Private-label brands at Target, other groceries losing stigma as shoppers budget more

Revenue from Target’s private labels, from Cat & Jack kidswear to Good & Gather food, has tripled in the past decade to more than $30 billion.

The enterprises bundled together would rank fifth among Minnesota’s public companies, ahead of U.S. Bancorp and 3M, and 144th on this year’s Fortune 500 list.

The strength for Target and other retailers, especially in the grocery sphere, is the result of a shift in consumer shopping habits since the pandemic. Think Kirkland at Costco and Trader Joe’s.

As inflation rose, shoppers turned to private labels, previously known as store brands or generic.

Private-label growth is the major reason Target leads the nation in trademark applications. Competitors, with their own private labels, also rank high on the list.

“There’s been a long-term change in buyer behavior toward greater acceptance of private labels because people were forced to try them and found out it worked really well,” said Mark Bergen, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota who studies pricing strategies and private labels.

In 2024, private-label sales increased almost 4%, reaching $271 billion, according to Circana. Retailers are paying attention.

Cub Foods recently surveyed customers and found nearly 4 out of 5 Minnesotans — and 87% of Cub shoppers — sometimes prefer private brand over name brand for the taste, the locally based subsidiary of United Natural Foods Inc. said.

The grocer’s private-label food offerings include Essential Everyday, Wild Harvest and Woodstock.

For shoppers raised in the 1980s or earlier, store brands meant budget buys in bland packaging. But many of today’s private labels are anything but generic.

Even with the inflation rate stabilizing, budget-conscious shopping persists. These behaviors may stick, Bergen said.

Retailers say shoppers are now more focused on products that reflect specific values and lifestyles, and that influences the range of private labels from Cub’s natural food line to Walmart’s Bettergoods line of higher-end foods.

“Feedback from our customers has told us they are seeking even more products that feature attributes such as local, gluten-free or plant-based,” said Curtis Funk, senior vice president of merchandising for Lunds & Byerlys.

But quality can mean different things, said Heidi Teoh, vice president of research and development at SunOpta, a plant-based food and beverage manufacturer in Eden Prairie.

“Depending on the retailer, there are some who have store brands that are higher quality than the national brand,” Bergen said.

Despite lingering perceptions that store brands cut corners, industry experts said private-label products are held to the same food safety regulations as national brands.

“If you go by food safety, it’s exactly the same thing. I don’t care who you are, you have to fall in the same exact regulation,” said Petros Levis, vice president of research, design and implementation at TreeHouse Foods. “Flour is flour, it comes out of Kansas.”

Today’s private labels are more deliberate, he said. Many private-label manufacturers “strip it down to what is valuable.”

There can be variation in the ingredients between private labels and national brands.

“The really tasty inputs are expensive, so think of it as like a chicken salad. There’s less chicken in the lower quality one because it keeps [the manufacturers’] costs down, but they’re good enough now at managing the store brands that they can compete on quality,” Bergen said.

These products are often reverse-engineered to compete with national brands, sometimes faster and leaner, while also creating a relationship with the shopper.

“Target is desperately trying to get you to see their store brands as better,” Bergen said. “They’re trying to build loyalty. [General Mills’] Cheerios doesn’t care which store you buy at. They care that you buy Cheerios.”

Target’s owned grocery brand, Good & Gather, launched in 2019 and now has more than 2,500 items developed specifically for the retailer.

As retailers move beyond the generic of the past generation, which was more akin to repackaging national brands, they also must put more money and time into developing new products.

“We approach research and development in a very similar fashion, so the process is the same regardless of who we are developing products for,” Teoh said.

SunOpta typically starts with an innovation session — either driven by retailer requests or internal trendspotting. Then comes ideation and refinement.

“It’s not unlike being in the kitchen,” Teoh said. “You might try six recipes and then start changing things until you get to a recipe that makes you go, ‘This is the one!’”

Formula ownership varies. Sometimes it belongs to the manufacturer, sometimes the customer. SunOpta uses an “identity preserved” program to guarantee each formula is unique.

“There would be an extraordinary amount of concern if the thought was that it was being repackaged,” Teoh said.

Levis attributes some of the confusion to the fact that some manufacturers work with both private and national brands.

Lakeville-based Post Consumer Brands is the nation’s largest private-label cereal maker, but typically the recipe will differ for the Walmart brand of Honey Bunches of Oats — even if made in the same plant.

Nutritional differences between private label and national brands are not typically the result of budget constraints, but product design and customer demand, Teoh said.

“Name brands have a lot of bells and whistles that don’t add value,” said Levis. “It’s more marketing value so they can get this added profit.”

But even when a private-label item is cheaper than the national brand alternative, stores prefer shoppers buy the store brand, Bergen said. Stores often make higher margins on those products.

“Private labels do have a price point, but the truth is, when we manufacture for national brands, they also have a price they want to hit,” Teoh said.

Private-label growth is strongest among Gen Z and younger millennials, with 44% and 39% trying store brands for the first time, according to Circana. Only 18% of older boomers and 16% of seniors say the same.

Levis attributes that gap to lingering stigma.

“Back then, if you weren’t buying the Jolly Green Giant green beans, you were buying poor people green beans,” Levis said.

His mother-in-law, who grew up in southeastern Iowa, told him she would hide private-label items at the bottom of her cart, stacking the name brand items on top. But that frugality allowed her to feed a family of four.

 “There’s a lot of noise that takes some time in people. If you hear something again and again, you believe it is better,” Levis said.

Bergen said earlier studies showed people hesitated to serve store brands to guests.

“If an item was going to be visible to company, people would buy branded products,” Bergen said. “But if it was just an input into a meal, there was more demand for private labels.”

That stigma has faded, but not entirely, he said.

“We tend to buy national brands in places where we’re a little more uncertain,” Bergen said. “We don’t want to be seen as cheap and the butter doesn’t taste good. Or my kids are still sick and unhappy at home.”