We Know Who Makes This Store Brand!

Kroger Private Selection Gourmet Jelly Beans

If you’re old enough to remember the “generics” craze back in the eighties, when groceries sold canned peas marked only with a bar code and the word “peas” on a plain white label, you know about store brands. They’re not new, of course – the Kenmore appliance brand at Sears has long included units made by Maytag, Frigidaire, and other well-known brands. In groceries, store brands are no longer just plain generics, now bearing hifalutin’ names like “Safeway Select.” But who makes ‘em? That’s often nearly impossible to tell, but we stumbled across not one but two store brands of “gourmet jelly beans” lately for which there is no doubt.

Brand number one is Kroger Private Selection Gourmet Jelly Beans, which boasts “41 Tantalizing Flavors”; and “chewy confections in 41 delicious flavors.”  Across the street at my local CVS drug store, they’d shelved a bag of their new Gold Emblem Gourmet Jelly Beans, also with 41 flavors (though neither “tantalizing” nor “delicious”). Never one to pass up a different brand of beans, I bought the Kroger brand – on sale for about $3.50, down from $3.99 for a seventeen-ounce bag.

The taste was familiar, as was the aroma wafting from the bag once it had been opened. I looked at the back, and lo and behold I spotted a familiar graphic: a color-coded guide to all 41 flavors, from strawberry cheesecake to Wow! Chocolate to perfectly pear… exactly the same set of flavors shown on the back of the Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans bag. The CVS bag – I didn’t buy any at the time – had the same graphic, the same claim of “made with real fruit juice” and a little graphic for combining flavors for a “special” recipe.

Like Gimbal’s beans, the Kroger brand is true gourmet: mini beans made with a jelly center the same flavor (and color) as the hard candy shell. The ingredient list is much the same as that on a Gimbal’s bag (the list of artificial colors is slightly different), and there’s no “made in the USA” label. As far as taste is concerned, the two brands are indistinguishable. So if you were curious, this is one time you can tell who made the store brand – and the good news is that Kroger Private Selection Gourmet Jelly Beans cost less per ounce than Gimbal’s – the same price for a 17-ounce bag as you’d pay (at Kroger, anyway) for a 14-ounce bag. Such a deal!

Oddly, the CVS beans are $4.99 for a pound -- I'll let you know if they're made by Gimbal's... some day.

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