1. Kirkland Signature (Costco) – The Ultimate Premium Disguise
Kirkland Signature is arguably the most successful private label in grocery history, and a big reason for that is how convincingly it avoids looking like one. Kirkland Signature is Costco’s private label brand, featured across Costco’s warehouses and website, and was launched in 1995, taking its name from the original location of Costco’s corporate headquarters in Kirkland, Washington. The red-and-black label has become so trusted that many members actively seek it out over national brands.
In 2024, the Kirkland Signature brand recorded $86 billion in revenue. That number alone makes it bigger than many standalone consumer brands most people recognize by name. Costco has adopted a strategy of co-branding certain items with well-known manufacturers to bolster consumer trust, with notable co-branded products including those from Chinet, Jelly Belly, Keurig Green Mountain, Ocean Spray, and Starbucks.
Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies diapers, produces Kirkland Signature diapers for Costco, and Duracell produces Kirkland Signature batteries, Costco executives have confirmed. On the food side, some Kirkland Signature coffees sold at Costco are roasted by Starbucks. The product inside the bag is the same – only the label and the price change. What makes Kirkland particularly clever is that it doesn’t hide this entirely. Some packaging openly lists the real manufacturer, which actually builds more trust while keeping the Kirkland premium image intact.
2. Trader Joe’s Store Brand – Artisan Vibes, Factory Reality
Trader Joe’s has built one of the most devoted cult followings in American retail, in large part because its products feel artisan, independent, and a little mysterious. Trader Joe’s sells almost exclusively white label products. From snacks to frozen meals, most items are produced by other manufacturers but branded exclusively for Trader Joe’s stores. That sense of discovery in the aisle – the quirky names, the nautical branding – is a carefully constructed identity layered over a very standard private-label operation.
Among the nation’s largest retailers, Aldi and its parent Trader Joe’s most heavily rely on private brand sales, accounting for 80% and 70% of their total sales, respectively. That’s an extraordinary figure. Retailers often rely on well-known manufacturers to supply their private label lines, and Walmart’s Great Value brand, for instance, is made by companies like Sara Lee and Bimbo. Trader Joe’s is no different in structure, despite the very different image it projects.
Most consumers aren’t aware of these relationships, and in Trader Joe’s case, the involvement of so many mainstream brands seems to go against the one-of-a-kind appeal the company promotes, which draws so many people to its stores. The frozen enchiladas, the everything-but-the-bagel seasoning, the cookie butter – there’s a good chance a third-party co-packer with multiple retail clients is producing all of them. The whimsy is real. The exclusivity, less so.
3. Great Value (Walmart) – The Price King With a Hidden Pedigree
Great Value is probably the most recognized store brand in the United States, and for decades it was the definition of “no frills.” Plain packaging, budget pricing, and an assumption of lower quality. That image has shifted significantly. Some store-brand items are said to be literally the same product as their name-brand counterparts, with the only difference being the packaging and price. Walmart’s Great Value line is one of the most documented examples of this.
The Great Value White Bread from Walmart is made in the same bakery as Sara Lee products and many other brands. That means shoppers paying a premium for a name-brand loaf may be buying from the exact same oven as the store-brand option. In some cases, a manufacturer can have multiple formulas for one product, creating a private-label version using one method and the national-label version using another – but in many pantry categories, the difference is minimal or nonexistent.
Walmart has also pushed further up the value chain. Walmart’s upscale Bettergoods brand – a big driver of the retailer’s recent earnings growth – features organic, plant-based, and gluten-free products. With the absence on the packaging of Walmart’s name or any traces of the Great Value brand, consumers may not even realize bettergoods is actually a private label and instead see it as similar to the kinds of exclusive and trendy offerings they might find at Trader Joe’s or Target. That’s the game: make it look independent enough that shoppers forget who actually owns it.
4. Simple Truth (Kroger) – Organic Branding, Retail Ownership
Simple Truth is Kroger’s health-focused private label, and it’s designed to read like a clean, mission-driven brand that belongs on the shelves of a specialty health store. The green packaging, the “free from” claims, the organic certifications – all of it signals wellness rather than cost-cutting. In reality, Simple Truth is just one arm of Kroger’s massive private label operation, which spans everything from basics to premium tiers.
Most private-label store brand products are manufactured by third parties, but companies owned by the retailer make some. A Kroger vice president stated in 2018 that approximately 60% of their private-label products are outsourced. The remaining 40% is manufactured internally – in 2018, Kroger owned 38 plants, including 19 dairy farms, 10 bakeries, and 2 butcheries, strategically spread across the US.
Most retailers prefer to keep the identity of their suppliers private and accordingly have non-disclosure clauses in their contracts, making it difficult to determine the producer of a private-label product. In a few cases, the manufacturer is allowed to mention it publicly, is revealed through a product recall, or in rare instances, is stated on the product itself. Simple Truth benefits enormously from this opacity. Shoppers are buying Kroger’s brand equity dressed up in wellness language, often without knowing where the actual product originated.
5. Millville (Aldi) – Cereal That’s More Familiar Than It Looks
Walk into any Aldi store and the cereal aisle is a masterclass in controlled imitation. The Millville brand boxes bear a striking visual resemblance to major national cereal brands – similar color schemes, similar mascots, similar font choices – all stopping just short of outright copying. Mondelēz International sued Aldi, alleging the grocer’s snack offerings replicate the packaging of Oreos, Chips Ahoy! and five other brands. The legal pressure signals just how closely these products mirror their national brand counterparts.
Aldi’s Millville brand is widely rumored to have been manufactured for the grocery chain, with some sources indicating that Millville cereals are manufactured by Malt-O-Meal, which is owned by Post. Whether or not that specific arrangement still holds, it illustrates how a store brand can carry the production quality of a national brand name while being sold at a fraction of the price. Generic cereals – store-brand corn flakes, rice puffs – often match the texture and ingredients of national equivalents made by the same manufacturer.
According to FMI’s 2024 Power of Private Brands report, 71% of US shoppers believe private-label quality is equal to or better than national brands. Aldi has bet its entire business model on that belief, and the bet continues to pay off. Ninety percent of products at Aldi are private label, so the chain can offer customers more affordable prices. Millville isn’t a knockoff in the cheap sense – it’s a calculated product designed to be functionally equivalent while costing noticeably less.
6. Good & Gather (Target) – The Premium Store Brand That Hides in Plain Sight
Target’s Good & Gather line launched in 2019 and quickly became one of the fastest-growing food brands in the country. The packaging is clean, modern, and minimalist – the kind of design language associated with independent food startups rather than a mass retailer. Most shoppers grabbing a Good & Gather Greek yogurt or pasta sauce don’t think “store brand.” They think “quality product.” That’s the entire point.
Decades ago, generic or private-label brands would purposely use inexpensive packaging and plain, stripped-down branding to convey the message of savings. These days, private-label packaging has shifted toward a more modern look with contemporary fonts and higher-quality imagery, and many of the design changes are also associated with health, sustainability, and clean ingredients. Good & Gather is the textbook example of this transformation.
Target has long focused on private brands, and its company-owned brands contribute more than $30 billion in annual sales, having more than tripled in the past three years. Good & Gather accounts for a major portion of that. As private-label quality has improved, consumers increasingly see store brands as comparable to – or even better than – national brands. Target understood this shift early and built Good & Gather to capitalize on it, creating a brand that looks like it could compete at Whole Foods while living inside a mass-market retailer.
7. Benton’s (Aldi) – The Oreo Doppelgänger With a Legal Paper Trail
Benton’s is Aldi’s cookie and cracker line, and it’s become something of a legend in the private label world – not just for its quality, but for how closely its products resemble national favorites. The chocolate sandwich cookies, the fudge stripes, the peanut butter crackers: each one clearly designed to evoke a household name. As food manufacturers look for opportunities to combat the rise of private label offerings, more CPG manufacturers are expected to sue retailers they claim are making copycat products.
The lawsuit from Mondelēz International against Aldi alleged the grocer’s snack offerings replicate the packaging of Oreos, Chips Ahoy! and five other brands. That lawsuit, filed in 2025, is one of the clearest admissions yet that the resemblance between Benton’s products and national brands isn’t accidental. Richelieu Foods, for example, is a private label food manufacturing company producing frozen pizza, salad dressing, sauces, marinades, condiments, and deli salads for other companies, including Hy-Vee, Aldi, Save A Lot, Sam’s Club, Hannaford, BJ’s Wholesale Club, and Shaw’s Supermarkets. The same large co-manufacturers often sit behind multiple retail brand names across the industry.
Many premium-positioned private labels have become indistinguishable from national brands for a majority of consumers. Benton’s cookies are a prime illustration. In blind taste tests, most people struggle to tell the difference. For discount chains that typically shy away from selling name-brand items, the ability to tap into product attributes tied to a popular item, such as an Oreo cookie, can prove incredibly valuable in getting a consumer to purchase their store’s offering instead. The line between imitation and genuine competition has never been thinner.
How to Spot a Private-Label Product in Disguise
The most reliable clue is the ingredient list. When a store brand and a national brand share nearly identical ingredient orders and quantities, there’s a strong chance they share a factory too. Since stores don’t spend money on national advertising campaigns for their products and the packaging is kept relatively basic, they can sell for less. That savings gap – often between roughly ten and thirty percent – is almost entirely a branding and marketing cost, not a manufacturing one.
Most retailers prefer to keep the identity of their suppliers private and accordingly have non-disclosure clauses in their contracts, making it difficult to determine the producer of a private-label product. This makes consumer research harder than it should be. One practical workaround is to look for UPC codes, lot numbers, and facility addresses on packaging – in some cases, these reveal a shared production origin. Recall notices have historically been some of the most revealing documents, as they expose which brands share a single manufacturing source.
Store brands can be anywhere from 10% to 50% cheaper than their national brand equivalents. For shoppers willing to compare labels carefully, the savings are real and the quality gap is often negligible. Store brand annual dollar sales jumped 30% from 2021 to 2025, with dollar share and unit share up about two percentage points. That trajectory tells its own story: once consumers try a private label and discover what they’ve been missing, they rarely go back.
The Branding Psychology That Keeps You Paying More
The reason so many shoppers keep reaching for national brands despite equivalent quality and lower store-brand prices comes down to one thing: perception. The old stigma – that private label meant lower quality – is fading. NIQ’s 2024 Brand Score Study found that 60% of shoppers now trust store brands, and 71% rate them equal or better in quality compared to national brands. Yet that lingering doubt still nudges many carts toward the pricier option.
According to FMI’s 2024 Power of Private Brands report, 71% of US shoppers believe private-label quality is equal to or better than that of national brands. Moreover, trust in store brands correlates directly with trust in the retailer itself, creating a powerful halo effect that benefits the entire private label portfolio. This is why retailers invest so heavily in the shopping experience as a whole – a cleaner store, better signage, and a stronger loyalty program all make the store brand feel more credible.
Sales of store brand products rose 3.9% in 2024, outpacing the 1% growth by national brands. Private label product sales increased $9 billion to a record $271 billion in all outlets. These aren’t fringe numbers anymore. Private label gives retailers more pricing flexibility and margin protection. While national brand gross margins typically hover in the 25–35% range for grocers, private-label margins can exceed 40%. The retailer wins on margin. The shopper wins on price. The only loser in the deal is the illusion that a brand name automatically means a better product.
Conclusion
The gap between what a food brand promises and what it actually delivers has never been smaller – or more commercially manipulated. From 2021 to 2024, private-label store brand sales increased by over $51 billion, a 23.6% gain. Shoppers are steadily catching on, not because they’ve been convinced by marketing, but because they tried the alternative and noticed something obvious: it tasted the same.
More than 80% of US consumers rate the quality of private-brand food products the same or better than national brands, and nearly 90% feel that private brands offer similar or better value. That’s not a trend – that’s a structural shift in how people think about food and branding. The companies producing your favorite crackers, cereals, and condiments are often the exact same ones filling the store-brand shelf right beside them.
Next time you’re standing in a grocery aisle comparing two products, flip both packages over. Check the ingredients, the manufacturer address, and the nutritional panel. The label on the front is marketing. Everything else is information. Knowing the difference is worth far more than any loyalty points program ever will be.
