Families around the country are paying hundreds of dollars per week for groceries these days, because yes, everything is seriously just that expensive right now (to say nothing of gas prices). Naturally, moms nationwide are doing everything they can to cut costs, whether that means shopping at multiple stores for the best deals, couponing, and more. If you’ve been brand-loyal to certain grocery items before — I grew up in a staunch Jif peanut butter household — you are probably at least considering swapping to the generic store-brand for some of those items. A new investigation by NetCredit uncovered exactly which store-brand items will save you the most money if you make the switch.
A team at NetCredit compiled a list of 171 common grocery products and visited Walmart, Kroger, and Target to calculate the price differences between the most popular name brands for each product and the store-brand alternatives. “We then aggregated these differences by product across the retailers to find the average savings available by switching to the store-brand version of each item,” the report explains.
Their thrifty shopping research found that opting for store-brand items at these three major retailers could save you more than 40%, compared to a shopping cart loaded with name-brand equivalents. Of the 171 items they compared, these were the 25 where the savings were largest and how much less they cost than their name-brand counterparts:
- Sports/hydration drinks — 74.3%
- Fruit Loops-style cereal — 69.3%
- Ketchup — 66.6%
- Plain corn flakes — 64.2%
- Tortilla chips — 62.7%
- Frosted shredded wheat cereal — 61.1%
- Gallon of 2% milk — 60.8%
- Gallon of whole milk — 60.3%
- Ranch dressing — 59.2%
- Chocolate milk — 58.5%
- Ice cream sandwiches — 56.7%
- Can of corn — 55.6%
- Spray cheese — 52.8%
- 12-pack of cola soda — 52.1%
- Mustard — 51.9%
- French baguette — 50.2%
- Cheesecake — 50%
- Boxed mac and cheese — 49.8%
- Cheddar cheese brick — 49.3%
- Spaghetti pasta — 49.2%
- Honey Bunches of Oats-style cereal — 48.7%
- Apple juice — 48%
- Bagged popcorn (pre-popped, like in the chip aisle) — 47.5%
- Cheerios-style cereal — 47.2%
- Potato chips — 47.1%
The report includes more detailed breakdowns of each section of the grocery store, like which frozen foods or canned items had the biggest savings’ margins. Overall, the financial experts behind it recommend choosing store-brand grocery items for things you buy the most often, like milk, soda, or bread. The small savings per purchase add up quickly over the month when you have to replenish the item frequently.
They also recommend swapping to store-brand items where you won’t taste any difference. For example, bottled water is bottled water. Lemon-lime sports drinks are lemon-lime sports drinks. That said, they encourage families to keep buying the brand-name items that do have a taste difference or that are your favorite snacks, spreads, et cetera. If you are going to buy a generic cereal but not eat it, is that money saved or wasted, you know?
While it’s not groundbreaking information that opting for store-brand foods can save money, it is startling to see how much you can save, and to know exactly which items are most worth swapping out. Since peanut butter didn’t make the top 25, maybe I can hang onto my Jif, but be more discerning about which cereals and sports drinks I put in my cart.
