What’s in a name? Store brands save shoppers cash 

Publix trails Aldi, Winn-Dixie and Walmart on core prices in Stet survey.

Second of two parts

Savvy grocery shoppers on a budget can find good deals on the shelves by looking beyond the name brands and going for store brands.

In Stet’s fall survey of 19 area grocery stores, Stet shoppers confirmed lower prices at every store for store-labeled products when compared with national brands.

Looking for cornflakes? At seven Publix stores, the average price for its store brand cereal was $3.71 — less than half the average price of  Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, the nation’s top brand, at $7.46 for the same 18-ounce box.

Even with Publix’s popular BOGO (buy one, get one free) the week before, Kellogg’s was more expensive at $4.12 each.

At Walmart, where discounts are common and prices generally lower than Publix, shoppers could buy two 5-pound bags of Walmart Great Value flour at $2.18 each for the cost of one bag of Gold Medal flour at Publix for $4.99, and still get change.

Store brands growing more popular

But what about quality?

Grocery corporate executives won’t reveal who makes their labeled products, but it’s well-known that brand-name food producers are behind most store labels.

Most store brands contain the same ingredients and nutrient counts as national counterparts. Appearance may be the only difference. Canned or frozen vegetables may not be as uniform in size or color as a brand-name product. Cornflakes may be smaller, but boxes contain the same amount in weight, with the same flavor profile and vitamin content.

While some shoppers insist only on name-brand items, others are increasingly willing to make a compromise for savings that add up.

Store brands sales nationwide hit a record 4.4% growth in the first half of 2025, outpacing national brands’ growth at 1.1%, the Private Label Manufacturers Association found.

The association attributes the rise to the quality and value of the private labels along with innovation.

Stores are creating their own flavors and combinations to compete with big-name counterparts.

But savings are king. With food prices in South Florida rising by an average of 4.8% in the 12-month period ending in August 2025, according to the Consumer Price Index, shoppers are looking for ways to cut their grocery bills.

How we reviewed grocery prices

To compare stores and prices, Stet sent 10 reporters into 19 area grocery stores on Oct. 28 to price more than 40 food items and household goods. The reporters shopped at Publix, Winn-Dixie, Walmart, Aldi, Whole Foods, Fresh Market and Trader Joe’s.

Part one of our grocery price story focused on Thanksgiving foods from that list. Read it here.

For this roundup, we put together a few baskets from different food categories to compare prices, and separated gourmet and specialty stores from the big three traditional stores.

In our first cart, we pulled out eight random canned or dry goods to look at store versus name-brand prices.

Our shoppers priced dry black beans, rice, cornflakes, flour, sugar, canned green beans, soup and boxed macaroni and cheese of equal sizes.

The Publix labels averaged $18.31 versus $29.23 for the name-brand counterparts: Goya black beans, Mahatma rice, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Gold Medal flour, Dixie Crystals sugar, DelMonte green beans, Campbell’s soup and Kraft Mac & Cheese. That’s a 46.25% percent savings.

Shoppers at Winn-Dixie could save $9.08 by shopping for store brands. Their generic basket cost $17.47, while the name brands rang up at $26.55.

Walmart’s Great Value store brand proved the cheapest among the mainstream grocers for the generic basket, at $12.94, while their cart of name brands was $21.70.

For lowest prices, check Aldi

Now enter Aldi — the fastest-growing grocer in the United States and a model that’s become a major competitor. It proved cheapest among the seven stores we surveyed in almost all food categories.

But shoppers make many compromises to ring up savings. Aldi’s basket of eight store-brand items we shopped totaled $11.98. There weren’t name brands here to compare.

The German-based store is wholly different from the mainstream grocers. Aldi’s shelves are stocked with almost all store-branded items. Choices among Aldi’s house brands are limited.

Foods are rotated in and out seasonally, with popular items selling out quickly.

Its stores are small and bare bones. Foods are shelved in their shipping boxes. Aisles are smaller. There’s little to no customer service. It’s do-it-yourself for packing up and taking groceries to your car — in a rented buggy.

But savings here are consistently significant.

The price of meat

A sampling from the meat case: One pound each of bacon, boneless chicken breasts and ground beef proved Aldi again cheapest at $12.83.

Whole Foods, another specialty market with a focus on organics and natural foods, rang up the highest, at $22.97 for the three meats.

But the meat cart came with a surprise: Fresh Market, a high-end grocery store, beat Walmart’s $16.97 cart at $16.72, and came in only above Aldi.

Shoppers line up at Fresh Market’s meat counter on Tuesdays, when the store sells organic ground chuck and organic chicken at almost half price. Other meats and seafood are typically on sale then, too.

However, Fresh Market, considered a gourmet or luxury grocer, is higher than the other specialty grocers on almost all other foods. Shoppers can sometimes pay two or three times as much for common items.

For dry black beans, Fresh Market charges $5.99 for a 12-ounce bag. That’s almost $8 per pound. The average per-pound price at all the other stores is $2.30.

The difference? Fresh Market is selling beans sourced from a single U.S. farm.

Eggs, milk, cheese and butter

Our dairy cart shows a jaw-dropping price spread between Aldi and Fresh Market.

The basket consisting of a gallon of whole milk, a pound of cheddar cheese, a dozen large eggs and a pound of butter was $33.12 at Fresh Market, while Aldi rang up at $12.26 — a $20.86 difference in what many consider staple refrigerated foods. 

Here is where national brands are passed over by shoppers looking for deals on foods most households use daily.

Egg prices are notably down from a year ago when they averaged $4.95 a dozen nationally. 

The mainstream grocers in our survey averaged $2.69, with no limits. A quick check in early January found the eggs at Aldi under $2 a dozen.

Several factors are involved in egg price drops, including the recovery from an avian flu outbreak, supply and inflation.

The price of produce

Produce prices flux more than most foods from day to day, with supply and transport huge industries on their own. Without national brands available, shoppers generally go for quality, and this category is where Stet shoppers found wide varieties of both choices and freshness.

We shopped produce bins for an ear of corn; a head of iceberg lettuce; 1 pound each of Gala apples, bananas, sweet potatoes and large tomatoes; 3 pounds of yellow onions; and 5 pounds of russet potatoes.

For frequent shoppers savvy to prices, it would come as no surprise that Whole Foods, which features organic and conventional produce side-by-side, was the most expensive for half the items in our produce cart. Aldi had four of the cheapest items, and its cart, at $10.70, came out cheapest overall. 

Walmart proved the largest for variety and freshness for our shoppers, with prices just above Aldi.

The Fresh Market basket total of $23.26 was highest because of its potatoes. The $7.45 price for a 5-pound bag was a wallet-squeezing $5.50 more than Walmart’s $1.97. Not only was Walmart lowest on potatoes but it offered the most choices — shoppers could buy a single potato or a 50-pound bag, as if they were operating a restaurant.

Walmart’s corn, averaging 57 cents an ear, was cheapest. With mounds of fresh cobs displayed, shoppers could shuck it directly at the bin and choose the best ears. Winn-Dixie’s corn was the priciest at $1.50 an ear. But only one Winn-Dixie store had fresh corn the day we shopped. Whole Foods and the lone Trader Joe’s we visited had none. 

As for quality and quantity, neither Publix nor Aldi displays were as well-stocked as other stores. Aldi was almost sold out of bananas and sweet potatoes, and other fruit bins were limited. Publix’s fresh corn appeared old, with dried tassels and black spots on the husks. There were limited bananas here, too, though they proffered a wide variety of apples.

The 30-item cart

While prices sometimes varied among same-name stores, we found them to be closely aligned. We shopped at seven Publix stores from Jupiter to West Palm Beach and found most items identically priced.

While we compared prices of store brands versus national brands on several items in our initial 44-item list, we were left with 30 items after removing duplicates and household goods. We averaged prices by store to reduce the impact of outliers and found Aldi had the lowest-priced basket at $63.15.

Walmart came in next at $76.65, with Winn-Dixie at $105.67 and Publix at $109.62.

The cart’s contents:

• A can of soup, a 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree, two refrigerated pie crusts, 4 pounds of sugar, 5 pounds of flour, 18 ounces of cornflakes, 9.6 ounces of ground coffee, a gallon of milk, a pound of butter, a pound of cheese, a dozen large eggs.
• A box of macaroni and cheese, a jar of peanut butter; a loaf of bread; a can of tuna; a pound each of bacon, chicken, and ground beef; a can of green beans; an ear of corn; a head of lettuce; a pound of apples; a pound of bananas.
• A pound of sweet potatoes, a pound of tomatoes, a 10.8-ounce package of frozen broccoli, 3 pounds of onions, 5 pounds of russet potatoes, 16 ounces of rice and 24 ounces of dry black beans.

Because not all items on our list were found at Whole Foods, Fresh Market and Trader Joe’s, we could not compare complete cart prices among the seven stores.

Fresh Market was the most expensive in most categories — but it bills itself as a luxury grocer. Its deals, however, are notable — especially for meats and seafood.

Knowing your grocery store

All the stores have their loyal fans, prices notwithstanding.

Publix is the “hometown” Florida store, with shoppers frequently claiming a store as “my Publix,” with a store in nearly every neighborhood. They often mention its weekly BOGO deals, and appreciate the friendly, attentive customer service that’s lacking in other stores. The popularity of its sub sandwiches and chicken wings has created a separate fan base just for those.

Aldi bought about 220 Winn-Dixie stores from Florida-based Southeastern Grocers.

However, Southeastern Grocers bought the Winn-Dixie brand, and will operate stores in Florida and south Georgia under its new Winn-Dixie Co. name.

Aldi fans are legendary, with social media pages devoted to single aisles in the store. Shoppers alert one another to products that are often sold out the day they hit the shelves. Its shopper base is growing rapidly because of its prices, and its physical presence is fanning out across the country. It is the third-largest grocer nationwide by number of stores.

Since offering fresh food, Walmart is now the country’s No. 1 grocer. Customers like the one-and-done shopping experience where you can pick up a yo-yo or a yogurt, or a chair or cherries. They appreciate the low prices its buying power brings, and the variety.

Whole Foods is a favorite of private chefs and other gourmet cooks whose budget allows for a pricier shopping experience. Much of the stock is organic. Its separate departments for cheese, bakery, floral and a large prepared food section are a draw. Thanks to its Amazon ownership, it’s also a favorite of online shoppers. Amazon Prime members get a discount.

Fresh Market, from Greensboro, N.C., typically are dropped in high-end areas, where shoppers are less budget-minded. Gourmands seek out products such as the fresh-roasted coffee store-within-the-store, snacks and prepared foods.

Trader Joe’s may be the quirkiest of stores, with mostly store brands, and a lively newsletter that highlights products in store and on sale for the month. Its fans also are online, and compare the quality of the store-labeled foods, and discuss favorites such as  the seasonal fresh flowers and mushroom choices. As with Aldi, shoppers are vocal about products that are cycled out if they don’t sell well.

Read Part 1, the Thanksgiving grocery cart.

Contributing to this story were Stet shoppers Janis Fontaine, Lou Ann Frala, Holly Baltz, Jane Musgrave, Liz Capozzi, Carolyn and Bill DiPaolo, Joel and Donna Engelhardt and Jan Norris.

Where Stet shopped

• Publix, 135 Bradley Place, Palm Beach; 228 Blue Heron Blvd., Riviera Beach; 828 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach; 6330 W. Indiantown Road, Jupiter; 11566 US 1, Palm Beach Gardens; 9900 Alternate A1A, Palm Beach Gardens.
• Winn-Dixie, 8924 N. Military Trail, Palm Beach Gardens; 7915 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach.
• Aldi, 6707 W. Indiantown Road, Jupiter; 220 N. Congress, Lake Park; 2481 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.
• Walmart, 2144 W. Indiantown Road, Jupiter; 101 N. Congress Ave., Lake Park; 6901 Okeechobee Road, West Palm Beach.
• Whole Foods, Downtown Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Beach Gardens; 1845 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., West Palm Beach.
• The Fresh Market, 311 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter; 4925 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens.
• Trader Joe’s, 2560 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens.

Clarification: Aldi bought about 220 Winn-Dixie stores from Florida-based Southeastern Grocers.

However, Southeastern Grocers bought the Winn-Dixie brand, and will operate stores in Florida and south Georgia under its new Winn-Dixie Co. name.