We aren’t fancy like Applebee’s on a date night. We’re frugal and like to save when we can, especially on things that don’t make a difference in our day-to-day. Little decisions each day can add up to huge savings, like eating Publix ice cream after burgers versus Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake. One place where we can save a lot is shopping generic versus name brand on our weekly grocery store runs.
Apart from the few exceptions noted below, the difference between most generic products and their fancier, more famous friends shaking their little tushes on the catwalk is solely the price. Below, we cover which name brands are, in our humble opinion, worth the extra cash and which generics to add to your cart to cut down monthly expenses in your budget.
Equate Generic Is a Great Value at Name Brand Quality
If you went window shopping at our house, you might think you were in a showroom where Walmart and IKEA had a baby. Local grocery stores around here are either really expensive unless you’re buying BOGO (in which case I buy a bunch of extra stuff that expires before we can eat it and don’t save any money) or are cheap but the entire store smells like rotten fish.
Polite pass on both. So we, my friends, are Walmart people.
There is no shame in our game. Inflation has hit our groceries and household goods budget line item like a kid gunning to win Red Rover. In our house, you will find the trifecta of Walmart knock-off brands:
- Equate – health-related products like sinus and allergy, cold & cough, oral care, etc.
- Mainstays – home goods like curtains, towels, storage bins & organizers, etc.
- Great Value – groceries and household supplies like rice and beans (literally and figuratively), dish soap, frozen fruit, etc.
Let’s do a breakdown of our last weekly grocery run and compare the cost of generics versus the name brand counterpart to see what difference it makes every week. (If there isn’t a name brand alternative, like my frozen strawberries, or a generic alternative, like my frozen dragon fruit, I omitted them below.)
I’ve never sat down and done this before, so it’ll be interesting for us to find out as well.
- Head and Shoulders shampoo: $8.97 vs $4.64
- Snuggle fabric softener: $4.77 ($0.11/oz) vs $0.07/oz generic
- Great Value frozen wild blueberries: $8.24 vs $12.48
- Great Value frozen carrots: $0.98 vs $2.97
- Great Value cranberry pomegranate juice: $3.97 vs $3.36 (huh!)
- Great Value chicken broth: $1.37 vs $2.98
- Ritz Crackers: $3.88 vs $2.72
- Birthday card: $0.98 vs $4.99
- Equate “Nasacort”: $10.48 vs $13.96
If we’d bought only the generics, we would have spent $36.41.
If we’d bought only the name brands, we would have spent $58.36.
Buying generics across the board would have saved us $21.95, which is about 38% less than the name brands.
And this was a short week of groceries for us without many household goods.
Just these savings alone for a year would save $1,141.40. Over a thousand bucks!
Because I’m a nerd, I pulled some stats to see how our trial week went. Turns out, we had a pretty average run. CNET compared 20 different generics versus name brands for staple groceries and concluded that buying store brand generics saves about 40% (1).
Let’s see how annual the average stacks up.
The average American family spends roughly $5,700 a year on food at home (2). This doesn’t even include household goods. A quick and dirty calculation assuming (and yes, I know what happens when we “ass-u-me” but this isn’t the SATs, this is quick budget math) that the average American family buys name brands suggests you could save up to $2,280 a year on your grocery budget.
While I don’t think most Americans buy strictly name brands, this doesn’t include household goods, which could add another grand or two easily to the equation. With our short week dirty calc of $1,141.40 in savings, it feels relatively safe to suggest you could save anywhere between $1,000-$2,000 a year just by trading in the fancy cereal boxes for their plastic bag knockoffs. You, too, can have $3 “Scobby” Snacks instead of $6 Scooby Snacks. Jinkies, what a deal!
The Owl That Winks at Girl Scout Cookies
Another great option to help cut down on your monthly groceries and household supplies is Aldi if you have one nearby. If you haven’t gone, make sure you take some reusable bags (or something to bag and carry your groceries) and a quarter to free a cart from the chain gang. Aldi has a bare bones support staff in the store and a simple layout. With the amount they save on overhead, they pass it along to customers in savings.
While we don’t usually do our entire weekly meal planning and shopping list around Aldi, you could in a pinch.
Aldi is typically good for produce, meat, and staples like milk and eggs. You can also find rice, beans, condiments, and knock-off cereals and other boxed foods. Just be careful of how much you spend on processed foods as they are some of the highest marked up items, name brand or not.
A few of our splurges I like to get at Aldi that are stupid cheap compared to their name brand counterparts:
- Winking Owl Shiraz wine – this is under $4 a bottle but doesn’t taste like $4 Walmart wine (which I do not recommend). Winking Owl is hit or miss, but we thoroughly enjoy the Shiraz.
- Benton’s peanut butter filled cookies – these taste exactly like Tagalongs and are just as good frozen as their name brand counterparts. The Aldi’s knockoff is around $2, while Girl Scouts are slinging their cookie drugs on the corner for $5. Oh, and the Aldi’s version is 9.5 oz while the OG Girl Scout boxes are only 6.5 oz, so it’s less than half the cost for almost 50% more.
Name Brands We Won’t Let Go Of
While we’re all about saving money with generics, there are a few name brands we’ve refused to give up. A few you’ll note above, including Head and Shoulders and Ritz Crackers. In our defense, we have tried the generic alternatives but wouldn’t give them 3 out of 5 star ratings.
A few others include:
- Campbell’s soup, because only the name brand is mmm, mmm, good enough when my husband’s sick
- Pop-Tarts
- Bath & Body Works
Generics That Are Better Than Their Famous Name Brand Friends
While there are some name brands that are worth the extra cost for us, we also have some generics that we prefer to the name brand. These are a win-win because they’re cheaper, too. These include:
- Great Value sausage breakfast croissants and biscuits versus Jimmy Deans
- Publix peppermint stick ice cream to anything Breyers makes
- Sprouts lip balm versus Chapstick, Dr. Bronner’s, etc.
- Sprouts sunflower butter
While I wouldn’t say Dr. Thunder is as good as Dr. Pepper, my husband swears knockoff sodas are just as good. If you live in South Park, this would be your Dr. Pep-er.
The Generic Versus Name Brand Challenge
Now it’s your turn. Look at your grocery cart the next time you’re at the store. How many name brand products do you have in your cart, simply because it’s what you’ve always gotten or was what you grew up on? I was a Kraft Mac n’ Cheese kid, but the generic turns out to be a-okay. Try swapping them out for a week. If everyone in the house hates it, you can always go back. But I’d bet you’d be surprised at how many things you can’t even tell the difference in.
What are some of your favorite generic alternatives to name brands? Drop them in the comments below! Also let us know how much you save at checkout during your challenge.
Check out our budgeting station for other tips on cutting expenses in your monthly budget.