10 Store-Brand Products South Carolinians No Longer Feel Embarrassed to Buy
A 2025 survey found that 72% of shoppers couldn’t pick the store-brand product out of a blind lineup against its name-brand match.
It shows how good store brands have gotten.
These are the store-brand products South Carolinians no longer feel embarrassed to buy.
1. Great Value Mac and Cheese
Great Value’s Original Mac and Cheese used to be the box a shopper buried at the bottom of the cart.
A 2025 blind panel run by the review site Cheapism tied it for first place among every store-brand and name-brand box tested, calling it by far the closest to classic Kraft.
Tasters singled out the tang and the salt level, the same “processed-cheese flavor” that gave several volunteers childhood flashbacks.
Not a downgrade.
The savings land on the receipt, not on the plate.
2. Good & Gather Chocolate Chips
Target’s Good & Gather line launched in 2019 with a promise to close the gap between store brand and name brand, and its semi-sweet chocolate chips are the proof.
A panel of food editors baked cookies with eight different chocolate chip brands and picked Good & Gather’s regular semi-sweet chips as the outright winner, praising their “pronounced” chocolate flavor.
No contest.
They beat the name brands people grew up with.
That settles the chocolate chip line on this year’s baking list.
3. Kirkland Signature Butter
Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter sits in the dairy case at every Costco in South Carolina, and it earns its spot next to the imported brands.
A professional taste test pitted it against Kerrygold, long considered the gold standard for grass-fed butter, and found the Kirkland version matched its quality at close to a third less per cup.
Testers liked its bold color and lower sodium for cooking, while Kerrygold still edged it out for spreading straight on bread.
Two winners, the butter cheaper.
4. Wellsley Farms Ice Cream
Wellsley Farms Vanilla Ice Cream is BJ’s Wholesale Club’s own label, and it doesn’t hide on the bottom shelf anymore at the club’s South Carolina locations.
Consumer Reports named it the top store-brand pick in its rundown of supermarket vanilla ice creams, noting the tub tastes just as rich as the pricier cartons beside it.
The lab didn’t lie.
That’s a nonprofit testing lab talking, not a marketing department.
The price gap just goes to buy more toppings.
5. 365 by Whole Foods Market Cashews
365 by Whole Foods Market Cashews stock the snack aisle at the chain’s only two South Carolina stores, in Mount Pleasant and Columbia.
Consumer Reports tested cashews from seven retailers, Whole Foods included, against Emerald Whole Cashews and rated nearly every store brand in the lineup superior, calling the name brand less fresh.
The name brand lost.
Freshness was the deciding factor, and Whole Foods’ private label won it along with six other retailers’ versions.
That’s a lab test, not a single shopper’s opinion.
Psst! How store-brand-savvy are you? Run through this checklist and see where you stand.
6. Member’s Mark Coffee
Member’s Mark is Sam’s Club’s own label, and its Fair Trade Certified ground coffee shows up in carts at all 13 Sam’s Club locations across South Carolina.
A professional cupper at CoffeeReview.com, the outlet coffee roasters use to benchmark their own beans, scored it 84 out of 100 on the same blind scale used to judge specialty roasters.
Just less expensive.
The review called it “remarkably balanced” for the price.
That’s a specialty-grade score at a fraction of specialty-grade prices.
7. Good & Gather Potato Chips
Good & Gather Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips stock the shelf at every Target in South Carolina, right next to the name-brand bags shoppers used to reach for out of habit.
Cheapism’s own taste-test panel ranked the reduced-fat version Best Low-Fat Chips in a blind test against name-brand rivals, calling the crunch every bit as good with half the fat.
Half the fat, same crunch.
Testers called it the best of Target’s own chip lineup, not just the best diet pick.
A bag costs less than the name-brand version and still won its own category.
8. Kirkland Signature Batteries
Kirkland Signature AA batteries ring up at every Costco warehouse in the state, from the Greenville store to the Costco off I-26 in North Charleston.
Costco CEO Craig Jelinek told an Atlanta TV station flat out that Duracell makes them, with no advertising budget baked into the sticker price.
Same battery.
A shopper stocking up for hurricane season pays roughly a third less per battery than the name on the same shelf.
What Makes Something a Store Brand
A store brand like Kirkland Signature isn’t manufactured in a Costco warehouse.
Retailers write a set of specs, then pay an outside factory to make the product under the store’s own label.
Sometimes that factory is the exact same plant that fills the name-brand bottle or box sitting one shelf over.
That’s the whole story behind Kirkland’s battery deal: One manufacturer, two labels, and a price gap that comes down to marketing, not materials.
9. Berkley Jensen Bath Tissue
Berkley Jensen Ultra Soft Bath Tissue is BJ’s Wholesale Club’s house brand, stocked at the chain’s South Carolina clubs alongside the paper towels and cleaning supplies.
Good Housekeeping’s textile lab tested 21 premium and “green” toilet paper styles on softness, strength, and construction back in 2017, and Berkley Jensen walked away with the Best of Test award for the best overall score and price.
The lab said so.
That’s a magazine test lab, not a coupon flyer, making the call.
That’s the winner riding home in the cart, no coupon required.
10. Great Value Ice Cream
Great Value Vanilla Ice Cream fills the same freezer case at Walmart stores from Rock Hill to Beaufort, sitting a few feet from the pricier brands.
Consumer Reports tagged it the Biggest Savings pick in its supermarket vanilla ice cream rundown, noting every tub in the lineup, store brand included, tasted great.
Testers did notice differences along the way, picking up more stabilizers and a stronger vanilla flavor than Breyers.
That’s different, not worse.
The Biggest Savings title was earned on price, not on taste alone.
The Numbers Behind the Shift
South Carolinians aren’t imagining a shift in how they treat store brands at checkout.
A 2025 survey from the consumer research firm First Insight found 72% of shoppers couldn’t reliably tell a store brand from a name brand in a side-by-side comparison.
The same survey found 84% trust store-brand quality as much as or more than the name brand, and 77% said they don’t care how their cart looks to anyone else.
Not a fluke.
That’s a different mindset than the box-hiding mindset of a generation ago.
Why the Switch Keeps Growing
Store brands aren’t a small slice of what South Carolinians load into a cart anymore.
Private-label sales hit $282.8 billion nationally in 2025, according to Circana data reported through the Private Label Manufacturers Association, growing nearly three times faster than name brands that same year.
Dollar share rose from 19.1% to 21.3% over five years.
That’s not pocket change.
Rising grocery prices pushed much of that shift, but the surveys point to something sturdier than a temporary belt-tightening.
Shoppers who try a store brand and like it tend to stick with it long after prices settle down.
Refrigerated store brands posted the sharpest category gains in 2025, up more than 6% in dollar sales as shoppers reached for store-brand milk, eggs, and deli staples.
Store-brand volume hit a record 68.7 billion units sold nationally that year, about 430 million more than 2024, proof the growth is coming from repeat trips and not a single stock-up run.
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