I am Hellman’s Mayo, Land of Lakes butter and Chobani person. Other than those I can easily switch up.
We use All Free because Tide Free took the color out of our clothes too quickly. All works fine (and leaves the color). As long as I have Oxiclean around for stains - another name brand I won’t switch from - all is well with our clothes.
We have to use scent free on most things as H has sensitive skin. That eliminates even considering most detergents.
We shop at Harris Teeter and many of their store brand products are fine.
I do still buy name brands of several things including
Tide or All free and Clear (Or sometimes Method)
TP/PT/tissues - couple of name brands are fine - Kleenex, puffs, bounty, viva, charmin, white cloud
Ketchup/mayo/mustard
Yogurt (Siggis, Fage, or Finlandia
Usually glad trash bags, glad or Saran Wrap, Reynolds aluminum foil, but any plastic bags for lunches are fine with me
I’m with @Creekland We like ALL Free and Clear here. It seems to be the only fragrance free detergent that gets the teenage boy stink out of my son’s clothes! Perisol works really well buy my DH can’t stand the fragrance.
I find I purchase a lot of BJ’s brand (Berkley and Jenson) products. We buy the sales of our favorite brands but if I need it and don’t have an extra in the pantry, I have a hard time spending for brand name. I will purchase a small size sale brand and then stock up on our favorite brands when they go on sale.
Mainly name brands here. I disagree with some choices of others, but everyone’s taste is different.
Years ago before there were the free hotel/motel breakfasts we used to buy a box of cereal plus milk. Once was enough for generic Cheerios- just not the good taste. Likewise with many other products. Tried store brand yogurt but it was not the same as the Dannon I use with cooked foods.
Kirkland has often gotten high marks from Consumer Reports- great if you go to Costco.
Comment about being old enough hits home. My biggest problem now is that they seem to discontinue products I actively like and have used for years- body wash and shampoo most recently.
I use All Free too!!!
We were very sad when Job Squad paper towels disappeared. And we’ve recently learned that Quaker stopped making Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice. No more shot from guns!
I am particular about the food we eat, i.e., only grass fed dairy and meats, which pretty much means brand name (or from local farms) but if there were generic versions of those items, I would happily purchase them. I will only buy Genova tuna, Hellman’s mayo, Bounty paper towels, Cascade dish detergent, King Arthur flour (non GMO) Don’t care about brand for pasta, rice, spices, canned beans, vinegars/oils/most condiments, nuts, bread, coffee, tea, sugar. After reading a previous post about beet sugar vs cane sugar I’m going to look into that.
Ghirardelli chocolate chips
Hellmans mayo
Siggi or oui yogurt
San Marzano canned tomatoes- currently Cento brand because TJ has them at a good price
Local dairy milk products
Daisy sour cream- love this product, the only ingredient is cream, no guar gum or other non dairy fillers or thickeners
I like lots of TJ products- eggs, coffee, dried fruits, frozen fruit for smoothies, I like their organic no salt PB
I use Kroger brands for things like canned beans, butter, other canned tomato products such as tomato paste, diced tomatoes
Overall I am picky about food and have found the good quality products I am willing to pay for. I love to find good local brands and support local small businesses.
I don’t do much dairy, but when I do I’ll get grass-fed–Organic Valley milk, cream, and ghee. Also, Kerrygold Irish butter. I get eggs from a local farmstand.
I usually make my own mayo, but when I’m in a hurry, I use either Hellman’s (which H prefers) or Sir Kennsington’s (which I love). My D lives in NC and she’ll bring me Duke’s mayo (can’t get it in MA).
Muir Glen tomatoes and Bionaturae tomato paste (glass jars)
Peter Luger steak sauce, Bonesuckin’ Sweet/hot Mustard, and Heinz ketchup
I generally prefer to buy major brand items over generic or house brands due to my experience working in a cannery.for a summer job back in college.
Proponents of generic or house brands say that they are often derived from the same crops and packed in the same canneries or processing plants. And that’s true BUT…
One summer during my college years I worked in a Del Monte cannery canning mostly green beans. And part of the process was the beans were spread out on a conveyor belt and people stood along both sides of the belt and picked out the bad beans and debris (rocks, dirt clods, leaves & twigs, dead mice etc.) before they went on for washing and further processing before being put into the cans. I worked way down at the other end of the line, loading the sealed cans into big carriers to taken away to big steam cookers to be cooked and sterilized right inside the can.
Without looking to see which labels were being later applied, you could always tell whether they were canning for Del Monte or for some Brand X by how fast the line was running. If the line was running nice and slow you knew they were canning for the Del Monte label. If they were canning for some supermarket’s house brand that line was running so fast it was very difficult to keep up. And back at the sorting conveyor belt the beans would be piled so deep and moving so fast,you knew there was no way the women standing there could possibly pick out all the junk and bad beans in time. Things were just moving way too fast to keep the quality up.
Ever since that summer I almost always buy name brands.
Not picky about most things. Walmart or Aldi store brands are fine with me. I am only looking for the cheapest price. I grew up in a big family/have a big family, so frugality is a way of life.
Over the years I’ve given in on a few things. Bought cheap toilet paper forever. A couple years ago I got the nice stuff for houseguests and decided that I deserve this, too. So now I get the Charmin or Cottonelle. I found that store brand dishwasher detergents don’t work as well as Cascade and Finish. I’ve always used Palmolive (name brand, but cheap) for dish soap and I use it in my foaming hand soap dispensers, too. (Funny childhood memory: using store-brand lemon-scented dish soap–as shampoo!) Comet cleanser–name brand, but inexpensive. Mom always used it, so I stick with it.
I make my own yogurt and am always trying to convince others to do this–it’s so easy. I like Fage for a starter.
Oreos!–Walmart and Aldi have good imitations, but nothing tastes quite the same.
Scipio: so that explains those stems in Aldi’s green beans…
I agree with several posts in this thread. A couple more to add to the conversation -
Uncle Matt’s Premium Organic orange juice. Unbelievable how much better this is than anything else I have ever had.
Q-tips.
For many items, I have found the CVS brand easily meets or exceeds the name-brand in quality and always at a much lower price point. Especially batteries, lotions, and any kind of canned nuts
Items I only buy at Trader Joe’s: Peanut butter, dishwashing detergent, California grown olive oil, soy creamer, marinara, ketchup, cat treats.
Their mayonnaise is excellent but I started making my own and am never going back to store-bought. Their dijon mustard is good, but not as good as Grey Poupon (and neither can compare to Maille).
A chemistry professor of mine had a similar story about generic aspirins and Tylenols. He said that chemically the store brands were safe and equivalent to the name brands but that when consulting with a pharma manufacturer he saw that they used different quality coatings on the different pills and that the off-brand pills didn’t always dissolve in the stomach/intestinal tract the way you thought they should (either too slow or too fast).
So many people have commented on mayo. I think we must be under users of mayo - I don’t think I use more than a medium sized squirt bottle a year!
This is funny!
I don’t think of myself as having a lot of brand preferences, but there are some products where there is such a quality difference that I’ll ignore price and go for the brand, and others where there is a unique quality/price relationship that justifies the brand.
Brands I pay for:
King Arthur bread flour. (But not all-purpose, unless it’s on major sale. I’ll pay a buck extra for KA or Hecker’s all-purpose flour, but not much more.) I pay a ridiculous premium for the bread flour, which justifies it. I often pay the same premium for KA whole wheat flour, but I am less certain that’s worth it.
Hellman’s mayo. We maybe buy one jar of mayo per year – we hardly ever use it – but if it’s not Hellman’s we never use it.
Heinz ketchup. See above re mayonnaise, except it takes us two years to go through a bottle of ketchup.
Saran Wrap. It’s $.10 more than the store brand, and at least $.25 better. Better than Glad, too.
BT’s Kombucha. I like it a lot.
Diet Coke.
Kleenex tissues. Both, my wife insists.
Lifeway kefir. Costs $1.00 more than La Yogurt, the only other brand my store carries, but absolutely worth it.
Post Grape Nuts. I don’t know why, but the generic imitations don’t taste anything like the original.
Maesri Thai curry pastes. Especially massaman.
Pam. Definitely less residue.
Kingsford Charcoal Briquets. Not match-light. Light better, burn more evenly.
Brands I don’t pay for:
Greek yogurt. Our store-brand no-fat is the one we prefer blind.
Peanut butter. We have gone back and forth on this over the years. We definitely have a secret love of Jif Extra Crunchy, but we are going through an “anything that is all peanuts” phase.
Almond butter: Store brand organic is the best.
Butter. Are you kidding? Unless you are buying European, completely a generic product.
Seltzer Water: We buy lots, exclusively on price.
King Arthur bread flour tends to be on the high side of protein content among bread flours (which tend to have higher protein content than all purpose flours). So perhaps the brand matters as an indication of protein content when the flour is used for purposes where protein content matters?
@abasket- I realized when reading this thread how little ketchup we use. H and I are trying to go through the excessive jars and cans in our pantry and he found ketchup that expired 2 years ago, lol.
That being said - I love Fresh Market brand canned artichoke hearts. There are no tough, fibrous leaves you have to remove, just start chopping!
@3puppies - more than 10 years ago, I helped my D3’s class so a fundraiser selling Valencia oranges from Uncle Matt’s. They were so nice to deal with! I can’t get their OJ near me, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Cains Mayo
Hunts Ketchup
Dawn (blue) dish detergent
Starkist tuna (water)
Oscar Meyer Natural Angus Beef hotdogs
Aunt Jemima original pancake syrup
“Aunt Jemima original pancake syrup”
Sacrilege, @NEPatsGirl! You’re from New England! No fake maple syrup!