Spacing the Cans | Hacker News Reader

Spacing the Cans

robhorning.substack.com

16 pointshams-andwich16 comments

Is it this complex? Or is it just that Aldi realised that middle-class people don’t want the store ‘discount’ label on their shelves as it makes them look poor?

Some bland ‘brand’ isn’t noticeable. And they’re all different, so you don’t pattern-match ‘Aldi’.

Our eyes just pass over it. And so Aldi is acceptable in your middle-class lifestyle even though it’s the cheap one.

It’s genius.

Exactly. It also makes sure you don’t pattern match the product as “inferior quality”. You assume “average quality”, and in fact (at least in the UK) many Aldi versions of products now have a reputation for being surprisingly high quality - but not all of them, so the segregation here between product lines allows some to get that reputation without being dragged down by the actually average ones.

They help all this by stocking the real branded versions of some products, and the fact their own brand products look roughly equivalent on the next shelf reinforces all of this.

Aldi have successfully manufactured a feeling that when you buy something cheaply it’s a _bargain_, rather than that you have compromised on the product you actually wanted to buy.

They also very hard when legally challenged for trademark disputes on their clone products with similar packaging, it’s certainly an important part of their strategy as far as they’re concerned.

I feel pretty strongly that the middle class stopped stocking its pantry with cans. Fresh ingredients not only taste better but are usually cheaper, and work from home only gave people more free time for the prep work involved.

It's not even about cost, but taste and showing off to the neighbors at the next gathering.

Aldi isn't the first to do it, an extreme version of it was in the 80's or so: https://gbnfgroceries.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-misc-foods-a...

Just plain white boxes with black font indicating what's inside "beer", "ice cream", "rice", etc.

We had a store called Finast. Their store brand just said Finast and what was in the box, but the boxes were yellow instead or white.

The article is explicitly not about that.

The whole stated point of the article is that these things are neither real brands nor the absense of a brand.

> Aldi tries to signify that absence with a lackluster presence, with mock marketing that conveys minimal effort.

I read the article as being that actually. It’s the postmodern “generic” label. The traditional mocking of the brands, so to speak, were the plain black on white products from the 40 years ago, but today it won’t fly, it needs to have a self referential ironic flare. But idea is pretty much the same.

There was a Dutch version of this as well with the 'brand' name Van een goede fabriek ('From a good factory') which I used quite a bit while at university. It was packaged in white boxes/bags or jars/cans with white labels with the product type - 'macaroni', 'pindakaas' (peanut butter), 'aardbeienjam' (strawberry jam), 'tarwebloem' (wheat flour) - in brown letters on a yellow rectangle with a brown edge around it. It was very intentionally made to look 'cheap' and it mostly was, money-wise. The products were mostly OK, good enough quality for the non-too-discerning student I was. Were I to live in the Netherlands still and were those products still available I'd still buy some of them. Others - like peanut butter and jam - I tend to make myself now so there is no longer any need to buy such.

What’s your peanut butter recipe? I’d never really considered making my own.

Just salted peanuts plus a tablespoon of oil (peanut oil, rape seed oil, whatever). Dump these in a blender and blend 'till the right consistency is achieved. You'll probably have to help the blender a bit by stirring in the peanuts when the knives have created a hole in which they are spinning freely, repeat this until the mixture has gotten warm enough to start flowing by itself. Make sure not to touch the knives while doing this and use a wooden utensil to avoid damage to the knives. Plastic works as well but just in case you happen to touch the knives I'd advice using wood or you'll end up eating plastic.

A full jar of peanut butter takes about 1.5 to 1.8 jars of peanuts (and a tablespoon of oil) to produce.

It's also nice to get raw peanuts and roast them in the oven before blending.

That oven works fine for roasting raw coffee beans as well. Raw beans keep a very long time if stored correctly, pity though they tend to be sold as a luxury product and thus priced to match that description. A popcorn popper of the 'modified heat gun' type (aluminium cup with slits in the bottom through which hot air is blown) also works well for roasting coffee.

Or in Canada, there's Loblaw's "No Name" store brand, with black Helvetica text on a bright yellow background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Name_(brand)

> It's been brought to my attention that you're not paying attention to the way you space the cans. —Mr. Humphries

> The generic must move amongst the brands as a fish swims in the sea —not 毛泽东

There's a more prosaic reason why Chinese companies use brand names like Felivolo, Tehanld, and Ljusved:

Amazon gives trademarked brands many benefits that enable higher sales, and to get a trademark you need no other trademark holder to protest that your mark is too similar to theirs.

If you use some almost random set of letters, you're very unlikely to experience delays in getting a trademark, and as soon as you get one you can immediately apply for Amazon's Brand Registry and start getting those brand-only marketing benefits.

A bit of a sidebar: Soviet Union has its own interesting history of product branding and brand culture which is somewhat touched upon, at a micro-scale, in relation to internal store branding.

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