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.
Swipe a short ways to the right to upvote. Swipe further to the right to downvote. Swiping left will reply. (If it was like Apollo, swiping further left is to save a comment)
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
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.
Fucking forreal I passed through Texas to pick up a friend from DFW and stopped at a few Costco's looking for some vodka, I thought I was just in shitty counties but nope! Chuck Testa!
I pay the extra bucks for European Sensodyne because it has Novamin in it.
Novamin is like magic, and there is no reason it should have been taken off the shelves in the US (I suspect it's heavy lobbying by the American Dental Association and the Teeth Fae People). Novamin binds and helps remineralize your teeth, very helpful for sensitivity and in conjuction with fluoride can get into the subsurface and helps actually repair the teeth.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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