8 Meijer Store Brands Michiganders Grab Instead of the Nationally Known Version

Meijer’s cranberry juice tied Ocean Spray in a national blind taste test.

But Michiganders didn’t need a taste test to tell them what they already knew: The store brand can hold its own against household names.

These are the Meijer products Michigan shoppers grab while everyone else reaches for the familiar label.

Purple Cow Beats the Big Names

Meijer’s freezer aisle carries every national ice cream brand you’d expect to find at any grocery store in the country.

Many Michiganders walk past them anyway.

Purple Cow sits in the same case, and it’s the carton that lands in the cart instead.

The name traces back to Fred Meijer himself, who shared a nonsense poem about a purple cow with his own sons and put it on the family’s ice cream counters when they opened inside Meijer stores in the 1960s.

Nowhere else sells it.

Meijer relaunched Purple Cow as its own dairy brand in 2012, after buying a dairy plant in Holland, Michigan, to make the stuff in-house instead of outsourcing production.

More than 40 flavors carry the label now, including Mackinac Island Fudge and Moose Tracks, and a pint never ships from anywhere but a Meijer.

Many Michiganders skip the big-name pints entirely because Purple Cow gets made a short drive from home instead of trucked in from somewhere else.

True Goodness Peanut Butter

True Goodness by Meijer sits on the same shelf as Jif and Skippy, and the store brand has grown into one of Meijer’s biggest bets.

Hundreds of products now carry the True Goodness label.

Every one of them skips more than 100 ingredients Meijer considers unwanted, things like high-fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes, and antibiotics in the meat.

The organic peanut butter shows the difference plainest.

Open a jar, and the ingredient list stops at peanuts and salt.

Many national jars add sugar and an oil blend just to keep the peanut butter from separating on the shelf.

That’s the whole difference.

Shoppers who want a shorter ingredient list reach for the Meijer jar and stop checking the name brand next to it.

Meijer’s Own Cranberry Juice

Ocean Spray shares the shelf with Meijer’s own cranberry juice, and the gap between them shows up more in price than in flavor.

Consumer Reports pitted the two against each other in a blind taste test and called it a toss-up.

Neither brand pulled ahead.

Ocean Spray came back a bit sweeter and slightly perfumed, while Meijer’s version leans tarter, more sour than sweet.

Both blend in juice from other fruits, like grape and apple, to round out the flavor.

Meijer’s bottle usually costs less at the register, and that’s the part that keeps Michiganders reaching for it out of habit rather than loyalty.

Frosted Fruit Os Over Froot Loops

Frosted Fruit Os squares off with Kellogg’s Froot Loops directly across the cereal aisle, ring for ring.

Shoppers who’ve put the two boxes side by side call them tough to tell apart.

Same crunch.

Same fruity flavor, and the same milk that turns an odd color by the last bite.

The Meijer box costs meaningfully less, and that gap holds even before you notice how often the name brand shrinks its box without lowering the price.

Once a family switches, the swap tends to stick because a kid pouring a bowl before school doesn’t clock the difference either.

Kettle Chips Nobody Misses

Lay’s Kettle Cooked chips share the shelf with Meijer’s own kettle-cooked bag, priced noticeably lower.

Shoppers who’ve run their own side-by-side taste tests report the two land close enough that the savings win outright.

That’s a different story than Meijer’s regular potato chips, which don’t hold up nearly as well against Lay’s classic bag.

One exception.

The kettle-cooked bag is worth remembering the next time a cookout calls for chips.

Set it next to a rotisserie chicken at the table, and nobody asks where the bag came from.

Frederik's Double Creme Brie

Frederik's by Meijer carries the name of Fred Meijer himself, and the line aims at the cheese and charcuterie board instead of the lunch box.

The Double Creme Brie is worth knowing.

It's creamy enough to spread cold, with a bloomy rind and a butter-forward center that stands up fine next to an imported wheel twice its price.

Cheese board approved.

Michiganders hosting a holiday table reach for Frederik's instead of paying import prices for a brand they can barely pronounce.

Meijer builds the whole line around that same idea: Restaurant-style flavor instead of a bargain-bin version of the real thing.

Mac and Cheese, Not Boxed

Meijer sells its own macaroni and cheese two ways: A hot deli version scooped fresh, and a frozen family-size tub made with a real cheddar cheese sauce.

No blue box in sight.

Home cooks who've tried the frozen version call it just as good as the name brand, and a few say better.

Kraft still wins on nostalgia for many families, but on a Tuesday night the Meijer tub cooks faster, and it feeds more people for less money.

True Goodness Coffee Pods

True Goodness also covers the coffee aisle, with its own single-serve pods sitting next to Green Mountain and the other national brands.

The pods brew from beans certified organic and fair trade, without the extra flavoring oils some national brands add to mask cheaper beans.

Same pot, less cost.