The Most Loved Private-Label Brands in Shelf-Stable and Frozen Food

In today’s cutthroat grocery market, private-label brands are crucial to boosting market share and margins. By offering great quality at a great price, these exclusive assortments can deepen customer loyalty, too. US shoppers who love a grocer’s private-label brand are seven times more loyal to the grocer—as measured by Net Promoter Score^SM—than shoppers who are reluctant to recommend its own-label product range.

Boosting overall NPS® in this way creates powerful commercial momentum because shoppers funnel more of their spending to a grocer if they feel loyal to that retailer (as opposed to being an NPS detractor who only grudgingly shops there, perhaps out of habit or convenience). The average share of wallet captured by US grocers is 12 percentage points higher if a shopper is a promoter rather than a detractor, according to our research.

However, not all private-label brands are equal. To better understand which are industry leaders, we partnered with ROI Rocket to survey more than 20,000 US consumers across 19 grocery categories spanning center-store food (which includes both shelf-stable and frozen foods), nonfood, and perishables departments. We then used a proprietary “consumer love score” to identify the most loved private-label brands in each department.

The first of these “most loved” leaderboards covers center-store food. The center-store private-label brands pictured above received the highest NPS and are the ones respondents are most likely to choose over both leading national brands and rival private-label brands. As well as outperforming on value, these leading private-label brands are seen as being on par with national brands in terms of quality and taste.

Trader Joe’s topped the list on the back of consumer enthusiasm for its private-label product innovation. Regional gem H-E-B earned a leading spot by successfully catering to the unique needs of its extremely loyal customer base in Texas. Value-oriented grocers and clubs are represented in the form of Costco and Sam’s Club, famed for offering consumers great-quality products at the lowest prices. Consumers appreciate Amazon Fresh for its quality, but the brand really stands out due to its convenient delivery.

Notable absentees from this list: traditional nationwide grocers. None shone on our “most loved” metric. Those retailers have an opportunity to strengthen their private-label brand appeal and reap the reward—increases in both loyalty and share of wallet. Our next leaderboard of the most loved private-label brands will cover perishables.

How we define the most loved private-label brands

The “most loved” score uses a weighted calculation of (1) a brand’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) and (2) consumer propensity to select the brand vs. other private and national brands within a category.

Shelf-stable and frozen product categories surveyed in our study included pasta, chips and salty snacks, packaged coffee, spices and seasoning, pasta sauce, bottled water, ice cream, and frozen pizza. Private-label brands must be present in two or more of the categories surveyed to be contenders for “most loved” status.