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Wal-Mart "Great Value" Food Items

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When I'm shopping just for random food/typical dinners, I always buy the store generic brand. If I want to whip up something special, or for a nicer dinner, then I'll buy some higher quality stuff. For everyday eating, I don't see much of a difference.
 
I bake cinnamon rolls in a springform pan. Never ever had a problem with Pillsbury branded cinnamon rolls.

Bought the Walmart branded ones on a whim to see if it was worth the $.40 savings. Got about 10 minutes into the bake and notices a lot smoke in the air. Checked the oven and smoke was piling up in it. The cinnamon rolls had hemmoraged out enough oily residue that it was flowing out of the springform seam and starting to burn on the bottom of the oven.

Never will I buy those again. I don't like their garlic bread either. It just doesn't have the buttery, garlicy goodness of the name brands.
 
If you want a decent offbrand, Target's "Archer Farms" stuff is very good. It's really not that cheap vs. name brand stuff, but they offer variety and flavors that no one else can/does.

Kroger's Kirkland brand is also very nice when it comes to "premium" store brands. I love their spicy red pepper tomato sauce. They also have some of the best frozen veggie items. Again though, not as cheap as GV.
 
While some here have noted that the GV brand items tasted inferior to the brand they usually buy I'm pretty sure that all of the GV items are made by a major brand name with the GV for Walmart and Sam's. Whether or not they make an item with the same quality standards as their own brand may be unknown, but why have two separate production lines for the same item with different labels. The only GV items I buy are a Multi Grain Flakes cereal and their aspartame sweetener. I don't know of a branded cereal that's exactly the same, but the sweetener is basically Equal and tastes the same to me. If it doesn't taste the same to you or you think it's not as good then buy Equal.
 
eits said:
great value foods are awesome, in my opinion. a lot of times, they're healthier than the brand name stuff and it's always cheaper.

go look at the nutritional values of the brand name and compare it to great value. you'll see it's, usually, a little healthier... check out the pop tarts, for example.
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not always. ive seen GV canned stuff higher than name brand canned stuff. i have also seen some products 2 cents cheaper than namebrand stuff.

i think they use the packaging to get shoppers used to tGV being cheaper but sneak in higher prices items on some of their products because shoppers are conditioned to assume GV is always cheaper.
 
vi edit said:
I bake cinnamon rolls in a springform pan. Never ever had a problem with Pillsbury branded cinnamon rolls.

Bought the Walmart branded ones on a whim to see if it was worth the $.40 savings. Got about 10 minutes into the bake and notices a lot smoke in the air. Checked the oven and smoke was piling up in it. The cinnamon rolls had hemmoraged out enough oily residue that it was flowing out of the springform seam and starting to burn on the bottom of the oven.

Never will I buy those again. I don't like their garlic bread either. It just doesn't have the buttery, garlicy goodness of the name brands.
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why in the heck would you use a spring-form pan to cool rolls? why not a cookie-sheet or pie pan?
 
While I don't really shop at Walmart, I buy plenty of generics. There are only a few things I go for name brand though, like Oreos.
 
OutHouse said:
why in the heck would you use a spring-form pan to cool rolls? why not a cookie-sheet or pie pan?
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Why? Because it's the perfect size and I can just pop the sides off when I'm ready to slather the icing on them. And other than that freak incident with the GV branded cinnamon rolls that must have been dunked in half a gallon of shortening prior to packaging I've never had a problem using them.
 
vi edit said:
If you want a decent offbrand, Target's "Archer Farms" stuff is very good. It's really not that cheap vs. name brand stuff, but they offer variety and flavors that no one else can/does.

Kroger's Kirkland brand is also very nice when it comes to "premium" store brands. I love their spicy red pepper tomato sauce. They also have some of the best frozen veggie items. Again though, not as cheap as GV.
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I thought Kirkland was CostCo?

Around here (North Texas), Kroger store brand items are creatively labeled 'Kroger' brand 😀

Except the sodas, which are 'Big K', etc.
 
waggy said:
i laugh when people say this. as if a company is going to spend billions to make a special line to sale lower quality to walmart. the sku's are the same and the quality are the same.

many of the items on GV brand are re branded name brand. BUT not all. i would say about 90% of the stuff is as good as the name brand stuff. some of it you should pass by.

when the peanut butter recall was going on there was a few articles about GV brand and what was re branded.
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It doesn't cost "billions" of dollars to make lower quality poptarts or pizza. When I worked at a birdseed plant that supplied both quality and generic brands, the recipes were almost identical. However the generic brands always had a little more filler seed instead of the quality seed than the name brands. And no, it didn't cost billions of dollars, it took five minutes of setting up and flipping a couple switches. Sure, great value pb may have been made at the same factory as peterpan, but that doesn't mean they have the same recipe. It is really easy to vary the ingredients and cooks times for food factories. And I can tell you right now that there is no way peterpan would let somebody else sell their peanut butter for a lower price, thats just not good business. They would insist that greatvalue use a different recipe.
 
eits said:
great value foods are awesome, in my opinion. a lot of times, they're healthier than the brand name stuff and it's always cheaper.

go look at the nutritional values of the brand name and compare it to great value. you'll see it's, usually, a little healthier... check out the pop tarts, for example.
Click to expand...

Pop-tarts are one specific item where I thought the GV brand was sufficiently inferior to never buy again.
 
Slew Foot said:
I buy them , most of them are pretty similar to the name brands. I wish the packaging wasnt so ghetto though.
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You know, it's funny. It used to be that GV brand stuff had a nice looking (if plain) label, like any other name brand product next to it.

Lately, though, it's like Walmart decided to go retro, and go back to the old (original) generic black & white labels of the late 70's, back when generics started hitting the grocery store shelves. Back in the days of BEER and CORN labels, with a label that gave only the facts, and wasn't very attractive.

IMHO, it's going to hurt their business. Many people still equate attractiveness with value. :hmm:
 
marvdmartian said:
Lately, though, it's like Walmart decided to go retro, and go back to the old (original) generic black & white labels of the late 70's, back when generics started hitting the grocery store shelves. Back in the days of BEER and CORN labels, with a label that gave only the facts, and wasn't very attractive.
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Odd. I actually thought the new "white" labels were pretty refreshing. Much more clean looking than the boring old all blue & yellow of the old ones.
 
vi edit said:
Odd. I actually thought the new "white" labels were pretty refreshing. Much more clean looking than the boring old all blue & yellow of the old ones.
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I concur, I like the retro labels. They catch my attention more than all the over-decorated boxes do these days. You get used to the overly intricate labels, then all of a sudden a big print retro label catches your attention.
 
GV soy milk is good, GV OJ not so good.

Somethings gotta have name brand: Sunbeam bread, Cavenders, Tony's, Orange juice, Sandwich meats, Tuna

GV brand food items that are okay: salt/pepper, pasta, sauce, soy milk, cheese, peanut butter, canned vegetables, paper towels, paper plates, condiments (although ketchup is watery sometimes)
 
We never had GV stuff in our Walmart until just recently. What's funny (to me anyway) is that they put it RIGHT next to the same product but from major name brands. The spots are almost always empty too because people just grab whatever is cheaper.

Best thing is how none of these companies can really complain, or Walmart will drop their products, and that's probably half or more of their revenue.
 
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