Forget Jif: This Dollar Tree Peanut Butter Gives You The Most Bang For Your Buck

By Bobby Lewis
A bowl of creamy peanut butter with peanuts scattered about banu sevim/Shutterstock

Jif is the most popular brand of peanut butter in the country, controlling about a third of the market. The rest is dominated by two other major brands, Skippy and Peter Pan, but the discount retailer Dollar Tree carries what some say is the next best thing to any of these. Check your local Dollar Tree for Nature's House Creamy Peanut Butter, which should be available in 10-ounce jars for about $1.50.

According to reviews from satisfied customers, it tastes a lot like Jif (or any other major brand), with the biggest difference being in price. Jif peanut butter often comes in 40-ounce jars, including at Walmart, which sells it for $6.97. That's about 17.5 cents per ounce, compared to the substantially smaller and cheaper Dollar Tree jar at 15 cents per ounce. For people who take budgeting seriously, that 2 cents an ounce can be huge.

How Dollar Tree's peanut butter stacks up to Jif

A 10 oz jar of creamy peanut butter, with a generic red and blue label Dollar Tree

Figuring out the price per ounce is always key, because comparing unit price to package sizing is one of the must-know rules about buying food at Dollar Tree. The company has been accused of selling small-packaged items to make its low prices seem lower than they actually are, but Nature's House peanut butter doesn't just seem affordable — the price per ounce proves it. One aspect that could undermine budget buying is not every Dollar Tree has the same prices on the same items. However, bulk groceries are one of the food products you might actually want to buy at Dollar Tree, because you can lock in the lowest bulk prices and have the goods delivered to your door.

For some, the difference between 15 and 17.5 cents per ounce may seem marginal; sometimes, so are the differences between generic and name-brand peanut butter. Some brands use as few as two ingredients — peanuts and salt — but Jif, and other big names, often have similar ingredients to Nature's House by Dollar Tree. Between these two, however, Dollar Tree's has more salt and fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (if such things are important to you).