The Brands Behind 6 Popular Walmart Great Value Products

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It's no secret: Store brand products are more affordable than popular name brands. This is because stores bypass the expensive advertising and distribution costs, which reduces retail costs for consumers. Walmart's Great Value private label brand was launched in 1993 and carries products from over 100 categories, including must-have snacks for less than $5, baked goods, meats, cheeses, condiments, and almost everything in between. However, in order to operate at scale and remain one of the country's largest food brands, Walmart cannot manufacture all of its products itself.

So don't let the different labels and lower price tags fool you — Walmart uses many of the same manufacturers that are behind big-name brand products. When customers claim that the Great Value foods are just as delicious as their favorite brands, it's because they're made in the same place and are often the exact same products. That being said, Walmart isn't always forthcoming with the manufacturers behind the Great Value line, so we did some digging. We gathered recall notices, earnings reports, and insights from former employees to find the brands behind six of Walmart's popular Great Value products.

Wells Dairy is the family-owned ice cream company that produces popular brands such as Blue Bunny, Halo Top, Bomb Pop, and Blue Ribbon. It has also been the company behind Walmart's Great Value ice cream for more than 30 years. Made in Le Mars, Iowa – the ice cream capital of the world — Wells Dairy is known for producing high-quality, responsibly-sourced ice cream with fresh milk. Customers on Reddit claim the Great Value ice cream "punches significantly above its weight class," offering excellent taste and texture for extremely affordable prices.

For comparison, one Blue Bunny vanilla ice cream sandwich costs $2.34, whereas an entire 12-pack of Great Value Vanilla ice cream sandwiches costs just $2.97. That's a difference of almost 32 cents per ounce. Additionally, the Walmart brand sandwiches receive extremely high ratings from customers, earning 4.5 stars across more than 13,000 reviews. With the knowledge that both of these brands are made by the exact same manufacturer — and considering the high ratings and price difference — you might want to pick store brand next time you're in the freezer aisle.

Bimbo Bakeries is the manufacturer behind big brands such as Little Bites, Thomas', Nature's Harvest, and Sara Lee, but it also creates products for store brands — including Kroger and Great Value. The connection to Walmart's brand was revealed when it issued a voluntary recall in 2015, when glass fragments were found in some bread products. This included two types of Great Value 100% whole wheat bread.

Customers have made the switch from name brands like Sara Lee to Great Value due to the stark price difference, and seem to be satisfied. One customer who made the switch writes on Reddit, "I've always bought sara lee but I've recently noticed how expensive it is. I considered making my own bread but I think the GV bread would cost the same & I don't have to make it. less than $1.50 and it's actually soft and fluffy!" Walmart sells Sara Lee 100% whole wheat bread for $3.74 and its Great Value whole wheat loaf costs more than a dollar less, at $2.17. Plus, the bread has tons of variety that customers love, including honey wheat, whole grain, multigrain, and sourdough.

The great debate of the best store-bought frozen chicken nuggets is always ongoing, but Perdue Farms is a brand that has been in the egg and chicken game for more than 100 years. As such, they know a thing or two about chicken products. As revealed by a recall in 2010, Perdue is actually the brand behind Walmart's Great Value frozen chicken nuggets. Perdue recalled more than 90,000 pounds of Great Value nuggets due to the potential presence of a foreign material, revealing that it was the manufacturer behind the popular product. It was one of the biggest Walmart Great Value brand recalls in history.

Walmart sells Perdue's name-brand chicken nuggets alongside its store brand offering. However, the name brand is significantly more expensive. Perdue chicken nuggets cost $7.24 for a 1.81-pound bag, whereas the Great Value nuggets cost $5.97 for 2 pounds. In addition to the more than 20,000 positive reviews on the store website, even professional chefs rank the store-brand nuggets highly in blind taste tests, describing them as having a good breadcrumb texture and a good chicken-to-breading ratio. It might be worth making the switch.

Post Holdings creates tons of the cereal brands you're probably familiar with, including Honey Bunches of Oats, Fruity Pebbles, and Raisin Bran. However, they also delve into the store-brand cereal market, revealing in a 2023 annual earnings report that Walmart was actually Post's biggest customer. Although some have speculated that other big brand cereal brands like Kellogg's and General Mills also provide store-brand products, this has not been confirmed, and both companies actually list Walmart as competition in their own reports. In general, though, many customers claim that generic cereal tends to be just as good, and paying for the label is often not worth it.

You can find several of Post's popular cereal brands in the aisles at Walmart, but the Great Value version offers significant discounts, so the question is: Do you save or splurge when it comes to cereal? Take the Great Value Raisin Bran, for instance, which costs $2.47 per box and holds up against the name-brand versions. One customer review on the Walmart site reads, "This GV raisin bran is more affordable, taste just as good as name brand and has more fiber than name brand."

Tyson Foods is one of the biggest chicken producers in the U.S. In addition to name-brand foods, the brand actually manufactures tons of store-brand products sold in retailers like Costco, Aldi, Target, and, of course, Walmart. A former Tyson employee revealed in a Reddit thread that the products that come down the line for Tyson are the same products that get packaged under the Great Value label.

The former employee explained on Reddit, "I used to work at Tyson. One of the things I did there ... was place and remove Tyson plastic bags of 5 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts coming to the end of the conveyor belt. Once I filled a pallet of about 100 bags I would begin to fill 5 pound bags of Great Value boneless skinless chicken breasts. They didn't change what was coming down the line. They are exactly the same product!" If this is the case, then you are simply paying more for the Tyson label, and assuming the Great Value brand is inferior is a mistake you want to avoid when shopping at Walmart.

Krusteaz, which is known for its baking mixes — particularly pancakes and waffles — is the brand behind Walmart's affordable Great Value pancake products. In 2022, Krusteaz (which was then called Continental Mills) issued a recall on Walmart Great Value products for potential foreign material contamination. Per the FDA, a cable in the processing line fragmented, and some pieces were discovered in small amounts of product. The product included Great Value Buttermilk Pancake & Waffle Mix.

The recall was quickly resolved, and no injuries were reported, but Krusteaz was also revealed as the big brand name behind Great Value and other store brand products, including Kroger. Not only is the Great Value pancake mix more affordable than its name-brand competitor, but some reviews actually rank it above Krusteaz for taste and texture. Among the thousands of positive reviews of the product on the Walmart website, one customer claims that the Great Value pancake mix "doesn't taste any different than the more expensive 'just add water' versions." In that case, it's well worth saving money and going with the private label on this one.