Also a lot of things at Trader Joes are just white labeled versions of other products. As in, literally the same product, just inside packaging that says "Trader Joe's <Similar Name to Other Product>"
Many years ago I worked at a candy company.
I tell you more. MOST of "private label" stuff is actually manufactured by the same company as the "name brand", what is more companies routinely manufacture stuff for each other depending on the factory loads, e.g. our plant would manufacture Reese's despite having no relation to the brand and it's a very common practice.
I worked for a cookie company. Sometimes we would just swap the boxes for the name brand in the packaging machine while the line was running. The funny thing is, one box said it had some ingredient in it (it didn't) and the other one didn't.
Also at some point one company asked the cookie company to create a recipe to imitate some other product so they could compete. Except the cookie company was the one making that other product. So they copied themselves, it wasn't too hard...
That sounds like an industry where a few large players have gobbled up everyone else and entrenched themselves, and they're all relatively happy with their market share (i.e. they aren't competing), and are thus happy to help "competitors" because what they want more than anything else is stability, and to keep new entrants from the market that actually might change things.
You know, collusion. Or emergent behavior that's essentially the same (but even that, while not necessarily illegal, is still bad for consumers).
it's not really all that sinister. It's just you have a factory and you have workers and sometimes you need more work for them than your company can provide. Just because you can manufacture items for your competitor does not mean you are colluding.
I'll tell you more, a lot of competitors use the same suppliers, like for example Ford and GM, will use LG for a lot of components. LG then can't share any tech they developed for GM when working with Ford, but it's not like they get a lobotomy.
People who work at Apple use AWS and people at Amazon use MacBooks. It's all complicated, but not sinister.
Similar things happen in the tech world - lots of various products are manufactured by a few; TVs being a really good example. There are only a few panel manufacturers out there.
We went on a factory tour at Cabot Creamery in VT several years ago, and they were packaging an off-label that day. The guide didn't specify what store it was for, but we thought we recognized it. When we went to TJ's the next week, we saw that same exact packaging on the shelves.
Yeah, at a job I worked at before there were two differences between our branded product and the store brand: The packaging/label, and the amount of thickener so that it would have a slightly different texture. Otherwise, same employees making it on the same machines with the same ingredients.
They did always have that one small change in there though, so that it wouldn't be exactly the same. Nothing you'd ever notice as a customer. Just a technicality so that each one could claim their own unique formula.
I think with another type of product it wasn't the thickness but a slight difference in the ratio of the flavorings - more raspberry and less blueberry here, more blueberry and less raspberry there.
I can't reply to the deeper comments, so I'll reply here.
The "store branded" products are also sometimes the exact same stuff, but they pay less (or the premium brands pay a premium) to have "first run" rights. That is, the premium brands are packaged first, right after a cleaning, so you're less likely to have "inclusions" like chunks of tomato goop in your ketchup.
That's not always true. I actually don't know how true it is at all. At least in facilities that I know about, everything was manufactured exactly the same, there was no such thing as "first run after cleaning", as far as I know "first run" premium has more to do with volumes and scheduling (e.g. at a candy factory you'll get priority to get your orders filled before halloween) or if any equipment goes down your orders will always be prioritized
you say it like it's a sort of corporate slut-shaming, but it's not. If you build a factory big enough to make 1/2 the cheese puffs in the world, there's an incentive to make it bigger and make all the cheese puffs in the world. Going from small batch bake/frying to assembly line flow is the 1st step, but once you're over that hurdle, you might as well go big, as long as you can handle the risk of being stuck with the risk of owning the 2nd biggest cheese puff tumbler in the world. That type of cooking is a natural monopoly.
that's the factory, but brands don't come from the factory, they come from the market, and have different reputations, strategies, customers and distribution channels. If you have a giant computer controlled cheese puffery, it's not that big a deal to change the formulation of the cheese, change the logo bags, etc. all on the fly, and it's much cheaper for you to do it than a smaller less sophisticated operation making you more customizable and still the low-cost producer.
did you know that even if you aren't a very big pizzeria or bakery you can order custom-milled flour from King Arthur for your restaurant? Their factory can handle it, and it engenders brand loyalty from fussy chefs.
>did you know that even if you aren't a very big pizzeria or bakery you can order custom-milled flour from King Arthur for your restaurant? Their factory can handle it, and it engenders brand loyalty from fussy chefs.
I didn't. Although I'm not that surprised given I think King Arthur Flour has maybe around 500 employees or so including a cafe, retail shop, and cooking classes and sells a pretty premium product. (Was actually surprised the number is so low. It's also employee-owned.)
> I have no problem with it myself; but the companies/brands certainly do.
actually, the companies don't have a problem with it, the customers do. customers (it's human nature, maslow's hierarchy, etc) cling to their beliefs about themselves and their identification with products that reflect their values. Companies would rather cut costs and sell one-size-fits-all products, but they need to give customers what they want, and different customers want different things.
> Lots of national brands have a "this is not produced in a factory or machine that produces any store brand"
and many people have the need to think that they are "better" than store brands, or more likely on HN, that they "see through" all the marketing, so companies market to you "transparently"... if a brand says "this is not produced X way" and you didn't even mention X, hmmm, do you really think they haven't figured you out?
if you are the cheese puff king, the most expensive thing you can do is not sell everybody exactly what they want, and you probably have redundancy in your manufacturing facilities, so why not segregate which products are on which machines, so long as a market segments aren't too small.
CNBC has a youtube video on the economics of Trader Joe's and the piece that stuck out to me is that they will have essentially a white label option, but have it slightly modified so it is "unique" to them
Ive got family who have worked in food production lines, it's often not the same product, maybe a slightly modified recipe or using different ingredients or ratios.
