I’m sure everyone here uses Generics or Store Brands from the grocery store… or should anyway. But have you ever wondered what the difference was between the name brand and the generic/store brand??

I’m using string beans for the example but the broad principles apply to all generics.

First consider the raw product… where do your string beans come from?? Mr. Happy Farmer.

Mr. Happy Farmer plants his fields with string beans then harvests them and delivers them to the Fancy Veggies Canning Plant.

Now all Happy can do is the very best he can to grow as much as he can without losing much to diseases and bugs and he takes everything he has grown to Fancy Veggies and gets paid $xx per ton.

What does the Fancy Veggies Canning Plant do now? It has a contract to can string beans under the Luxury Brand Label and has to meet all the requirements Luxury Brand has laid down in order for the canning plant to get paid the premium rate they are charging Luxury for their service.

Well, Luxury Brand is VERY picky about what they want put in the cans with their label.

String Beans have to be not too long but not too short, not too thin but not too fat, not too green but not too yellow. They have to be Just Right. (Darn! I feel like Goldilocks here).

So Fancy Veggies sends Happy Farmers string beans down a conveyor where a whole group of workers pick over the string beans, pulling out all of them that don’t meet Luxuries specifications. What does meet specs disappears into the bowels of the factory to appear at the other end in a shiny new can with Luxury Brands label and off to the stores.

But what about all the string beans the workers pulled off the conveyor? Is Fancy Veggies going to throw them away? Nay, Nay, Fluffay!! Lose all that Money? Not by the Hair on my Chinny Chin Chin! (Ok, reading stores to my two year old Great Niece… sue me!)

All those string beans that were too fat or too thin, too long or too short, a bit too green or a bit too yellow… well they went down another conveyor into the bowels of the plant and came out the other end in a shiny new can with Generic Joes label on them.

The moral of all this is: As a General Rule the products in a Generic/Store Brand can often come from the SAME farm and often the SAME canning plant as the Name Brand Label. The final difference is the roll of labels loaded into the labelling machine… That’s it!

Name brands usually have very tight tolerances on size and color and no farmer can produce exactly what they want 100% of the time… a good percentage of the crops don’t meet specs but throwing them out is not considered an option so those that don’t meet “specs” become “Lesser Brands.”

Granted you might have the occasional taste difference… it’s not the produce it’s the additives… amount/kind of salt or added sugar used basically so pick generics/store brands that have little if any additives used in processing. They will be as close to the Name Brand, if not identical, in taste as is possible.

Usually when presentation matters you can go with the name brand… but otherwise don’t bother.

Photo credit: stock.xchng.