Generic Grocery Brands

Lightening Online brought up an interesting topic this week - generic grocery brands. Her post reminded me of trudging my way through the ‘no name’ snackfood my mother occasionally bought because we couldn’t always afford the better stuff. We lived about 25 minutes from a small country town and we couldn’t always nip down to the shops for a treat, so Mum learned to keep a stocked pantry - and because of my parents’ limited finances at the time, there were always plenty of generic products - things like tinned peaches (a cheap dessert), long-life milk (UHT shelf-stable milk) and all manner of baking supplies.

Funny thing was, we never thought much of it. That’s one of the benefits of living in a rural area - you just don’t tend to worry too much about what the neighbour kids are eating or who has what in their lunchboxes. The really cool kids had home-baked goodies anyway, and Mum was always pretty good at that. We were never short of nibblies due to her skill but the commercial snacks we did buy from time to time tended to be generics. Yep, there were hits and misses and when we did get a mouthful of a brand name potato chip or snackbar it was a bit of a taste explosion, but because we started off with generics we were already used to the taste and texture and it never made a lick of difference to us to return to them.

Lightening briefly mentioned this in her post, but generics used to have a large dose of social stigma attached to them. Generics were for poor folk. There are a few different levels of ‘generic’ products here in Australia. At the top of the ‘cheapie pile’ are the true ‘no-names’ - Home Brand (see pic above), Savings, and Black and Gold are the main ones. Generally speaking, each is featured at one of the three major supermarket chains down here. But shoppers were avoiding them because of the perceived ‘ick factor’. Somewhere along the line the supermarkets wised up to the notion that they could introduce a type of generic to play to the people who liked to save money but avoided the ultra-cheap brands because of what Gertrude at No. 42 might think. The stores’ ‘own brand’ was born. This is an ‘in between’ brand - cheaper than brand names but a little more expensive than the true generics. Shoppers tend to percieve these in-between brands as a way to buy their cake cheaply and eat it too, and growth in this area has exploded in recent years.

In honour of Lightening’s Generic Products Love Fest I thought I’d take you on a little selected tour of my Master Grocery List and talk about why I choose generic or brand name for some of our most common purchases.

Background information (especially for Aussies) - our regular supermarket is Woolworths. We sometimes duck into the Foodland/IGA in the small suburban shopping centre 6 mins drive away if we happen to be there for other things and every few weeks I’ll notice a couple of really good sales items in their catalogue so I shop the loss leaders there on occasion. We rarely bother with Coles (even though we’re near the major suburban shopping centre where it is located all the time) so I tend to automatically recycle the Coles grocery catalogue when it comes.

(For Non-Aussies - Coles and Woolworths are the two main supermarket chains down here, with Foodland/IGA bringing up the rear (plus, of course, multiple other chains, but they’re the three main players). There are a few Aldi’s dotted around the place but none in my state and warehouse shopping, such as the type the US finds in Costco or Sam’s Club, is non-existent. Couponing just doesn’t happen. If we get a coupon for something, such as in the local newspaper or as a flyer in the mailbox, it’s usually for things like oil changes, tyre warehouses, Pizza Hut or local cafes. We don’t have CVS so Crystal’s deals have me alternatively bewildered and jealous, LOL. If you’re very lucky you might have a ‘grocery seconds’ supermarket near where you are (I do) but most of the time if you want to save money at the supermarket you’re down to watching the weekly grocery catalogues at the main stores. You can sometimes find good deals on personal care items at the Chemist (drugstore) and I’ve found stand-alone fruit and veg stores and butchers offer the best value on those products rather than the supermarkets)

So here we go!

Milk - generic (Home Brand). Woolworth’s brand milk and their Home Brand milk is identical, but you save around 30c per 3 litre (about ¾ gallon) and it all adds up.

Sour Cream - Woolworths brand (my local store doesn’t carry a ‘true generic’ so I use the store’s own brand)

Bread - Woolworths brand, about $2 per loaf

Bakery Items In General - I tend to go for the ones baked in store at Woolworths because they’re the cheapest. ( We only buy the expensive breads, hotdog rolls, burger buns and other items Woolworths stocks occasionally, and I can usually find brand name burger buns and hotdog rolls on sale somewhere for $2 per bag or less which is over half off)

Weetbix - Home Brand (cheapie version of this linked product). We’re so used to it now we can’t even tell the difference. As cereals go, Weetbix (and it’s generic counterparts) are one of the ‘good guys’ but they’re all virtually identical so why not save some money? I do still buy brand name cereals sometimes - Special K, Cheerios, Nutrigrain etc but we try to buy them only on sale. The cheapie Weetbix is always in our cupboard though.

Rice/Pasta - While I don’t necessarily think there’s much difference in nutritional content between generics and brand names here, I tend to buy the brand name (San Remo) due to texture. And honestly, pasta and rice are cheap enough already so $1.20 for a packet instead of 89c isn’t going to kill us. It’s still fantastic value.

Crackers - we’ve usually got some type of cracker in the pantry. You can see Home Brand water crackers in the pic above - we buy those sometimes. We put a few in a mini ziplock along with a ‘twist’ of peanut butter or other spread (cut a small square of baking paper, put a dollop on, and twist or fold up) for a cheap ‘Le Snak‘. Lately the kids have been eating Cheese Ritz crackers for a change.

Baking Supplies (sugar, flour etc) - almost always generic (Home Brand), if available. It just makes good sense and I can’t work out why someone would pay $1 more for a packet of sugar - it doesn’t taste any sweeter, right? There are a few exceptions though - yeast and anything chocolate. Generic chocolate chips are just sad :) I also cut myself some slack and sometimes buy a few boxes of the Green’s Traditional cake mixes when I see them on sale - they cost under $2 and come with icing which is a cheap afternoon tea - occasionally of course - for the kids, with plenty of leftover slices for lunchboxes. Sometimes a mama’s gotta do what a mama’s gotta do…

Pasta Sauce - okay, this is one where we buy brand name every time, but we buy it smartly. Our favourite brand is normally $3 per jar but we wait until it gets to $2 a jar and then buy a dozen. Yes, I could make my own - but I’ve long since realised I’m no pasta sauce making gal, LOL.

Peanut Butter - generic (Home Brand). I just don’t get why people spend more for Kraft.

Vegemite - sorry, but there isn’t a generic alternative that even comes close to Vegemite. Even the ‘we know we’re not Vegemite but we’re something kind of like it’ brands fail miserably. The good news about Vegemite is that you use it sparingly by default, LOL.

Honey - generic. Apart from varietal differences, honey is honey.

Toilet Paper - NOT generic - ’nuff said! But not the most expensive either (Aussies - Quilton brand)

Deodorant - not generic, but we stock up on sale.

Feminine Products - definitely not generic! But that’s personal choice.

Cola - not that we buy it very often, but Coke is a bit like Vegemite - there’s not a comparable product. Pepsi’s not even in the same league (*wink*). We don’t buy cans, just the occasional 1.25 litre (42oz) bottle, perhaps one every week or two.

Teabags/Coffee - we drink far more tea than coffee, but we’re not exactly connoisseurs of either - plain old Lipton for tea and whatever Nescafe instant coffee is on sale. I know, instant! Don’t shun me…

Snackbars/Muesli Bars (granola bars) - brand name (Uncle Toby’s/Kellogg’s). But again, we buy on sale if we buy them at all (I’m trying to get better with baking more often…no, really). We have a 50c per serving limit when we do buy them.

Household Items (lightglobes, sponges, paper towels and so on) - generic

Cheese - generic (Home Brand). Although, even the cheap cheese is expensive these days, sigh.

Buying generic groceries is always a smart choice to make :) But some of the individual products? Aughh. Things I won’t buy generic: Yoghurt, components for mexican meals (taco shells, taco seasoning etc), anything chocolate (blech!), potato chips (when we buy them, which is not all the time, we usually go the ol’ Doritos route), frozen fish (we prefer Australian brands over Vietnamese fish farms). As a general rule, I’ll try a true generic once. If it passes, wonderful. If it fails, I’ll try a store’s ‘own brand’ generic (Woolworths Select, for example) for that product. And if that fails, I cycle through the brand names until I find one that tastes good and fits well within our budget (hopefully on sale). For example - we’re all perfectly happy with Masterfoods sauces and mustards, but draw the line at Maille - lovely I’m sure, but it’s an added expense when we’re already happy with a cheaper version. We will buy Home Brand fresh milk (years of UHT milk has turned me into a ‘fresh only’ milk freak, LOL), and sometimes the store’s own brand of milk at a pinch, but it pains us to pay for Pura or Dairy Farmers milk (which happens sometimes if Talented Hubby does a late night milk-and-bread run to the service station on his way home from work). Don’t even talk to me about chocolate. We can get Home Brand chocolate confectionery - but don’t. We can go for Nestle or Cadbury (Cadbury’s better, in my humble opinion, LOL). And then we can go for Lindt. We strike a middle ground (Cadbury’s) on that one. And there are hundreds of examples of this kind of thing in our family’s personal list of common grocery items.

We’d like to afford to support 100% Australian-made but although a lot of generics are made in the same factories as their brand name counterparts, a large portion of these brand names (and therefore, certain generics) are still made overseas where the labour is cheaper. You’ll find a lot of Australian generic brands were actually made in China. So it’s a bit of give-and-take. We save money by buying generic where we can, but no, we’re not fanatical about it :)