Who's making Trader Joe's food? A look at where generics might come from



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Why does Trader Joe's boxed macaroni and cheese taste like Annie's? Probably because the well-known name brand makes the product for the national supermarket chain—at least according to rumors.

Trader Joe's doesn't have a factory where it makes its own products, and instead sources them from well-known brands and sells them under the Trader Joe's sub-brands at a discount.

The privately held grocery chain based in Monrovia, Calif., closely guards this information and is notoriously secretive about its relationships because it wants its customers to develop loyalty to its own brand. The big brands don't want consumers to have this information because Trader Joe's sells their products at discounted prices. If you were Frito-Lay, you wouldn't want people to know they can buy the same bag of Stacy's pita chips for a couple dollars less at Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's can keep its prices down because it doesn't spend big marketing dollars on advertising beyond its own Fearless Flyer, nor does it have a complex coupon program. And buying directly from the manufacturers keeps costs low.

Consumers are often making guesses about Trader Joe's brand relationships based on packaging, ingredient lists and taste. Is Gordon Biersch making Trader Joe's beer? Is Strauss Family Creamery providing the European Style Organic Plain Whole Milk Yogurt? Is Trader Joe's buying its canned tomatoes from Muir Glenn?

We reached out to Trader Joe's to answer these questions and they never got back to us. We also spoke with a few of the big brands and all told us they couldn't discuss this matter with the media.

Double Rainbow supposedly makes some of the Trader Joe's ice cream and so we called the company to ask if this was the case and a woman who refused to provide her name said, "I'm not at liberty to disclose that information. You have to run a taste test. That's what I would suggest."

And so that's what we did. We decided to investigate 11 of those rumored relationships and closely examined ingredient labels and conducted our own taste tests. We also looked at pricing at the big brand purchased at Whole Foods and the similar (or exactly the same) product at TJ's.

You'll find the results above, and we hope you'll share some of your own assumptions about Trader Joe's products in the comments. Together, we might be able to figure this out.