House Brands at Grocery Store

 I was wondering how one would found out who the actual manufacturer of
a house brand is. As I opened up a package of plastic wrap this morning
I purchased at a dollar store, I wondered if some guy had a machine in
his garage that made this stuff, and supplied all the dollar stores. I
know that Heinz at one time supplied most of the house brand soup, but
has since sold the line to someone else. One would think there is a
national register of such a list.

Tom

 
tombates@city-net.com wrote:

I don't have the list but "some" can be figured out.  Ralston Purina
makes quite a bit of those store brand cereals.  Some of the items in
the dollar stores are produced just for them only and don't have a
"parent" company like Heinz (niche marketing from what I understand).
I'm pretty sure the actual manufacturers don't want you to know because
it could detract from the sales of their branded items.  Kinda like the
Geo Prism being the same thing as a Toyota Corolla...only cheaper ;)

 
Most on this group probably aren't old enough to remember the canned
soup fiasco of I believe the summer of 1971 (I might have the year
wrong, it may have been 1970 I am  writing from memory) . What
transpired was a small soup company (BON VIVANT) of Newark,  NJ canned
a can of vichyssoise that somehow wasn't properly processed AKA
commercialy sterile which was purchased by a down state New York couple
by the name of  Cochrane which ate it. That particular can had
developed botulinium toxin from the underprocessing  and resulted in
the death of Mr. Cochrane and near death of Mrs. Cochrane. The
resulting  recall disclosed out of the same batch there were cans
labeled in brands ranging from most expensive  (SS Pierce, CROSSE &
BLACKWELL) to BON VIVANT (their own label) to several economy /store
brands. This caused quite a shakeup on several counts ranging from
NATIONAL CANNERS ASSN. getting stricter low acid canning regulations
passed and  having revealed to the general public THAT THE MOST
EXPENSIVE BRANDS AND CHEAPEST BRANDS WERE OFTEN ONLY DIFFERANT IN THE
LABEL APPLIED TO THE PRODUCT, THEY WERE OFTEN THE EXACT SAME PRODUCT.
So you can see that dollar store brands can be exactly the same
products as fancy brands.

 CHUCKB wrote:
....

So you can see that dollar store brands Can be completely
different products as fancy name brands. It's a crap shoot.
You have no way of knowing what you're getting until you
take a chance and try it.

My recommendation... Don't buy huge quantities of a brand
name that is completely unknown to you. Get one and try it
first to see if it's any good.

Anthony

 CHUCKB wrote:


Exactly "can be" but you have no way of knowing. If its a large purchase
there is a good likelihood that it isn't. If it is a low volume "niche"
product where it doesn't pay to adjust the manufacturing process it
might be.