Technology

Don't the same brands also make the store (private label) brands?

In the 70s it felt like brands actually meant something. Since the 90s, they haven't. Brands have milked their loyal followers for every last penny of profit while cheapening their products as much as they possibly can. Brands have become an anti-pattern for me, if a particular brand is "commanding a premium" that's a sign to me to A) dig DEEP on pre-purchase quality information and if that's hard to come by (which it usually is) B) walk away from the recognized brand name - assume it to be of inferior quality to go with its higher price.

I shopped in the same grocery store chain my grandparents and parents shopped in my whole life since the 1960s until about 8-10 years ago. At that point they started milking their brand loyalists and literally jacked our monthly food bill 2x, +100%, and that's not industry wide inflation, that's how much they inflated relative to the competition. We went from spending 90% of our food, soaps, pharmacy/drug store purchases there down to less than 5% in the first year after we quit them, and since then they now get less than 1% of our budget, only catching our purchases when they're the only store open or other cases of extreme convenience purchasing. During the pandemic, we had instantcart deliver groceries from a competitor and a $120 delivered order, including $10 tip and delivery fees, were still far less expensive than the same products from the "leading" chain.

Jan 2028 PlayStation is going to stop physical games. So you don’t have to wait too long.

Shrinkflators can go F themselves. That shrunken package with the same, or often higher, price is a major incentive for me to buy their competitors' products instead.

I am loyal to certain cheese producers, from local small scale producers to national artisan producers that ship to me, to national larger scale cheese makers who have specific products I like. I'll buy certain imported cheeses with place protections, like Italian DOP cheeses.

With chicken, I like a particular producer, because the chicken just tastes better to me when it's air chilled and of a specific size (4 lbs/1.8 kg is the ideal size).

For flour, I use a combination of a local mill for whole wheat, and a reputable national producer for bread flour and all purpose white flour. I have a specific brand for 00 pizza flour. I know what to expect from those products, and that allows me to be precise.

For pasta, I have several brands and shapes to choose from, and can obviously do fine with whatever box, but I still have my preferences for specific shapes and brands and bronze-die lines. Some of them are imported and some are domestic.

Condiments and sauces? Yeah, I have a preferred ketchup brand, 3 specific soy sauces for different applications, 3 specific mustard brands for different applications, and a preferred mayonnaise. I keep about 5-10 hot sauces on hand, each for a different style of food.

As you mention, for wine and beer and liquor and liqueurs, I am fairly picky when it comes to brands and quality. Life is too short to drink bad alcohol.

But it also pretty much extends to non alcoholic beverages, too. I choose my coffee and go for specific roasts by specific roasters. I like a particular brand of soda. I even have a preferred brand of orange juice.

For chips and snacks, I very much prefer specific flavors of specific brands, including even the biggest of the industrialized brands for certain products.

With chocolate? Yeah, brand matters to me a lot. Most other candy, too.

I have a preferred butter brand. I can make do with others, but I prefer mine. There are only two bacon brands I like. I have a hot dog brand preference, too.

I'm pretty serious about food, and I love blind tasting things and forming preferences around new foods, revisiting old taste tests, etc. I couldn't imagine not caring about the details on food, and that often means knowing the difference between brands (and knowing when a brand has changed its formula/recipe).

People out there are doing good work, making delicious food. Sometimes they put their name on it, and that means something.

In foods especially, they have substituted corn syrup for sugar, steroid+antibiotic pumped milk and meat for "real" meat (typical market chicken is a travesty these past years), GMO crops sprayed with extreme weed killers and pesticides for simple sun and water grown food. They like to say our food bills are going down in real dollars, but they're not, not if you buy organic GMO free - which is what most food used to be not so long ago.

Having cereal for breakfast daily is akin to using soda for hydration.

Well, I was born in the 1960s and honey coated chocolate sugar bombs were already the cereal of choice among my kindergarten classmantes - and soda for hydration was pretty standard then too.

Pretty mind blowing to think maybe people don't need 200 variations of the same sugary grains.