposedly fair-trade/locally produced/organic/environmentally conscious. One of these chains is called COOP.

One of my favorite parts of watching your videos is seeing the growth in comments, views, and subscribers. I actually remember when this channel didn’t have any videos yet and only had under 500 subscribers!

The one Kirkland product we have tried and refuse to buy again is coffee. Now I know why it is so horrible, nasty starbucks.

I found this channel a few weeks ago and somehow I've already caught up on all the videos. Thanks for the quality content!

Always buy store brand milk, it is usually made by the national brand sold in the same store. Only difference is a label change during the product run .30 + years in dairy industry.

As a manufacturer, I can tell you that a lot of these guys have secondary products that they sell that are only for the private label. But they usually aren't as good as their own house brand. There is also a lot of privately label only companies. They have no label of their own and they provide stuff to grocery stores and other places. It's a big business, it's a lot bigger than you think

It’s so nice to finally have you speak about Canadian content, especially since you’re Canadian! 👏🏼

I don't know how it is in North America but in Germany, and I think all EU countries, even the storebrands must have the manufacturer's adress on them. They usually try to hide the brand name behind a shell company but if you know where certain big brands have their seats, you can easily figure out who actually produced it. E.g. Rewe's ice tea is made by Austrian drink producer Rauch. I noticed because of the typical rosehip tea basis AND the adress that is the same as Rauch's. Some manufacturers even the storebranded versions in their own outlets.

In the uk we have aldi and lidl who both make cheaper dupes but super markets have been doing it for years causing the occasional controversy

I really enjoy your videos so thank you for putting them out. While I don’t live in the usa, I see many brands sold overseas are the same.

When Aldi's came to town several years ago, I tried their store brand pickles. They tasted like the smell of motor oil. Never built up the trust to try any of their other offerings. Until hyperinflation came along. Now my cabinets look like a shrine to Aldi and Walmart.

am i the only one who really likes the No Name packaging? i think it’s very clean and striking

I remember in the 70s my parents buying “Beer”. Yellow can, black font. That was all it said.

As a Canadian who moved to the US a few years ago, I really miss Loblaws and No Name. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods don't carry everything I need/want in a weekly shopping run and Safeway is just trash. 🇨🇦🏆

One of the few times I don't buy generic: if I have to go to an event and bring food (example: potato chips/cookies) It makes you look really cheap to toss a few generic bags on the table vs name brand. People will gloss right over the generic not trusting it.

You went to California one time and got earrings? As a native of Cali, I love it.

"You get what you pay for" only applies to cheap things. I've bought plenty of expensive junk.

I literally never buy name brand if there's a store brand version. Except for mayo, great value mayo needs to step its game up.

I think it would be great for brands to let us know which products are simply overflow from a mainstream manufacturer, but I doubt it would happen

Living in the uk there are very few grocery items that I buy from Branded names. However we have much higher food standards here than the US ( not sure about Canada) and free range birds grass fed origin traceable meat, non gm, fair trade products etc are easy to find at good price points!!!

I used to do a lot of work in the realm of private label goods. It much less common for private label goods to be manufactured by the same companies who make the branded competitors than people think (this is even more rare as a long run / steady state arrangement). There are many midsize companies who specialize in the manufacture of private label (and often other contract manufactured) goods. Rather than brands using excess line capacity for private label production, it's not uncommon for brands to have relatively low line capacity and contract out the manufacture of some of their goods to other companies (e.g. it's common for brands with seasonal varieties like Oreos to contract out the manufacture of some flavors). This lets them keep their operating expenses low. Also worth noting that private label manufacturing is really low margin vs branded, so few branded companies will maintain excess line capacity in the long run in order to fulfill private label contracts

Western Family is an interesting brand. I associate it so heavily with small grocery stores in poor rural communities in the mountain states lol

There were generic groceries in the 70's and 80's with a plain white label and just "beer" " spaghetti" etc. At least in the south there's tiered off brands. Always Save is real low budget/quality and Best Choice is a grade below national brands

My father worked for a cannery when I was a kid. As a teen, there were times when the company would have the sons of employees come in on a Saturday so we could take our labels off of cans so they could relabel them with another company's label.

Should have mentioned MGP (Midwestern Grain Products). Essentially they distill and age spirits and sell them to other companies that mix them and sell them as their own brands including highly reputable brands like Angel's Envy, Bulleit Rye, Filibuster, George Dickel Rye, James E. Pepper, Smooth Ambler, and Templeton Rye. That can either be the entire business model or it can be a kickstarter to break into an industry where you need products aged 5 years to even hit shelves.

Good channel, I appreciate ye Brethren. Thank ye for puttin' sources in the description too. Really helps verify stuff cuz fake informative channels are za new craze... That people are fallin' for.

No name reminds me of the generic brand Always Save. It has the same violently yellow packaging, font design, and even simple picture. Unfortunately it was also genuinely worse than other store brands and name brands. It was cheap though.

The setup for that Rick and Morty joke was really good. Gotta give ya props for that 😂

Being in restaurants for a long time, Buying cheap was always the way. Great video, warms my heart.

I live in europe and only buy off-brand or store brands, if they are available, as I do not want to pay for extra marketing costs from brands and there is not really a difference in quality.

In the northeast US there was a grocery chain called Pathmark that had a generic brand called "No Frills" since 1978 (same year as No Frills in Canada). Their products were white with black text saying what it was (image search for "pathmark no frills" and you'll find plenty of examples).

here in italy we have supermarket brands and you can read on the back of the product “produced by ….” and many times it is produced by the same company that sells the same product for double the amount of the supermarket brand

As someone who works quality control in the food industry, the off brand product we process is practically the same as the branded product except it has higher defects, so keep that in mind when buying something

If you were around in the US during the 1970’s and 1980’s, you may recall seeing generic products on grocery store shelves without brand labels. The packaging was typically white and featured the name of the product printed in black. I think they were eventually absorbed into the various store brands.

There's a huge giveaway in the UK and the EU that will tell you if some product is made in the same factory as the branded item it competes with. Many foods are required to display an symbol on the packaging that identifies the source and production facility of the product or it's main ingredients. An example might be a frozen ready meal, say a lasagne where on the branded product (Bird's Eye, Bisto or Findus) you will see an oval emblem with a code along the lines of "UK 755 EU", but if you check Tesco Supermarkets own brand product you find the exact same code. This indicates the product was made in the same facility in the UK and that the main ingredients were sourced from within the EU. That doesn't necessarily mean the products are 100% identical as the major supermarkets and brands might specify minor changes to meet their specific price point (12% beef instead of 14%, or less oregano say).

I liked Costco for a while, but what made me a loyal fan is the Kirkland dog food (diamon foods) It's great value and my dogs Love it!

“You get what you pay for” attitude in Canada is why so many things are overpriced here.

Canadian who lives/grew up in the US and visits Canada often No Name is one of my favorites, they make my fav pickles. I always associated them with No frills and Always loved it so when Aldi got big it wasn't weird, it was awesome.

Future Proof: If you haven't already, please do a video comparing Shoppers Drug Mart to Walgreens/CVS. I really miss SDM too! ❤

I tend to buy a store’s own products here in the UK, my local shops are a Co-Operative and Iceland. With both I get money back and if I save up I can outright buy my shopping with said money if I wanted to. Even bought a kettle and crate of koppaberg with my co-op card, £30-£40 worth of goods basically for free? I ain’t complaining

As a child in the 70s and 80s my folks used to shop at a Supermarket here in the Northeast USA called Pathmark. They used to have an aisle or two called No Frills. Everything in this aisle was the same white label with a plain description.

What's happened over the last 20 years is so many big, established companies have sold their names to Chinese holding companies who have destroyed the quality of the product to make a quick buck. These days I pay pretty much no attention to brand names as they're no longer a guarantee of quality in many cases.

Now, I ALWAYS try the “off brands” first. Sometimes it doesn’t work - but mostly it does. Kroger will give you the name brand of you don’t like theirs.

Here in Italy, there's one that I love, Coop, from the Coop supermarkets (ehh) and I really like it because it is a cooperative and not a corporation, and that's a big plus in my book!

Thanks for doing content about Canada/Canadian companies hope to see more.

in portugal we refer to the store brands as marca branca, which means blank brand, as in, it doesn't have an actual big brand name on the product, just the store's name. and i grew up pretty much always with store brand products, and even now i still mostly buy store brand. pretty much everything that's big brand name exists as store brand, it's cheaper and it's the exact same product. all it has is a different name on the label. i've bought products from a brand name because it was on sale, only to find it tastes the exact same as the store brand. so unless it's on sale, i don't bother with the brand name

The issue with generic products is a lack of accountability unless it’s a private label such as Kirkland which is accountable to Costco itself. Straight up generic products can be impossible to hold to any kind of standard or refund.

I have experienced this go either way. Some store brands are just as good or better than the name brands, while others are worse or too weak. Oreos is a great example for me. I love the name brand and can eat a whole package with no problem, but the name brand versions taste off, and some leave my throat hurting too if I eat too many. Yet, store brand coffee tastes just fine versus starbucks or other brands (i drink black, medium columbian). Likewise, knock off brand pasta is the same. I have never had issues with cheap Walmart elbow noodles lol So, it seems to be trial and error.

Quick guide how to spot the difference: factory addresses. In Europe you have place or company that made the product available on the packaging, and quick comparison of that will serve as immediate display of what two products are exactly the same. Some companies do specialize in just that - making products for others, no matter if it's famous brand or off-brand. Ya think a brand would own so many factories for various different products? Nah. They just tell some companies (often local ones, or local-owned-by-bigger) to do stuff for them and they're gucci.

Yes I would like a video on fair trade, 1% for planet and other labels please!!! I think I saw one or two on your channel since this video, but I would love to see more! Thanks for these awesome, informative videos. :)

Idk. I usually want name brand, but I will always prioritize price over the(usually unproven or downright false)green washed name brands. That choice of being able to afford a few $1-5 no name, or just one or two $5-10+ name brand item could be the difference between me and my kids being comfortable or going hungry before another payday. Ethics are all warm and fuzzy and all, but at the end of the day, choosing to buy what aligns with your morals is unfortunately a choice only some of us get to make. I am grateful for no name brands. I only wish good practices and ethics were the legal standard and affordable for everyone.

It's actually hilarious how much importance we place on brands when a lot of these things comes from the same factories and all that. Although admittedly it comes with good reason but probably not as much importance as we place on them as a society. Great watch and breakdown as always.

I used to buy the store brand for everything but it became clear pretty quickly what generic products were similar to the name brand and which products were not. Even brands like simple truth which appear to be a cool new organic brand is owned by Kroger, and a lot of simple truth products suck, like their tahini paste and their ghee.