Showerthought: Remember when generic store brand stuff was always bad? Now it's sometimes better.

I used to swear off store brand ketchup after a bad experience in 2018 with a watery bottle from a discount grocery in Cleveland. But last month I grabbed the Aldi organic version on a whim and honestly it beat Heinz in a blind taste test my wife ran. Has anyone else noticed the quality gap closing on certain items or is it just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary5d ago

and honestly @emmawood i think the whole "generic = bad" thing is fading across the board. it's like stores finally realized people won't buy their stuff if it's trash. i've noticed it with cereal too. the off brand versions used to taste like cardboard but now some of them are actually crunchier than the name brands. the pattern i see is that stores are investing in better suppliers and testing because they want repeat customers. a lot of the same factories that make name brand stuff also make store brand now. so you get the same product for less money and sometimes they tweak the recipe to be even better to stand out. your point about consistency is real though, some items are still hit or miss, but it seems like the good ones are sticking around and the bad ones get swapped out fast.

emmawood5d ago

Wait, are you sure that blind taste test wasn't biased by knowing it was Aldi? I've had the opposite experience with their pasta sauce, it tasted like sugary tomato paste compared to Rao's. Maybe your wife's test was rigged or something. And that watery 2018 ketchup situation is exactly why I still don't trust generic condiments, they can be inconsistent batch to batch.