When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?
eyeondesign.aiga.org
eyeondesign.aiga.org
I know the site is called "eye on design", but the associations of user tracking via ads and this blinking eye were amusing to me. Imagine having a blinking eye in the corner of each website for each tracker it has :)
Regardless of your stance on ad blockers, simply showing a mysterious eye without telling you you should stop your ad blocker sounds like awful design.
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Correction: It just blinked at me.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/woolworths-is-killing-off...
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/our-brands/essen...
Instead, they now have these wholesome-sounding brands such as Redmere Farms, Nightingale Farms, etc which imply you're buying from some twee family business instead.
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Tesco_Everyday_Value
They also have "Stockwell & Co" for the things which don't come from British farms, like jam and baked beans. That at least is a nod to history, because Tesco started out selling tea packaged by T. E. Stockwell.
They are entirely upfront about their brands:
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/zone/exclusively-at-te...
It amuses me that their dairy brand is 'Creamfields', both because that's too obvious, and also a house music festival:
Wairtrose also have an 'Essentials' range although the labelling is very similar to regular priced products. I buy these without a second thought.
Then they have heaps of other brands that are owned by them but have “proper” sounding brand names to give more illusion of choice.
It's the kind of design you would expect at a government facility lowest bid kinda thing.
Didn't last too long.
I think what people really want are "good enough" replacements for higher-priced brands, yet someone to take responsibility.
Also, don't forget about "Woolworths select", which was no better than homebrand but the tubs oats came in made really good pantry containers, and so in my kitchen anything loose like rice or almonds goes in them.
As a kid I always hated having to buy that particular brand because it indicated to everyone that we weren’t able to afford “real” brands. (I’ve thankfully grown out of this mentality. Even now that I’m earning the most I ever have in my life I still try to stick to homebrand as much as possible)
Aldi was formed by 2 brothers and then split after a disagreement about whether or not to stock alcohol. The reason I find it interesting is actually because Aldi isn't the first big brand formed by two German brothers to split into two (big, recognizable) brands. That honor would go to Adidas and Puma.
From my experience the US Aldi (which is part of an Aldi Sud) is a dimlit, bottom of the barrel discounter with a small selection of basics. Where Trader Joe's is a quirky "Hawaiian-themed" specialty grocer with a good selection of the unique-to-US products.
I won’t comment on the quality though, I very rarely shop with them.
In Northern Ireland it's still mocked gently as being a bit pretentious, where the 'ladies who lunch' from Malone do their shopping. But at the same time there is a great affection for the brand as it was the only mainland supermarket company to have a presence in NI throughout the Troubles.
> In Northern Ireland it's still mocked gently as being a bit pretentious
Waitrose seems to be filling that role in England.
"ja!" (yes!) is the cheapest and looks cheap. Next is "Beste Wahl" (best choice) which is more expensive and followed by "Bio" (Organic), again slightly more expensive and obviously organic. Finally, there is "Feine Welt" (Fine/Tasty World) which has the highest prices and more specialty items.
The designs of "Beste Wahl" and "Bio" look about equal, "ja!" clearly looks cheap and "Feine Welt" looks fancy: https://i.imgur.com/YA9VTyZ.png
edit: And before REWE bought them, we had a chain called SKY. When they introduced a new, very cheap, house brand the internal name was "Aldinative Produkte", a portmanteau of our discounter "Aldi" and "alternative" ;)
I also tend to like our supermarkets' generic packaging better. They use quality, color packaging, but the designs are usually understated and no-nonsense. It's like they're trying to say "this is a quality product, but we didn't overspend on flashy marketing and cartoon mascots". Even if it's not true, some of the Good&Gather packaging in the article makes me feel like I could have saved a little more if they didn't spend extra on cartoon animals. But maybe I'm just biased towards the things I grew up with.
https://www.theshelbyreport.com/2014/10/30/the-art-of-pricin...
Whereas with more expensive brands, at least for me, there's always a worry (and frequently, a strong suspicion) that you're just buying the exact same product but with an extra 200% markup.
It had its own special aisle.
Big cans with white labels that merely said “BEANS” or “CORN” in fat black letters.
Of course, it was embarrassing to have a cart full of that stuff as everyone would know you were poor.
I don't mean this to pick on you personally, but this sentence sums up so many problems with consumerism, advertising and it's ability to make us overpay. You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Especially with things like corn where no one could differentiate between the white label and name brands.
These days the off brand labels have there own special stores like ALDI, which is even better because you don't have to fight the distraction of a dozen brands of the same thing.
Namely, when I was a kid, my sister and I were terrified to go into that aisle because our mother told us that food was for albinos... that’s why the labels lacked color. It truly scared the crap out of me. Haha! Anyway, I will now sit back and wait for HN’s albino members to downvote me for offending people of [non]color.
- Mentioning downvotes is a sure way to get them, and there's even a mention in the guidelines[1] saying to avoid to do that : "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
- Other than this, I don't know about the last time, but here your comment feels like a fun anecdote more than an actual discussion point. While this kind of comment goes well in a lot of communities (typically very well with Reddit), it tends to get less traction on HN, as HN is very much directed towards discussion and argumentation
For true commodities thats entirely reasonable. And these days when the same contract manufacturers develops and packages the product for Aldi, trader joes, kroger, and Annies its even more true. But dont let rose colored glasses obscure the differences that dis exist between the generics and name brands of previous times. Its ok to admit that Toasted Nut Os just werent as good on texture and flavor.
https://www.treehugger.com/which-food-companies-dont-use-bpa...
In many cases, it's not just that nobody can differentiate between them. They are literally the same product from the same factory, sometimes coming right off the same line. As in: Some of the cans of product go left for the "name brand" label and go right for the "store brand" label.
It's excellent price discrimination. Get consumers to spend as much as they can afford for the same product.
Less important point is that you dont need to soak them 24 hours in advance, that is excessively long. A day before is primary convenient time when to do it for people who soak them for that long.
But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones
"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them
This lines up well with cooking the beans in a slow cooker, which in turn lines up well with working from home. Some evenings, i think "oh, i'll cook beans tomorrow", and put a pan on to soak (one minute's work). The next morning, i boil them for ten minutes to kill the PHA (if necessary for that variety), then load them in the slow cooker with whatever other ingredients seem good, and set it to run for eight hours.
It only involves a little bit of planning ahead, and very little actual work. In fact, it's nice to be able to front-load the work, so i do it in the morning when i'm still coming up to speed, rather than in the evening when i'm tired.
But I was certainly trained to buy peanut butter instead of putting peanuts in a blender.
When the only source of food are giant super markets 95% filled with aisles of packaged processed products (be they generic or otherwise) then yes people are trained from birth to buy them.
It's always a little adventure, to discover new things there. I guess I have a need to substitute for the lack of real hunting :-)
The design of these products is not exactly good looking, but very recognizable. One designer applied this brand image to a whole appartment with a "ja! living room" and "ja! armchair", which I find hilarious.
http://www.danieldilger.de/portfolio/ja-wohnung/
Look at that "ja! disco ball" and the "ja! beer vending machine", isn't that just awesome?
Since that time when you can order a nice book made out of your photographs, for ten bucks, and 3D print complex parts.
The people who are in the business of providing packaging likely upped their game with new production techniques that let them use better images, colors, materials and so on. They probably did that to edge out other people in that business.
Packaging sells; people are attracted to attractive packaging, so there is obvious motivation behind it. Once everyone is doing it, you can't be left behind.
With true “generic” product, a company doesn’t need to invest in good food quality. There is no brand to protect. “Kirkland”, is a decent respected brand on it’s own. You can only buy it at Costco, but you know it’s going to be decent. Trader Joe’s is similar. It’s not “generic”, it’s Trader Joe’s Brand. It’s a pretty significant difference, particularly at places like Trader Joe’s where a big portion of what they sell is their house brand.
The other significant piece of this is the ubiquity of branded stores. 30 years ago, when you went grocery shopping, you had 5 different regional supermarkets. Those supermarkets couldn’t afford to front their own brand so they went with generics as their cheap product. Now, we have so many country or even world-wide retailers that those retailers can afford their own brands. Some of them even have multiple “store brands” for their higher quality products.
The packaging is just the end-result of all of this, to have a brand, you need an identity.
I would not think the same of a regular grocery store and generic products.
Publix (southern US employee owned grocery store) was the first "big" store to try making the store brand look like a competing brand back in the early 2000s. They did it in response to the dot com bust and then gas prices soaring a year or two later. Other food brands were shrinking package sizes, but charging the same. Publix tried to differentiate by keeping the bigger sizes as long as they could (they eventually adopted the smaller trends). However, they capitalized on being able to brand at the same time. That Target brand aesthetic in the article, yea, Publix did that first in 04.
If you look up HOW, ADDY and AIGA awards from like 2004 to 2009 for package design, you see Publix kicking ass and taking names. Every award article commented how other stores need to take notice (especially target). Add on their profits from store brand goods went up, making them a bigger powerhouse in southern US grocery. Other stores followed suite.
I just find it weird how aiga themselves cant report on something they helped break out from back in the day. I'm guessing it's a Target paid article? Or a fiver blog writer...
This isn't even organic vs. processed/industrial food. There is just no outlet which has it all, so I have to shop around in different locations. Just Aldilidl would be too limiting for my tastes and needs.
Whether or not the price different is worth it is obviously up to the buyer.
Imagine knowing that a discount chain is about to make a regular purchase of 300,000 tins of beans. You will happily rebrand, keep it hushed up and take the repeat large orders. It makes me wonder what the margins are on a single tin of Heinz beans.
I remember there was a whole thing a few years ago about fake olive oil and fake grated Parmesan cheese (or what was mostly wood pulp which was allowable per legal definition). I think Kirkland was one of the real olive oil products, but the point is there were differences and some of the expensive brands were real and some were fake.
Bigger brands have bigger pockets to line with profits so we all know that the ingredients are probably the first to take a hit. Discounters do not have to deal with brand taxes.
I wonder if that's roughly true? I could imagine both yes and no. Classic economics, sort of by definition, can't take real world edge effects into account.
The true pioneer in this space is of course Trader Joe's.
Tesco:
- Value
- Tesco
- Finest
Sainsburys:
- Basics
- Sainsburys
- Taste the Difference
The packaging for the lowest tier was simple and used minimal colour (I think deliberately). The packaging for the highest tier was fancy (e.g. more saturated colours, use of metallic lettering).
If you have one own-label brand, you want to make it attractive. If you have several own-label brands, you want them to look distinct, so that shoppers self-select into the higher tier (higher margin) brand when they care, rather than always defaulting to the cheapest. You have to make the cheapest one 'worse' in some way.
I was curious myself when I saw it and it is indeed a 'Tesco exclusive' manufacturer that essentially sells everything that would previously have gone under the 'value' brand.
- "ja!" is the cheapest of the bunch, with very simple design (until quite recently the packaging was mostly white with blue and red print, no colour photos or other fancy design elements)
- "REWE Beste Wahl" ("Best Choice") is the "classier" own brand, with nicer design
- "REWE Regional" for regional products
- "REWE Bio" for organic foods
- "REWE Feine Welt" ("Delicious World") for own-brand delicacies
- "REWE to go" for "convenience" products
- "REWE frei von" ("free of") for lactose- and gluten-free products
- "Wilhelm Brandenburg" for meat products
https://www.ica.se/handla/sok/B%C3%B6nor/produkt/vita-bonor-...
With the internet, photoshop, diversity in packaging, explosion of available artists and designers, better printers for test and packaging, more savvy PM's it's a natural progression.
They still are not that good frankly, there's a ways to go to improve.
In my mind, that is the inhouse brand to beat in terms of high quality and good value. And it is definitely driven by consumer data, since Costco has information on what every member bought and returned.
Walmart may be soul-sucking to shop at, but their Dr. Thunder and clone colas are really good and 67 cents a 2 liter.
Their yogurt is basically as good as yoplait (orange is great), and their generic salt and vinegar kettle chips and life cereal are all great.
Supermarket clones are still pretty bad, which is surprising given what Walmart and Costco have been able to do with their market strength.
A failed coup attempt.
Rarely is it good to compete with your own vendors. Sometimes it works, but you have to be quick, you have to be brash, and most of all you have to be lucky. The rest of the time you may find yourself having to negotiate with people who remember you tried to stab them in the face.
The other is an upscale brand. I actually prefer it over most brand-name products. Over time I've become accustom to always seek out the store brand because it's such good quality, even if it's not always cheaper.
http://www.billsbeercans.com/~billsbee/canstore/images/IMG_1...
The reason is that design, photography, image/video editing, and printing became basic capabilities available to anyone.
They actually experimented for a while in 2000-2008 with slightly nicer/fancier packaging, only to do a redesign in 2009 back to the simpler design. I think they might just be the brand that best epitomizes the xkcd comic (https://xkcd.com/993/), and their yellow packages probably stand out even more than white in a supermarket environment.