The End of the ‘Generic’ Grocery-Store Brand

One survey indicates that in 2023 and 2024, more than half of shoppers made decisions about where to shop based on stores’ brands, compared with a third in 2016. Grocery stores have a huge incentive to invest in their own private-label goods. Last year, Walmart launched a “culinary-first” grocery brand, whatever that means. At some point, a slickly packaged, not-so-inexpensive private label begins to seem like any other brand—premiocre, endless, engineered using big data and expensive marketing—and then you might as well buy the national brand. When it’s brands, brands, brands, all the way down, they start feeling simply generic: nothing special about them.