The investment blog Motley Fool takes an interesting look at Private Brand, with nods to Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Whole Foods.
Private Labels Are No Laughing Matter
In the cult classic flick Repo Man, all products were generic, with labels that read “BEER” or “FOOD.” Funny, yeah, but when the movie came out in 1984, the ugly recession of the early ’80s was fresh in people’s minds, and stores really did carry cheap products with plain white labels and self-explanatory names. Since then, store-brand goods have increased in quality, removing much of their old stigma. Once viewed with derision, these low-priced, “private label” wares are now making a comeback on many grocers’ shelves.
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I remember generics quite well. They were typically white or yellow label products, and the quality of such items sometimes left much to be desired (canned vegetables may be substandard or harder to chew, compared to traditional store brand items, or name brands such as Del Monte or Green Giant.) Generic cereals weren’t bad at all…the corn flakes tasted just like Kellogg’s, and the toasted oats tasted just like Cheerios. The soft drinks weren’t bad either. Probably the best selling of the generics was beer and cigarettes…my grandfather brought generic beer home all the time-he liked it for a cheap drunk. I knew people who smoked generic cigarettes as well. (I don’t smoke or drink myself.) Eventually the plain-white-pack generic cigarettes became branded (such as Basic and GPC…which meant “Generic Products Corporation”)…those brands eventually went to fancier packaging when generics went out of vogue in the 1990′s. Today, the closest thing you can get to generics is the “Valu Time” brand sold by Giant Eagle, Acme (the Akron, OH grocery chain), and other supermarkets serviced by Topco…as well as the store brand items carried by Save-A-Lot and Aldi. Stores had their own “branded generics”…Finast/Pick-N-Pay had yellow-label “Guaranteed Value Generic” items, Kroger had “Cost Cutter” (brought back by Kroger via their “FMV” (For Maximum Value) and “Kroger Value” brands, and the yellow-label “No Frills” brand once sold by the former National Tea chain and the former Loblaws stores in the US. Walmart’s newest “Great Value” packaging has a generic feel to it.