The fluorescent lights of the superstore can feel like a battleground for your wallet. On one side, you have the familiar national brands, their logos a comforting promise of consistency. On the other, the stark, simple packaging of store brands like Walmart’s Great Value and Target’s up & up or Good & Gather, whispering of significant savings. For the frugal American household, the choice seems obvious: go generic. But is it always the right one?
The truth is, not all generic products are created equal. While many are fantastic bargains, manufactured in the same facilities as their pricier counterparts, others can be a disappointment in taste, quality, or performance. Navigating this landscape requires more than just grabbing the cheapest box. It requires a strategy.
This guide is that strategy. We’re not here to shame you for your brand loyalty or celebrate blind frugality. We are here to give you the tools to make informed, evidence-based decisions in the aisles of Walmart and Target. We will demystify food labels, break down pricing tricks, and explore which categories of generic brands typically offer the best value for your dollar and which might be worth skipping. Our goal is to turn your weekly grocery run from a stressful guessing game into a simple, repeatable habit that saves you money without sacrificing nutrition or safety.
We’ll answer the big questions: Is Walmart’s Great Value brand any good? What are the best up & up products at Target? And most importantly, how can you become the expert on what’s best for your family and your budget?
How to Read Prices and Packages
Before we can judge a product, we have to understand what the store is telling us. The most powerful information isn’t on the front of the package; it’s on the small print of the price tag and the ingredient list. Mastering these two things is the foundation of smart shopping.
The first and most important tool is the unit price. This is the cost of a product broken down into a standard unit of measurement, like cents per ounce, dollars per pound, or cost per sheet. You’ll find it in smaller print on the shelf tag, right next to the big, bold retail price. Why does it matter? Because package sizes are designed to be deceiving. A 16-ounce box of cereal for $4.50 seems cheaper than a 20-ounce box for $5.00. But the unit price tells the real story. The smaller box is 28.1 cents per ounce, while the larger box is only 25 cents per ounce. The bigger box is the better deal, and the unit price makes that instantly clear. Always compare the unit price between different sizes of the same brand and between the generic brand and the national brand.
This leads directly to the concept of shrinkflation, a subtle but common way companies raise prices without changing the number on the tag. Shrinkflation is when the manufacturer reduces the amount of product in a package while keeping the price the same. Your bag of chips feels a little lighter, your block of cheese is a bit thinner, and your roll of paper towels has fewer sheets. A perfect example is ice cream. For years, the standard carton was a half-gallon (64 ounces). Today, most cartons are 1.5 quarts (48 ounces), a 25% reduction, but the price has often stayed the same or even increased. If you paid $5.99 for 64 ounces last year, your unit price was about 9.4 cents per ounce. If you pay that same $5.99 for the new 48-ounce carton, your unit price is now 12.5 cents per ounce. That’s a significant price hike hidden in plain sight.
Finally, let’s define our terms. A national brand is a product sold by a major manufacturer across the country, like Kraft, Kellogg’s, or Procter & Gamble. A private label or store brand is a product manufactured for and sold exclusively by a specific retailer. Great Value is Walmart’s private label; Good & Gather (for food) and up & up (for home and personal care) are two of Target’s major private labels. Many private label products are made by the same companies that produce national brands, a practice known as co-packing. This is why sometimes the store brand tastes identical to the name brand—it might just be in a different box.
