Kirkland signature wine and spirits (and tons of other Kirkland brand stuff). Not necessary better, but it's so much cheaper and so close to quality that it's a bit brainer to buy it over more expensive stuff. Plus,on a lot of instances the Kirkland signature is made by big companies and rebranded as Kirkland.
I agree. But I can’t upvote your comment because I can’t figure our how to do it in Memmy. Swipe left downvotes it. Swipe right to comment. Touching the up and down arrows does nothing. But Kirkland stuff is great.
Kirkland diapers, wipes are an immense value for parents too. And good Lord do I love me some Kirkland branded booze.
Kirkland is at the very least competitive for pretty much everything really.
Their clothes are great quality too
I love their tech slacks. $15 for basically Lululemon abc pants.
I know for spirits, not sure on wine and beer, in many cases it is literally from the same factory that the name brand comes from they get bulk deals and just put their labels on it
Cries in Texan
Their malbec is so good. Sometimes I'll spurge on a sometimes MUCH more expensive bottle and 9/10 I regret not just going to Costco and getting theirs.
- Almost all paper goods, specifically Kirkland brand.
- Canned veggies are all the same as well, so whatever’s cheapest
- most dried herbs and spices
- staples like flour, butter, sugar, oil, etc. they are basic and as long as you are getting the kind you need (like AP flour or dark brown sugar) there isn’t any room for differences that the average consumer could notice anyways
Have you not experienced Kerrygold butter? Because there is definitely a difference! Everything else checks out though.
I see you
As a fountain pen user and fan of stationery, I can assure you not all paper is created equal. For me it's 100% worth paying for the good stuff.
Paper goods meaning napkins, paper plates (mostly for food prep), paper towels, etc. agreed 100% on actual paper for writing.
If you make bread you can tell a difference between brands of flour, and the more expensive stuff is usually noticably better.
I have heard that Canadian flour is better than American, so maybe that's why, but I've never noticed a difference in flour brands. I've been baking bread for years and did it as a full time job for two years.
I bake a lot and I've also noticed that sugar can vary between brands, mostly with how it's ground. When I buy the generic, this time it might be finer and next time, it could be really coarse. I usually stick with Domino brand now.
Canned veggies
I feel like the generic branded ones have more nasty looking pieces in them
There's also a noticeable difference with some beans. Cheap ones are tough and taste almost stale, while nicer ones are creamier and more flavourful.
Aldi has Frosted Mini-wheats that keep don't get as soggy and hold on to the frosting longer.
Aldi generics overall tbh
Agreed, Aldi's stuff rarely worse than equivalent products, and some I prefer more than the name brand. Only things I balk at are fake cheese flavored things and canned goods from their German themed store brand.
except baby wipes, theirs are lousy
Canned and processed food. Store brand os usually much cheaper and tastes the same if not sometimes better than the big brand names.
One of my old coworkers dads worked at a canning plant. He said his dad was in charge of the labeling and claims that almost all canned food is the same.
He said they’d run x amount of green giant labels, x amount of del monte, x amount of best choice, etc all from the same batch.
Aldi's brand of bagels is better than Thomas for me and are about half the price. There's something that tastes oddly "sugary" about Thomas bagels in comparison.
To be fair, Thomas’ bagels are about as bad as bagels get. It’s not hard to beat one of those.
Open carrying a Thomas’ bagel is actually a crime in the state of New York.
Calling anything made by Thomas's "bagels" is just plain insulting. It's round bread, at best.
Trader Joe's employee reporting in: (cries in non-unionized) Aldi's bagels are so much better than ours it ain't even close to a fair fight
Those aren't bagels, they're little circle shaped lies!
Great Value Ranch Corn Chips are superior to Cool Ranch Doritos. Actually, quite a bit of GV stuff is as good if not better than the name brand they are knocking off. Not all of it, though.
Kirkland Hotdogs are superior to Ballpark (but I mean, that's incredibly easy since ballparks suck) and I think are more comparable to a Nathan's or Hebrew National; although those last two are still better than Costco's signature dog.
Clover Valley (Dollar General brand) has the best fig newtons and cake snacks around. Way more flavorful and moist than the name brands Hostess or Little Debbie. Also their pop tarts.
+1 for Kirkland
Kirkland Signature products in general are just as good or better than the name brands because they usually are the name brand stuff.
Their batteries are Duracell, their bagged coffee is roasted by Starbucks, their diapers are Huggies, their canned tuna is Bumblebee, etc.
Kirkland hot dogs are an oddity, though. They used to be Hebrew National, but they got too expensive to be selling for 1.50 at the food court, so Costco bought an old Hebrew National meat plant in California and makes their own hot dogs now.
Toast 'em Pop-Ups (a pop tarts generic) had an apple flavor that I miss to this day.
Basically anything Kirkland signature branded, including medicines sold over the counter. Compare Kirkland signature ibuprofen count + cost vs brand name in store sometime. The difference is staggering.
Soda comes to mind. I like generic fudge sticks better than the Keeebler stuff too.
My children will only accept No Name (it's a store brand here in Canada) ranch dressing. I've gotten name brand ones on sale before and they were not impressed.
No Name has some pretty solid stuff. Not necessarily always the top quality, but generally decent value.
Hate to praise them too much because Galen Weston can go f* himself, but you kind of have to pick one billionaire or another when talking about store brands up here.
Galen is evil but PC and No Name have so many good products. It's not fair.
The No Name ice cream wafers are also the best around, and the cheapest to boot!
We were actually surprised that not only were they just as good at like ⅓ the price, they were WAY better.
You can get a giant pack of them for literally the price of a checkout line candy bar.
I really like Food Lion's Dr. Perky over Dr. Pepper. I know it's like really strange but the Dr. Perky is quite good. Also, Food Lion's version of Mountain Dew, Mountain Lion, is a lot better.
I love these names. They sound like characters from a low-budget porn spoof of a popular movie.
HAHAHAHA! I never thought about it that way but it would totally work. 😆
I mainly shop at Giant and their store-brand sodas are almost all undrinkable ("Mr. Bob" is their version of Dr. Pepper), all with this bizarre medicine-y aftertaste. The only good one is their diet grape soda - it's possible that I like this only because there's no brand name version to compare it to.
IMHO, grape soda is awfully hard to screw up. 😜
Kroger Nutter Butters. Aside from just tasting better, the packaging is also way less flimsy. (Plus, resealable!)
There's this white cheddar flavour mac and cheese and the store brand where I am is much better than the Kraft version.
There might be a bit of nostalgia though for me as it was one of the go-to "quick and easy" meals my mom would make for us as a kid.
In Canada, Loblaws has a no name brand kd called deluxe white cheddar that is hands down the best Mac and cheese, Kraft white cheese always comes out bland and watery no matter how little milk I add.
That's literally the brand I was referring to, haha. I haven't actually bought it in a while though, since for several years the closest Loblaws store was too far away.
I'm now closer to one, but still haven't picked any up. Haven't timed any of my visits with when it's on discount, and otherwise it's around the same price as KD. Haven't been eating much of that sort of food anyways.
Great value mac and cheese is better than kraft
amen hallelujah
Never tried the great value brand, but had Shop Rite's bowl and basket branded Mac and Cheese and it was easily the most disappointing thing I've eaten in a long time. Saved a couple cents and ended up with a bowl of mushy imitation cheese slime.
Aldi hand cream, 70p a bottle, does the same as Neutrogena at £3-4
Kirkland wet wipes.
No name (Superstore brand) hot chocolate. Blows name brand out the water!
Superstore brand frozen desserts are so good as well. Back when they had salted toffee chunk chocolate covered cheesecake pops I used to get them all the time.
Also their ice cream is killer. Their version of Oreo ice cream has like triple the cookie chunks of brand name.
Family Dollar brand (Kidgets, IIRC?) diapers and baby wipes
Aldi fudge-stripe cookies
Centrella "Magic Stars" rainbow cereal
Drumsticks- those chocolate dipped ice cream cones with the nuts on top. The generic in my experience usually has way more nuts, sometimes more ice cream, and more caramel filling.
Lidl has two levels of Oreos knockoffs (much cheaper ones, and even cheaper ones) and both are better than proper Oreos.
I always hear about Lidl and Aldi just Google maped a Lidl store. Closest one is over 1300 miles away. Sad days. Aldi is a lot closer though. Only 650 miles to an Aldi. La sigh.
In the UK Aldi and Lidl are everywhere. I have 14 Aldi and 15 Lidl stores within a 15 mile radius of my house.
Here in Europe they're everywhere. I have two within 5 minutes walk.
But I've heard the same being said about other Oreo knockoffs, so I believe you'll find some.
Hashbrowns - McCain is tasteless in comparison
walmart thick and creamy mac and cheese > kraft all day every day fuck you fight me.
Kraft is utter garbage so that one's not really surprising.
Well Food Lion deluxe mac and cheese is absolute garbage. You've been warned.
Gloves idk.
I use my $10 gardening gloves at the batting cages where they try and sell me on some $65 Franklin brand baseball bat glove grippers.
Dawg they're gloves.
You know those Irwin quick clamps that are very popular, blue and yellow quick release clamps. I have a bunch of them and they're fine.
I also have a bunch of "craftright" clamps. Same thing, but the clamping force feels so much higher, the Irwin clamps are what I use if I've run out of my cheap knockoff clamps
If you live in the UK, Lidl's in-house cola brand, Freeway, is better than Pepsi or Coca-Cola, IMHO.
Member's Mark nicotine gum, original flavor. Juicy Fruitish flavor and stellar consistency/quality.
Great Value Fudgicles
Real fudgicles just taste weird at this point.
Aplenty brand foodstuffs - Amazon's knockoffs of popular products. high quality, really flavorful stuff.
