Consumer

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― Families are paying more to drive to the store, and paying more once they get there. Grocery prices jumped nearly 6 percent last year, which is the biggest increase since 1990.

Customers could save some money by skipping name brands and buying store brands instead. But would that come at the price of taste?

Take four seasoned chefs and five finicky kids. Set aside. Buy 16 big brand items, 16 store brands. Combine taste testers and foods. That's the recipe for a battle of the brands.

First, we shopped for big brands -- names like Jif, Campbell's, Kellogg's, Land O'Lakes, Kraft and Chicken of the Sea. Then we bought store brands from Cub, Rainbow and SuperTarget. The store brands proved cheaper every time, and sometimes we even got more food.

WCCO-TV's Terri Gruca wanted to see how these ingredients worked in a recipe, so I whipped up a Minnesota classic: tuna fish hotdish. She made one casserole with big brands, the other with ingredients from Cub and Rainbow. She also decided to make a sweet treat: Rice Krispie bars. The big brand version contains Kraft Jet Puffed marshmallows, which cost more than twice the price of Target's marshmallows.

Click here to take a look at the price chart for everything we bought.

To sample my creations, Gruca recruited the top talent in our neighborhood: Vincent Francoual, chef and part owner of Vincent, A Restaurant; Jack Riebel, top chef at the Dakota; Thom Pham, Temple's owner and chef; and Jessica Anderson, the pastry pro at Nick and Eddie.

For Pham and Francoual, this was uncharted territory.

"Honestly, this is the first time I've had the hotdish," said Pham. "So I didn't know what to expect."

Who knew Gruca would be expanding their culinary horizons? The hotdish competition was a tie. Riebel and Pham picked the big brand hotdish. Francoual and Anderson preferred the store brand casserole.

"I think what this says is that the Europeans will raise their children far cheaper than Americans will," said Anderson, in reference to her British roots and Francoual's French ancestry.

Next came the pickle competition: Gedney versus Target Market Pantry. The result was another tie.

"I'm a Gedney guy, I guess," said Francoual.

"I thought it was a better pickle. So I guess that makes me a Gedney guy, too," Riebel added.

Our chefs worked up a thirst, but which soda did they prefer between Diet Coke or SuperChill, the Cub equivalent? This time there was a clear favorite.

Riebel sniffed his soda cup and said, "This was clean and fresh and maybe had more carbonation."

Anderson didn't mince words about the pop she disliked, exclaiming "It was gross!"

Everybody but Vincent agreed. The top pop was ... SuperChill.

We let the chefs superchill out so we could turn our attention to a kids' taste test: Jif peanut butter, Welch's jelly and Wonder bread versus Roundy's brands from Rainbow.

Right away, Angela picked the PB&J with Wonder bread, saying "This is the only bread my mom buys, too."

Three kids preferred the big names. Two choose store brand sandwiches. Koreah couldn't pinpoint why he liked the Roundy's sandwich, offering "I liked it because it just tasted good."

We got the same results with the milk. Three kids pick Kemps, two pick Cub.

One food they all agreed on was applesauce. When we blind tested Target Market Pantry against Mott's, Sadie said the Target brand "just didn't have very much taste at all," while Max added he thought Mott's "was thick and had a good texture." Amari weighed in on the Mott's, too, "It had a lot more flavor to it."

The final score: Mott's 5, Target zip.

As for those Rice Krispie bars Gruca made, four of the five kid judges picked the pricier name brands, and we do mean pricier. Add all our ingredients up, and we spent $29.41 on store brands, $40.18 on big brands. That's a 37 percent difference!

This is no small fee since, thanks to the higher price of gas, you're paying more to drive to the grocery store and paying more once you get there. According to the Consumer Price Index, grocery prices jumped more than 5 percent last year, the highest one-year hike since 1990. Milk prices made one of the biggest price leaps, totally almost 20 percent in one year.

We turned back to the chefs for the last event in our battle of the brands: an vanilla ice cream taste. One brand immediately stood apart from the pack, but for all the wrong reasons.

"It doesn't taste like vanilla ice cream at all," said Pham.

"It's weird," said Riebel, "It smells like it has bubble gum on it."

Francoual said, "Don't eat this, OK?"

Which ice cream was all wrong? Breyers or Cub? Brace yourself, brand fans. The unanimous favorite was Cub.

"It was so surprising," said Anderson. "(The) Cub brand, far better than Breyers, no doubt about it."

"I thought that I would like the big brand better, but Cub," said Pham, raising his fist in the air.

Here's one more look at the final standings:



What did we learn in this battle of the brands, that the more expensive, bigger brand was automatically the better product? Not necessarily.

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