Food brands or own label (aka your own shouty TV :D )

[jenniren]

Branston baked beans, nicer than any other brand.

[meriad]

Is that the one you get for Grumpy? He loves it

yes, that's it


Covid needs to hurry up and go away so I can come visit and bring some goodies (well depending on what we are / are not allowed to bring that is!) sigh

[JanB]

Coffee, a suitcase full of coffee

Oh, and garam masala and other stuff

Actually, may not need it. There is a new Indian spice shop in Almancil and if I can get down there, I'll load the car up

[miasmum]

I like Branston baked beans too Jen.

I will only buy wotsits too and Walkers ready salted crisps. Weetabix and marmite.

[TheOstrich]

Our main supermarket is a Waitrose, (been there this evening, in fact). Interestingly, they don't have a particularly wide range of own label stuff, but there are a few clear winners.
We actually prefer Waitrose Essential teabags over Tetley and PGTips for taste. They come in boxes of 4x40 foiled packets rather than 240 in a big box so tend to stay fresher longer.
Their own brand breakfast cereals are OK, but we reckon Kellogg's and Weetabix products are much more palatable.
Waitrose Essential baked beans taste pretty much as good as Heinz and in 4-packs have always been very competitively priced.
Their own brand soups are limited in range and aren't as good as the Heinz varieties, but they are considerably cheaper - however I can usually get the Heinz cans on a special offer of some sort in Iceland anyway.

Mind you, for us, it's not just the food brands vs own label conundrum. Price does have to be factored in when bulk shopping at Waitrose, so we now do a targeted shop at Iceland every 3 weeks or so to keep our overall food shopping bills down - biscuits, spaghetti cans, and Clover are three items which are all consistently very much cheaper. We also do have an Aldi and Lidl in town but I'm allergic to German discounters , and Asda's car park is permanently rammed and policed by Parking Eye about whom there's been numerous complaints , so I won't shop there either.

[victor]

Heinz beans @ soup
Lidl for my coffee
Lidl or Aldi for Strawberry Crisp cereal
Aldi for frozen peas and wash up liquid
Iceland for Willow butter
Iceland or morrisons for Cathedral City -whoever has cheapest offer
Morrisons for fish .frozen chips@ Broad beans
Morrissons fruit @ veg + wholemeal bread
Asda ? not much unless we have to
Tesco meat pies
Porridge whoever has best offer

[Workingman]

I absolutely hate the ready made or tinned curries, spagbols, chilli-con-carne, meatballs and their likes. They all taste the industrial same and can be done at home in no time at all, and for a fraction of the cost.

Make them yourself and you know what's in them - no chemistry set needed. They are not hard and if you can boil an egg you are a chef! Stop buying glop and cook your own stuff - it really does make sense. Oh, and a lot of them can be done in the time it takes to order and deliver a takeaway, esp curries and stir fries.

[JoM]

Jo, have you tried Aldi's Nescafé Azera equiavent - not bad at all?

Yes, we didn’t like it
We don’t use instant coffee very often, me and Tom are the coffee drinkers and we use the Nespresso machine but John doesn’t like using it so if he’s the one making the drinks then he makes instant.

[Gal2]

I'm the only coffee drinker here, and CBA with the faff of a machine (even though Jen left her deLonghi when she moved out) so it's Kenco decaff instant all the way. I've tried others but none have that same taste. Tom's a tea man and loves his Yorkshire Tea, so they both have to be branded.

I am not a baked bean fan, generally only buy the cheapest LOL.

And for me it HAS to be Mornflake Quick porridge oats, one minute in the microwave saves all the faff of a milky pan to clean....and tastes fab with a drizzle of honey and a few fresh raspberries

Those aside, I get everything else from Lidl as I like their prices